An excellent summary of contemporary practice.
DD
Certainly good points.
However, a renaissance musician used a transposing system,
therefore
they did not transpose in the modern sense because they were
already
transposing.
Although there is not a handy modern analogy, unless you
play the
bass clarinet, it would be like saying a person who was
sight-singing
using "moveable Do" instead of "fixed Do"
should use "moveable Do". They would say, I always use
"moveable Do,"
what do you mean?
(Substitute "moveable Ut" if you are a purist, although Ut
is by
definition moveable)
The most difficult part about renaissance theory--aside from
the
Formschneider codex--is that the lute is currently in a
"fixed Do"
space, but historically was in the "moveable Do" space:
"G Lute" = fixed Do space
"Lute in Sol" = moveable Do space
Does it matter? Sure thing! Endless confusion otherwise
about keys,
pitch, performance, etc.
dt
At 11:53 AM 7/20/2009, you wrote:
A practical musician wiil use a practical tuning.
In the sense that a certain lute will sound right for
certain
repertoire when tuned to a certain pitch with the
appropriate strings.
When playing in an ensemble with other tuneable instruments
one has
to come to an an agreement on which pitch to use.
When playing with fixed pitch instruments one will have to
either
cancel the gigg, or transpose or play another size of lute.
All this is very much in accordance with "ye oulde practice"
LvS
Op 20 jul 2009, om 20:14 heeft David Tayler het volgende
geschreven:
Terms like "alto lute" or "alto viol" are periodically
floated and
usually do not gain traction, however, this is simply a
modern
terminology phenomenon.
Alto recorder did very well; on the other hand, male
alto--now
replaced by the more resplendent sounding
"countertenor"--has pretty
much disappeared.
Several professional archlute players changed the name of
their
instruments from "archlute" to "theorbo" when the theorbo
became more
in demand from the hiring point of view--they didn't change
instruments, just names.
At one point, when it looked like "arciliuto" might gain
traction,
several changed to "arciliuto", then back again to
"archlute" and
"theorbo". You can see the trail reflected in CD liner
notes.
I sort of liked "arciliuto" myself--more historical and
with that
international flair. Does not rhyme with "hirsute" as well.
And of course Shakespeare's famous line "a rose by any
other name
would smell as sweet" was originally "a rose by any other
word",
which avoids the careless repetition of the "word name":
What's in a name? That which we call a Rose
By any other Word would smell as sweet.
dt
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