There was a Jewish lutenist in Turin called Sig. Angelo in the 1630s.. I
mentioned this in the introduction to the Bartolotti piece. The infromation
comes from a very interesting article by Francois Pierre Goy about Bullen
Reymes. This is what I said...
"The young English lutenist and guitarist, Bullen Reymes, who toured the
continent in the 1630s, arrived in Turin on 6th October, 1633 where he
remained until the end of the month. On the 8th he went to visit a Jew
called Sig. Angelo who played the lute, and he heard him play again two days
later. There is however no evidence to suggest that this was Bartolotti.
At least one of the pieces described as "du Juif" - the sarabande in F:Pn
Vm7675 (p.97) is attributed to Corbetta in another source and several of the
other "du Juif" pieces are in a scordatura known as "ton du Juif". Most of
the pieces in question are rather simple - certainly not of the quality we
associate with Bartolotti's work. The name Angelo Mikielo or Michaelangelo
is a common Italian Christian name so that it is uncertain whether any of
the the pieces are actually by Bartolotti.
As ever
Monica
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mjos & Larson" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Cc: "Martyn Hodgson" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2010 7:13 AM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Bartolotti
Those numbers below chords are curious. My first inclination was to
consider them indications on how to break the chords (like the
shorthand used in earlier Italian sources), but breaking a two note
"chord" in the middle of system 5 in "3" does seem curious. The
numbers, as far as I can see, are _only_ on that page and not used in
other pieces. They also appear in the two sections where the music is
notated in from 2 to 5 notes aligned vertically for each "chord".
Given that this is a Prelude, and likely played with an element of
freedom, and thinking they may be intended to remind the manuscript
owner of some performance difference in those chords, leads me to
think they may possibly signal either breaking, relative note
length, or repeating the chords that many times.
I am a big fan of Bartolotti and recently purchased the SFL edition
by Moscardo. Because there was so little information in the edition
about the source, I tried to seek out some more information about the
first group of pieces from A-Wn 17706.
Peter Steur's content list only lists piece 99 as being by Angelo
Michiele (=SFL edition pp.6-7). Steur gives 88v as the folio number,
but my (somewhat poor) photocopy seems to give the numbers 89 and 178
(?) in the corner. I cannot see any other indication of Bartolotti's
authorship from the pages I have.
http://mss.slweiss.de/index.php?id=2&type=ms&ms=A-
Wn17706&lang=eng&showmss=1&stP
The Sources Munuscrites en Tablature at
http://www.bnu.fr/Smt/perb.htm
lists only an Allemande and a Gigue by Bartolotti in A-Wn 17706. That
second piece may well be the "Gigue de Angelin de Rome", which I
assume is in the Baroque lute section of the manuscript. (Didn't
someone -- possibly Monica Hall -- recently suggest that there was a
Jewish lutenist in Rome with the name Angelo/Angelin?)
Does anyone know on what grounds Moscardo feels that these 10 pieces
are by Bartolotti?
By the way, I believe there are two prominent mistakes in Moscardo's
edition of the Allemanda on pages 6-7. Pickup measure has a "d" on
the third course -- I believe this is a misreading of the "C"
mensural sign, and that the piece begins with the two notes on the
second string. In Moscardo's last system on page 6, last measure, the
fifth event should be only "c" on string 2 with the open tenth
course, then shift the "a_b" etc, one eighth note to the right.
Moscardos measure only has 11 eighth notes instead of the original's
12. I have not looked for errors in the other pieces.
-- R
_______
Thank you for this.
On the subject of Bartolotti's theorbo works, has anyone yet
come up
with an interpretation of the small numbers under the tablature
stave
in the Prelude starting at f. 90v of Wien NB MS 17.706. Altho'
this
piece isn't attributed to B., a later Allemande in a very similar
style is. I asked this question a few years ago (in fact 14 Dec
2005)
but there seemed no convincing view of what they meant. I've
pasted my
original query below and would be grateful for any insights.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
' What I think are even more problematical, are the numbers (ie
a '2'
or a '3') appearing under some chords at the bottom of page 90
(179) in
the theorbo pieces at the back of Wien MS17.706. At first glance
one
might say these are simply shorthand for bass course tablature,
but the
MS uses the usual strokes (ie a /a //a ///a 4 5 6 7) to indicate
these; is it the number of times the chord is repeated? - but in the
context of the particular chord progressions where it appears this
makes little sense; is it how the chord is to be broken? but the
relevant chords have varying numbers of notes (ranging from three
to 5)
and he also uses the established ://: sign for arpeggiation; is
it some
LH fingering? - but in the context this again makes no sense.'
Martyn
--
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
