There are bad transcriptions out there, yes. If that is your point, agreed.
My point was another one: the inherent ambiguety in tablature does not
always translate well into mensural notation.
David
----- Original Message -----
From: ""Mathias Rösel"" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 3:42 PM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Improvising and Composing?
Two examples, pars pro toto taken from CNRS edition of Gallot. Each is
the typical up-beat bar of a courante. And each is transcribed as a
single line into grand staff, although there are _two_ parts each time.
The second example even has dashes (thumb) so as to indicate the lower
voice. Nevertheless, beginnings like these are usually played as though
they were a single line. Instead of holding and connecting the lower
voice, its notes are integrated into the upper voice.
Courante La Bordelaise, CNRS p. 61:
-e---r-|----
---r---|-^d-
-------|----
-------|----
-------|----
-------|----
Courante (Gallot le Jeune), CNRS p. 221
---------|-----
---------|---e-
-a----a--|-----
-.--d----|-----
----|----|-e---
---------|-|---
Another example, concerning leading notes (La Bordelaise, p. 61, tab
bars 5/6). The in the grand staff transcription has the leading F sharp
(middle part) dangling in the air, and so it is played most often.
Instead of connecting it with its goal, viz. G, the leading note
vanishes through all those separee notes into Nirwana. "Because French
baroque is incomprehensible, anyway".
- |. |\ | | |\ |
-----------|--------------------|--
- | |
-----------|-------a------------|--
- | |
-----d-----|-r---d--------------|--
- | / |
-----/--b--|---r----------------|--
- | / | |
-----r---- |--------------------|--
- / | |
-----a-----|--------------------|--
- | a /a |
Mathias
"LGS-Europe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb:
> Grand staff notation may be useful as far as renaissance music is
> concerned, but with baroque lute music it veils more than it reveals.
> That's not the fault of grand staff but that of transcribers who did
> not
> correctly distinguish parts and did not discern shaping of voices.
But some of the tablatures defy transcirption into mensural notation. The
ambiguous nature of some music does lend itself better to the neutral
medium
of tablature than to the seemingly exactness of mensural notation. That
is
true of music where the number of parts is not always clear: two voices
merging into one and splitting up for short streches, or for example for
broken chords alluding to sustained melodies in one or more parts, even
though the notes cannot be held everywhere. We can think of many examples
in
lute music where tablature is the best possible medium, precicely because
of
its ambiguous nature. Reading this music from staff notation can give one
the false sense of security that the interpretation chosen in the
transcription is the only truth. Transcription is translation. Some might
be
lost, but some might be gained.
David
****************************
David van Ooijen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.davidvanooijen.nl
****************************
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