Dear All,
I just realized that "forwarding" something to the list runs foul of the
"attachments forbidden" rule, so here is the whole thing - apologies for
any duplication:
I'm forwarding this reply to my note from David Hill, sometime
countertenor and fellow alumnus of the Deller Academy and Bob Spencer
(see below for David's comments, which you should read first if you want
to make sense of any of this).
I was unaware of the Wigthorp concordance, and also forgot to mention
some wrong notes which really jarred with one who has been familiar with
Dowland's original since the year dot....
As for consort songs being for "treble" voices, I'm afraid this once
again raises the ugly head of the pitch monster. I have some reasons to
believe that Dowland would have expected to hear his songs about a tone
or perhaps even a minor third below modern pitch - if so, then "treble"
often tails off into "alto" without too much difficulty. I'm not saying
there was a "standard" pitch in Dowland's time, but at the same time we
should resist the temptation to project our assumptions about pitch onto
their music.
The problem with the modern countertenor singing lute songs is partly to
do with pitch and partly to do with voice production/timbre. As far as
pitch is concerned, many songs are sufficiently low that a modern
countertenor can manage them (at the top of their range) without
transposition - but then we have problems which relate to any voice
being at the top of its range, in a music which values speech-like
intelligibility. The voice production/timbre issue is perhaps less
serious, but the "head voice" of the modern c/t is not always conducive
to the kind of speech-like expression which seems to be required for the
effective delivery of the poems.
Just a thought about pitch - we tend to think in terms of a'=440, and
therefore in terms of most lute songs being "for" tenor or soprano - but
if we allow a substantially lower pitch, these songs could be sung by
almost anybody, whether they were (by modern classification) a
"baritone" or a "tenor", a "mezzo" or a "soprano". Surely that fits
very well with Dowland's publication strategy and also with the
realities of music making in his time, where no-one got out a tuning
fork at the beginning of a rehearsal.....
Best to All,
Martin
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject:
Re: Down, down, down I fall
From:
"David Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date:
Sat, 7 Jun 2008 19:19:40 +0100
To:
"Martin Shepherd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Dear Martin (please pass parts of this on to all and sundry if you wish!),
I don't have the new Scholl disc, but I do know that
'Sorrow Come' is a 'sacred' contrafactum of 'Sorrow, Stay' by one
William Wigthorp, titled 'Dowlands Sorrow 5'. It's in the British
Library Add. Mss17,786-17791. It's also in Musica Britannica vol. 32.
The underlay (in the music) on 'wretched' is exactly as sung by the
wretched Herr Scholl, I'm afraid, but I agree that he really should know
how to pronounce 'fall' and other words properly.
Scholl's recording of A Musical Banquet, with the 'extraordinary' Edin
Karamazov features some truly cringeworthy wrong notes, leading me to
ask the same question - why did no-one at the sessions correct him? I
love Scholl in later music such as Handel, but this sort of thing is
just wrong. We all know that consort songs are for treble voices.
This song appears (in this Wigthorp consort song version) on the Consort
of Musick's Complete Dowland box on CD 7, track 1, sung (in English) by
the divine Miss Kirkby.
All of the copious and VERY useful information that came with the
original LP issues of these recordings, however, was omitted from the
1997 CD re-issue.
By the way - it would be most enterprising for the Lute Soc to scan in
all of this insert and cover text from the COM Dowland LP covers, to
make available to members, since almost everyone in the lute world will
have this CD box on their shelves for reference (whether they like it or
not, of course), but not all will still have the LPs! Chris should have
all these LPs as part of the Lute soc library collection, because I gave
the whole set of mine to Bob Spencer in 1992 for his reference, and I
believe that Jilly later passed them on to the Soc.
As you know, I've seriously turned against my own former species, and I
now find it very difficult to tolerate countertenors singing lute songs
at all. There are too many things wrong with it, not least of which is
the necessary transpositions, which really make most lutenists have to
work hard, and as you say, it's difficult enough to do it anyway,
without hurdles. I really don't think that Countertenors/falsettists
EVER sang such songs before the early 50s, or even that they existed AT
ALL outside of chapels. Even alto parts to madrigals are no fun for
falsettists - the range is all wrong, necessitating 'gear-shifts' into
chest register, then back again, sometimes in mid-word! Once you strip
away at what C/Ts may have sung at this time, you really have to query
their very existence outside of the choir stalls - at least at this period.
As you say, with the 'modern' countertenor, so much is sacrificed on the
altar of making a lovely noise that the poor old music itself often goes
out of the window. And I was as guilty of that as anyone else. I now
recant my former sins of having sung lute songs (even though I'm well
aware that sometimes it sounded lovely - I'm not that daft), and that I
forced lutenists to perform against the grain of performance practice by
sticking everything down a fourth, and will from henceforth try to do
all in my power to help stamp out this (often) ugly piece of
'mis-information' that still continues to disfigure our general
perception of how lute songs were performed.
A published article is needed, somewhere influential, a proclamation,
drawing together any evidence (or lack of it) for C/Ts doing Jacobean
lute song before 1950. I can't write it - I'm way out of my depth, but
I'm certain that I'm right, and I'm more than happy to discuss it with
anyone willing to commit to this manifesto!
NB. Falsetto C/Ts DID exist by Purcell's time, of course - I'm not
saying they didn't, and besides we have ample evidence in the range of
the voice parts, e.g. the 'split' (for breath) in the two melismatic
phrases of the word 'sing' in 'Mark How the lark and linnet sing' by
Blow - exactly where the break between head and chest voices occurs. But
there, as in the case of early 17th century music, the evidence lies in
the vocal ranges. We just all need to look, critically.
At any rate, it's probably not as bad as 'By the Streams of Afton Water'.
Good to hear from you!
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