On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:53:30 +0000, Ron Andrico wrote > Hello Monica: > Besard's 1617 book was rather inelegantly engraved. He may have used > the services of a chimpanzee, which explains a great deal. > Ron Andrico
Sorry, and I might be completely off here, but IIRC Besard 1617 was neither engraved nor typeset - it's a woodcut. But I think that only partially explains the problems in that print. While there are a lot of errors that can be explained by the impossibility to correct errors (letters being on the wrong line etc.) there are a _lot_ of errors that can't be explained by this, like the ensemble parts not matching harmonically or having non-matching length. > As far as the music is concerned it seems Besard was not > a professional musician. Whatever "professional musician" means in that time. I think we need to be very careful with such statements - ur inability the read/interpret the original text might be just that: _our_ inanbility. May I mention the fact that Robert Dowland found Besard worthy (and professional) enough to translate his lute instructions? Cheers, Ralf Mattes 16 Aug 2011 16:42:40 +0100 > > To: [email protected] > > CC: [email protected] > > From: [email protected] > > Subject: [LUTE] Re: Besard duets once more > > > > 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? > > I am not very familiar with this particular > source but it doesn't surprise > me that it is apparently a > mess. I can think of a number of baroque guitar > tablatures > which are pretty useless. Have you ever looked at Pesori?. > And > then there is Dalza. > Have you read Martin shepherd's article > "Was Dalza really weird?" > > There are fairly obvious practical > reasons why there might be a large number > of > printing > errors. As far as the music is concerned it seems Besard was not > > a professional musician. A bad case of vanity publishing. Is the book > > engraved or printed from type? > > > > Monica > > > > > > > > -- > > > ******************************* > > > 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 > > > > > > -- -- R. Mattes - Hochschule fuer Musik Freiburg [email protected]
