Dear Franz One really good song for bass voice can be found in the Stainer and Bell "Songs from Manuscript Sources" volume 1. It is "Most men do love the Spanish wine". I recorded it some years ago, and both the singer and I really enjoyed ourselves! At the same time, we also recorded the first song in that volume., Parson's "In youthly years", with a bass lute and the singer an octave down. It sounded fine.
Moving into the C17th, of course there are loads of English dialogues for soprano and bass, with a simple, usually unfigured continuo line. Stewart and Hector point to Fuellana and Valderabano vihuela songs which work well. Slightly off topic here, very often the singing part in vihuela songs is included in the tablature. So if you try to to a song like Valderabano's "Con que la lavare" or Corten espadas afilados" (vocal line being the tenor part), with a soprano, you will be playing in parallel octaves with the singer, which sounds very odd! Best wishes Martin On 24/01/2011 08:45, "Franz Mechsner" <franz.mechs...@northumbria.ac.uk> wrote: > Dear Lutenists, > > I would love to sing some of the beautiful Renaissance lute (or > vihuela) songs by myself (in private of course...), but cannot find any > for bass voice. Is it that songs were exclusively or mainly composed > for higher pitches of voice? If it was for an ideal of beauty - weren't > there male amateurs who liked to sing as well (as good as they could) > in these times? Could you point me to some suitable sources? > > Best regards > Franz > > > -- > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
