Dear All,
(Stuart, I hope you don't mind me sharing this with the list, but I
think this might be of interest to everyone)
Pavans are tricky. Viol players always seem to play them too fast
(presumably because their parts have no written out divisions on the
repeats) and lute players have a tendency to play them too slow -
because the repeats are usually chock-full of fast notes. The crucial
thing, whatever the speed, is to get a feeling of a slow, swinging
two-in-the-bar. In this case I have probably failed utterly, because
Bacheler's divisions are so rhapsodic in style. He also delights in
unusual rhythmic patterns, a classic one for him being bars 30 and 31,
also 55.
One thing I discovered some years ago using a metronome is that we all
have a tendency to play the slow notes too slow and the fast notes too
fast, so sometimes the "fast" notes are not as fast as you think.
On the subject of ornaments, I have improvised graces because there are
no signs in the source. In many cases where a dotted note is followed
by two short notes, it seems to cry out for a shake, and this is
confirmed by the appearance of a sign for a shake in similar contexts in
other sources, for example in Vallet.
Sometimes it is not altogether clear whether a shake should use the
upper or lower note auxiliary, as in bars 20-21 - but here fingering
suggests a lower note auxiliary, and in fact the overall musical context
(an ascending sequence through bars 20-22) tends to point in the same
direction.
Another feature which Bacheler seems to like is unisons (end of bar 13,
beginning of bar 17, etc). I'm often tempted to add a fall here, and a
particular favourite of mine (also applicable to the same chord at the
beginning of the second strain of his Galliard on "To plead my faith",
Board, f.16v.) is the a2f3f4 at the beginning of bar 17. If you play a
fall from d3 to f3 in the middle of the chord, and spread the chord, you
get a lovely effect a bit like what was later called a "battery" on the
harpsichord.
I wouldn't want to claim that my graces are in any sense "correct" -
though they are based on historical evidence. The details will always
vary from one occasion to another, and different people obviously made
different choices in the past, as they do now. One thing is
interesting: once you get used to hearing this music with the graces, it
seems horribly bare without them.
Best wishes,
Martin
On 16/02/2011 23:14, Stuart Walsh wrote:
On 15/02/2011 10:00, Martin Shepherd wrote:
Dear All,
I'm finally catching up with myself! Before the new lute went off to
its new owner I managed to make several hasty recordings, so this is
the same lute as last time (7c after Venere C36, 67cm string length,
strung completely in gut):
www.luteshop.co.uk/month/pieceofthemonth.htm
I hope you like it.
Martin
I very much enjoyed it. The sound of the lute is lovely but it's also
very interesting to hear an English pavan again. I haven't even tried
to play one for years. I could never get the unadorned strain slow
enough nor the diminutions fast enough. Have you put more
ornamentation into this than previous pieces?
Stuart
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