Dear Stuart,
Some years ago Jon Banks made a CD with the early music group Sirinu, which included some of those early 16th century lute trios. The trios made up about one third of the CD. I always take Jon's edition to Lute Society playing events, but the music never gets played. The rhythms are difficult, and few lutenists are happy to read staff notation. Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [[1]mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stuart Walsh Sent: 11 September 2009 23:36 To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: [LUTE] Re: Imbalance [email protected] wrote: > I guess we were pretty good sight readers, Stuart. I had studed > percussion since Jr. High and was playing drums professionally at the > time. The other 'lutenists' were very good players - conservatory > trained - on their respective modern instruments. So we all did well > with the rhythmic complexities. Also, required at the workshop were > daily classes in doing exercises from Hindemith's Elementary Training > for Musicians. By the time you get into the third or fourth chapter > of that, you're having fun with rhythms! As a drummer, it was > actually the rhythmic 'interest' characteristic of much early > music that initially attracted me. Another memorable evening was > spent listening to recorder players trying to read through "Christe > Crosse" from T. Morley's "A Plain and Easy Introduction to Music" (if > I remember the title correctly). One would have to look to > contemporary - or at least modern - musical works to find similar > rhythmic complexity, I think. > > Ned > We had a classically-trained violinist stay with us for a while (Bartok no problem etc) - and I put some fifteenth century music in front of her (I chose something quite tricky!) and she was really quite flummoxed - for a couple of minutes anyway, but then sorted it out. What I find most shocking/surprising in this kind of music (as it is realised in modern editions) is seeing what looks like a simple melodic line which, if it were in 4/4 would be a simple as could be. But it's not on the the beat at all! But there is a beat and some of the other parts may be playing it - or not. (I can put up some juicy examples if anyone is interested) Jon Banks has been championing a repertoire (some textless chansons and other things) from around 1500 which he argues is for lute trio (or a trio of plucked instruments, probably of different sizes). He has written a book about it and the Lute Society (UK) has published some of the pieces. I have worked on some of the pieces (as an amateur) and I still don't feel at all confident at trying to play them with others. I'd be interested to know who is playing them. Stuart -- References 1. mailto:[email protected] To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
