Ooops, sorry Sean, meant to send this to the list:
Hi All,
Hold marks are found in many lute tablatures, often with the explanation
that they are an indication to hold the finger on a note.
But you don't have to do too much experimentation to find that often it
is impossible to hold the finger in that place and these marks were used
to indicate voice-leading rather than fingering. Even in quite simple
pieces, the fingers can't always literally keep the voices going, and
the art of lute playing is to give the illusion of a full-voiced texture.
This is another example of how lute tablature is a score, a
representation of a piece of music on one sheet of paper (try reading
simultaneously from four partbooks and you'll see what I mean) rather
than a simple set of instructions on how to place the fingers.
With best wishes to all for 2014,
Martin
On 03/01/2014 19:24, Sean Smith wrote:
Dear theoj89294,
It's my understanding that they represent instances of "let this note
ring". In nearly all cases it helps the voice-leading in the polyphony
or keeps a bass note going until the next chord change.
One finds this practice in many previous lute books (though not all),
such as Antonio Rotta (a double-cross), and Simon Gintzler (asterix) -
both from whom he borrowed heavily for his publications. DaCrema, on
the other hand, not so much. SG's fantasies are labeled "Simon Sentler"
and his intabulations are (typically for Phalese) unattributed. The
major Josquin motet intabs in PP '52 are by Gintzler. Howard Mayer
Brown's Printed Instrumental Music before 1600 is an immense help in
sorting out many of those anonymous settings.
Sean
On Jan 3, 2014, at 9:50 AM, [email protected] wrote:
I was looking through Pierre Phalese, Hortus Musarum, 1552
(available online - search "Phalese Hortus IMSLP" )
Phalese puts an asterix (*) on the staff often sometimes multiple ones,
and in very specific placement, and I realized these must be markings to
'stop' a string from sounding? I am very curious about this. Are there
other examples of notations used in lute tab to stop strings? Does this
suggest the sustain of lute strings back then might have been more
robust than we may think? trj
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