Martin
Thank you for forwarding David Hill's email, it does raise interesting
issues.
Just a few points. You wrote:
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
Why?
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".
Yes, but how about the four-part versions, presumably with the same lute.
realities of music making in his time, where no-one got out a tuning fork
at the beginning of a rehearsal.....
True, but there is that same lute again, with the treble tuned up just under
breaking point, hence at a more or less fixed pitch.
Something else. There are some period transposed lute parts, aren't there?
Anyway, there were differenty sized, and presumably pitched lutes. Playing a
lute song on a lute a fourth down makes it very suitable for an alto. This
is what I sometimes do with my counter tenor, by the way, but more often I
transpose just one tone or a third down. Transposing down a second makes
some of the lute parts easier, strangely enough. Morley's 'It was a lover
and his lass' comes to mind. But that's coincidence, not evidence.
David
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Shepherd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Lute Net" <[email protected]>; "David Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2008 9:46 PM
Subject: [LUTE] lute songs
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. - 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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