Hi Stuart,
I love Crawford's duet versions but they are perhaps a bit fast - though
it's worth considering that in La Morra his divisions are based on
Newsidler's version.
Just a quick check with the metronome (so I may be a bit adrift): I
suggest about 66 for La Morra, 66 for La Bernardina, and 58 for the
Benedictus. That is for whole notes (no flag), as in the first two
notes of La Morra. But you could get away with slower speeds.
Have you tried La Alfonsina? Another gem from Odhecaton, and as you say
it's interesting that in 1536 Newsidler is still making versions of
pieces which were 40 years old, though of course he may have made these
versions long before publishing them (it must have taken him quite a
time to assemble the contents of his first two books and perhaps they
reflect his teaching over many years). Another interesting reflection
is that some of the pieces in the first book are difficult enough, then
in the second book you get even more elaborate versions of the same pieces.
Finally, in his intabulations he simplifies 4-part pieces so that you
only have to play three parts at any one time. Four note chords only
appear at the ends of pieces, and only on adjacent strings, so I suspect
he did not use the ring finger at all. It also appears that he never
uses a barre, and he doesn't mention it in his text either.
Best wishes,
Martin
Stuart Walsh wrote:
Are these pieces really only feasible for a very advanced player?
(I've got Martin Shepherd's Lute Society: Renaissance Music from
German Sources)
Would anyone suggest an approximate speed to aim for, for any of them?
If it's the speed that Crawford Young and Karl-Ernst Schroder adopt in
their duet arrangement of La Morra then I give up now.
(These pieces are all in Odhecaton as three-part compositions, c1500.
Is it surprising that they appear quite a bit later in Newsidler?)
Stuart
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
