To be honest, lute music is stuffed full of consecutive fifths. You
don't have to look far to find many examples much more obvious than
this one. The voice leading is usually pretty ropy too. The 'Poulton'
Lachrimae appears to switch between 6, 4 and 3 voices in the first two
bars. But then, they weren't writing in strict Palestrina style - and
indeed, why should they?
Interesting, incidentally, this business of solo versions of Lachrimae
in two different keys. How often does this happen? I can think off
the top of my head of Danyel's Rosa and Milano's Janequin Bataille.
Why did people bother doing what is in effect a complete rewrite?
The toughest criticism of Dowland came from Burney, nearly two
centuries later, who was 'disappointed and astonished at his scanty
abilities in counterpoint'. Curiously, the music examples given by
Burney don't actually include any lute music.
P
On 24 February 2010 19:46, vance wood <[1]vancew...@wowway.com> wrote:
Maybe we are seeing here what some of Dowland's contemporary critics
meant when they remarked about Dowland's lousy counterpoint. Can it
be that we are assuming that Dowland would not write in such a
manner, ignoring the fact that indeed he did---on purpose?
----- Original Message ----- From: "David van Ooijen"
<[2]davidvanooi...@gmail.com>
To: "[3]lute-cs.dartmouth.edu" <[4]l...@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 12:20 PM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Dowland's "Lachrimae"
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 11:09 AM, David Tayler
<[5]vidan...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
As printed in the Poulton edition, The fifths and direct octaves
cross the bar, from G to D in the lowest sounding voices to E flat
to
B flat in the lowest sounding voices.
I see, consecutive fifths between what I regard as bass and middle
voice (altus/tenor) to bass and tenor, with the middle voice of the
first chord clearly going to the altus of the second chord. I think we
can agree to disagree on calling that a parallel fifth - we
definitively went to different counterpoint classes - but if your
ears perceive it such, so much the better for your ears. Mine are less
well-attuned, I must confess.
Your fix, replacing the b-flat by a g (second fret, fourth course) is
elegant - and not more difficult - but I must say I like the stepwise
motion of b-flat to c' to d' tenor line in the second measure, in
imitation of what is happening in the middle voice of measure one. As
you say, hearing counterpoint in lute writing can be a personal thing.
But adding the g might have the best of both worlds: warmer chord,
third to avoid attention to bare 5-8 sound, retaining stepwise tenor.
I will try it for a while.
Thanks for the clarification, anyway.
David
--
*******************************
David van Ooijen
[6]davidvanooi...@gmail.com
[7]www.davidvanooijen.nl
*******************************
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Peter Martin
Belle Serre
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81100 Castres
France
tel: 0033 (0)5 63 35 68 46
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e: [8]peter.l...@gmail.com
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References
1. mailto:vancew...@wowway.com
2. mailto:davidvanooi...@gmail.com
3. http://lute-cs.dartmouth.edu/
4. mailto:lute@cs.dartmouth.edu
5. mailto:vidan...@sbcglobal.net
6. mailto:davidvanooi...@gmail.com
7. http://www.davidvanooijen.nl/
8. mailto:peter.l...@gmail.com
9. http://www.silvius.co.uk/
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