On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 06:02:17 -0700 (PDT), Christopher Wilke wrote
> The confusion arises from the fact that HK is always using the same
> examples in his prefaces. The 4-note arp. is always demonstrated p-
> i-m-i, but illustrated on strings that result in low to high. So,
> what if the arp. needs to happen on strings other than those in the
> preface? Does HK want us to use the same pattern or break the chord
> with some other right hand pattern so as to achieve the same type of
> note order? Picininni doesn't help: his examples are almost
> identical to Kapsperger's. I tend to think, keep the pattern, but
> that's just a guess.
>
> There are two examples in which Kapsperger deviates from p-i-m-i.
> The six note arp. is played p-p-p-i-m-i on strings 6-5-4-2-1-3.
> With re-entrant tuning, this results in the notes proceeding bass-
> ten-alto-ten-alto-sop. (To add to the confusion, in Libro IV it
> says to play it p-p-p-m-(i)-m!) More interestingly, HK's advice for
> the 3-note arp. is to start on the TOP note and descend to the bass:
> i-m-p.
I think we should be careful in separating two issues here:
[1] Fingering (i.e. what fingers to use to play certain notes.
[2] "Note layout" - i.e. in what sequence to play the notes of
an arpeggiated chord.
[1] At least for the early Chitarrone repertoir it seems pretty clear
to me that there's no documented use of the ring finger. IIRC that's
pretty much in concordance with right hand fingering for the lute.
Also, when playing close to the bridge (which seems to have been the
most common place) using more the two fingers besides the thumb is
difficult since there is a noticeable difference in the sound quality
between the first and the third finger.
[2] Yes, il tedesco leaves out important informantion - but i wouldn't
call that 'confusing' (the information he gives isn't contradicting in
itself), it's just not enough. At least so it seems. We do have
examples for string combinations 4-321, 5-321 and 654321 (i guess
6-321 would be similar to the other bass+top three strings). All
combinations with the top three notes on 543 are uninteresting since
there's no inversion happening. That leaves us with missing examples
for the combinations 6-432 and 5432. But that's a combination that
hardly ever used in the third book (I'd have do dig to find my
microfilm copies of the other books to broaden that observation).
There _are_ places I'd be curious to get more information from
Kapsberger. There are some chords where the pattern he mentions
produce non-bottom-to-top voicings, for example the final e major
chord in Toccata no. 2 or some places in the toccata arpeggiata.
Those are the interesting spots.
Cheers, RalfD
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
