I totally agree with Dr. Ness. If someone wants to play freely the beginning is ok, of course, but we have to think a little more about the music written by Francesco and in general about the writing and the performance practice of the counterpoint in the first half of the Sixteenth-century. Many greetings Franco Pavan ps: by the way, the version in Castelfranco Veneto ms. is in the "correct" rhythm.
2010/11/29 A. J. Ness <[1][email protected]> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Susanne Herre" <[1][2][email protected]> To: "Lute List" <[2][3][email protected]> Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2010 9:43 AM Subject: [LUTE] Re: Francesco da Milano - Ness 33 > Thank you for all your responses! > > Sorry I didn't write clearly. > > I know of three versions which were kindly given to me by David van Oijen: > > - Siena Manuscript > - Intabolatura di Liuto di M. Francesco da Milano [...] Libro Terzo, > Gardano 1562 > - Theatrum Musicum - Petrus Phalesius, Antuerpiensi 1571 > > All these versions have the opening motif with a rhythm being > "semibreve-minima-minima" > I think it is strange to have an alternation of the motif as soon as in > the first imitation and I was thinking of any reason of notation / > printing problems. > But my theory also seems not to be very convincing because they could have > started the first imitation on an "upbeat" if they want to use bar lines. > On his CD of 2008 Hopkinson Smith plays the version written in Siena, > Gardano and Phalese. > It is very interesting, Jean-Marie, to know about this english version > with "corrected" opening motif. > If there are any other versions or theories - it would also be interesting > to know about that. > > Thanks to all, > > Susanne ==================================================== >> > >> Dear lute lovers, >> > >> What are your opinions about the beginning of Francesco da >> Milano - Fantasia Ness 33 regarding the note value of the first note of >> the first motif? >> > >> My thoughts at the moment are that maybe it happened like this: Francesco wrote the piece without bar lines. When they tried to >> > print it with bar lines it was not possible or not common to print >> only an upbeat / a bar of half length. So they changed the rhythm to a >> very common pattern so the motif could now fit into one bar. >> > >> Could that be possible? Maybe that happened with other pieces >> as well? >> > >> Or maybe Francesco "had to" compose it like this because no >> piece like a fantasia or ricercar would start with an upbeat? >> > >> Best wishes, >> > >> Susanne ===================================================== Dear Susanne and friends, Perhaps I might add a few comments appropriate to this discussion. Err, about 800 words about two notes.<g> A few years back I completed a collected edition of the music of Francesco da Milano, with which some of you are familiar. When I worked on that edition I assembled all known sources for Francesco's music, that is, altogether, some 640 pieces that were copied or printed into 16th and early 17th sources. That is standard working procedure in preparing a critical edition of music. To determine the very best reading to use as a basic source, and to discover if other sources had corrections that might be incorporated into the basic reading, I collated all those 640+++ pieces. For No. 33 the best source I had at that time was from the Intabolatura de Lauto, Libro Terzo (Venice; Antonio Gardane, 1547). So I used it, although the rhythm of the first three notes seemed to garble the opening musical idea, Francesco's favored mi-fa-mi motive. The motive dominates the entire ricercar and its companion No. 34. Why throw away a strong opening musical idea? Surely it was intended to be the same as the later imitation, three equal semibreves, rather than the semibreve-minim-minim of the Gardane exemplar (which found its way into so many later printed editions and manuscripts, as David van Ooijen showed us, in part). Six independent sources available to me at that time gave the reading which I suspected was the correct one, three long notes (semibreves) as in the answering points-of-imitation. These included one ms copied in Florence and another in Lucca; a late, otherwise very corrupt "homophonic" version attributed to Diomedes Cato in the Hainhofer Lautenbuecher (ca. 1603), as well as the Cambridge manuscript cited by Jean-Marie--the latter is published as Appendix 4 in the FdaM edition. So I adopted the change, marking it with "[*]" to indicate the emendation was found in contemporary sources. One source (the one from Lucca) even confirmed Susanne Herre's suspicions about an "upbeat" by inserting a rest before the first note. (Actually it's not quite an "upbeat" rather than a piece beginning on the second beat in triple meter, but as it comes down from Gardane falsely barred in duple.) One of the most lamented lost sources back then was an Intabulatura de lauto di M. Francesco Milanese et M. Perino [sic] Fiorentino, Libro Primo (Rome: Valerio Dorico & Lodovico fratello, M. D. LXVI). I only had the first four folios (from an incomplete copy in a French library). The original print run was probably about a thousand copies! All thrown away when the music became outmoded. The incomplete copy included the table of contents demonstrating that it had the same contents as the later Gardane print. The preface explained that the volume had been edited by Francesco student Pierino Fiorentino (d. 1552) as a monument to his recently departed teacher. The fragmentary copy included three Francesco fantasias (Nos. 30-32). From those three pieces the importance of the Roman print was quite obvious. The pieces were virtually without mistakes, were printed WITHOUT barlines (as Susanne guessed, and as I suspect was Francesco's preferred notation), and to show the polyphonic voice-leading, held notes were marked with numerous +'s (omitted in the Gardane print). And the strange longas with coronas (mentioned by David Tayler) at the END (but NOT at the beginning) are another Gardane appendage, and not contained in the authoritative Roman print. The Dorico publication surely represented the very best of Francesco's output, prepared under the watchful eye of his most distinguished student. It was an authoritative source, the only legitimate one to come down to us. But I only had a fragment of the print. Before World War II there had been one complete copy of the Dorico print in the Prussian State Library. (The original print run was probably about 1000 copies--all gone now.) But as the bombs began to fall, it was said to have been sent for safekeeping with about a third of that library's rare music to the Fuerstenfeldbruck Castle in what is now Poland. Rumors held that soldiers had found the cache, and after the war locals reported that they had seen soldiers burning books to keep warm (the cache had included the autograph finale to Beethoven's Ninth, and an act of Magic Flute in Mozart's hand, etc.). The rumors were fortunately false. The collection was missing from the castle where the Germans had stored it, but had been moved around into various monasteries and castles, and finally came into the possession of the Polish government in Cracow. The government considered the collection to be war reparations, and the cache's existence was not revealed until about 40 years after war's end. The saga is told in Nigel Lewis, Paperchase: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach . . . The Search for Their Lost Music (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1981), x + 246 pp. There were Francesco's Nos. 30-36, 38-42 in what must be considered their most authoritative readings. (Gardane misattributed No. 37 to Francesco, although it is correctly assigned to Pierino in the Dorico print.) It was the direct source for Gardane's 1547 edition. Without barlines the Dorico print has the correct note values at the beginning, three semibreves, not the semibreve-minim-minim of Gardane's pirated print, and all those which followed based on it. In drawing the barlines, Gardane's editor or typesetter(?) misunderstood Susanne's "upbeat," treating it as a "downbeat," shortening the second and third notes to fit the notes to his perceived duple meter. So we even know the culprit: a hack in Gardane's print shop. There is no valid authority for the semibreve-minim-minim beginning for No. 33. -- References 1. mailto:[4][email protected] 2. mailto:[5][email protected] To get on or off this list see list information at [6]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. mailto:[email protected] 2. mailto:[email protected] 3. mailto:[email protected] 4. mailto:[email protected] 5. mailto:[email protected] 6. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/%7Ewbc/lute-admin/index.html
