Once more I've turned my attention to the lute duets from Besard's 1617 publication. What happened here? Unequal lengths of the two parts, false relations al over the place, the literature writes about polychords (D major in one part, G-major in another), simultaneous cadenses in different keys, need I go on? We all like the occasional spicy dissonance, and for some it cannot be spicy enough, but this ... Let me quote Julia Sutton from her article 'The Music of J. B. Besard's "Novus Partus", 1617' (Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 19, No. 2, Summer, 1966): "While it may be that some unusual dissonances were intended by Besard, we may well be forced to conclude that a combination of serious typographical errors and poor writing renders some of these works unplayable." I know how to fix it: rewrite it, and some of you send me their fixes when I last asked about Besard last year (was it?). But looking at the music, it begs the question: why? Why so many errors and/or poor writing, why bother to publish it? Is there a theory out there, someone?
David -- ******************************* David van Ooijen [email protected] www.davidvanooijen.nl ******************************* To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
