Hi Mathias,
Wow this is really interesting. I was thinking about what a pain it is
to stop and re-tune the basses for different keys when I was tuning
last night. I sometimes fret a bass if it's convenient, or if not can
move the notes up an octave. I'm playing a 9-course orpharion so it has
about 1 less bass string than would be nice for quite a bit of music.
I wonder how often people would have done this 400 years ago. Has
anyone done any studies to see if there are concordances of the same
piece in different tunings and how much this might have been done?
Nancy
> Really interesting. I'll have a look at flat tuning and see what
I can
make of it.
Do you happen to know the Fronimo software? Transcripts from one
tuning to
the other are really easy. Two clicks, and there you are.
> When you mention the awkward stretch in measure 8 - would that be
the 8th
bar of the second section where there's a stretch from 7th fret
(third
sting) to 4th fret (fourth string) followed by 7th fret first sting?
No, sorry, I was talking about first section, measure 9
----e----r'-a-r---a' -r-
----a-----------a------
----b-------------------
------------------------
------------------------
------------------------
///a
Which In flat tuning (F5D5B4G4D4A3 | G3F3E3D3C3B2) turns into
----e----r'-a-r---a' -r-
----a-----------a------
----a-------------------
------------------------
------------------------
------------------------
///a
> I get around that one by doing a half barre with my little finger
at the
7th fret - and it works for me. The stretch is very awkward for me
if I try
to use my third (ring) finger for the 7th fret (third string) and I
can't
really get it to sound clearly with the 4th fret (4th string)
stopped with
my first finger. Hope that makes sense!
It does, and I understand that your hand are smaller than mine. With
flat
tuning, that measure become more feasible:
-------h----g-e----r----
-------------------------
----g-----e---r---------
-------------------------
----f-------------d----r-
-------------------------
A bit less difficult IMO.
Best wishes,
Mathias
> I'vev been doing a little checking up on Tombeau de Mezangeau
and it's
> attributed to Ennemond "Vieux" Gaultier rather than Denis - his
younger
> cousin.
No argument about this. Denis took care of both his own and his
cousin's
music in this edition. "... on se plaint que les copies des pieces
de Luth
que Jay compose et que les copies des celes que Mr. Gaultier Sieur
de Neve
mon cousin a faites, se trouvent fort alterees ... Jay cru estre
oblige des
les faire graver pour les representer au Naturel" (people complain
that the
lute music that I and my cousin composed, is very much altered in
copies. So
I felt I was obliged to have them engraved so as to represent them
in their
natural form).
> It was Denis who supervised publication of the 'Livre de
> Tablature pour Lut . . . .' in which it appears, but this was
published
> in 1672, over 20 years after the death of Ennemond.
And more than 40 years after Ennemond retired from service and
public. Food
for thoughts.
If you transcribe the tablature of the Tombeau for French flat
tuning, this
whole pavan will lie more comfortably in your hands. An awkward
stretch like
in measure 8 disappears, and IMO the whole piece is more organic. My
sneaking suspicion is that Ennemond's music was so charming that
people
transcribed it for the new tunings of the day, that way smuggling
quite a
few mistakes into the staves.
There is an allemande by Ennemond twice in D-Rou xvii-54. Once in
d-minor
tuning, the other in French flat tuning.
Mathias
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