James, this is brilliant. Thank you! I'll place a link on my website.A
It's funny - I did my initial work on it back in 1996 from a copy of
Maynard's dissertation held in Edinburgh University library, and
recorded it the same year for a CD that came out the following year.
But I haven't given it any thought since then until this week, and it
has been fun to rediscover the music. I'll be making a video of four of
the pieces later this morning on a 7c.A
Hopefully more people will take a look at exploring this rather quirky
manuscript, and at its suitability for playing on the lute.
Rob
On 26 April 2014 09:02, James Kimbel <[1]jimkim...@gmail.com> wrote:
Many thanks to Rob MacKillop for intabulating several beautiful
pieces
from the Anonymous Scottish Manuscript BM Add ms 4911 ("The Art of
Music"), and many more thanks to him for putting his intabulations
online.
In his edition, Rob mentions the PhD. thesis where he got the
transcriptions:
Judson Dana Maynard, "An anonymous Scottish treatise on music from
the
sixteenth century, British Museum, Additional Manuscript 4911,
edition
and commentary," 2 vols. (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University,
1961)
I was thinking about ordering a copy of the dissertation to make
more
intabulations when I discovered that the text of the manuscript and
many of its musical examples are online for free at:
Texts on Music in English
[2]http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tme/16th/16th.html
Just scroll down to SCOTA3B1 TEXT for the first part of the
manuscript
and then there's SCOTA3B2 TEXT, SCOTA3B3 TEXT, & SCOTA3B4 TEXT for
the
rest of it.
From what I've read so far, much of the manuscript is a tutor on
"descant," that is, improvising over (and/or under) a cantus firmus,
a
necessary skill for singers of sacred music. After the descant
section
there is a tutor for "faburden," another necessary skill for
singers.
The text is 16th Century Scottish/Latin and not TOO difficult to
understand, although a translation would be useful. The musical
examples are small GIFs in modern notation, and since they give
credit
to Maynard's thesis, are presumably his. In some of them the staff
lines don't reproduce, but there's enough there with staff lines for
more intabulations. Since there are quite a few pieces that could be
intabulated, I'll probably order the dissertation to get a larger,
somewhat clearer copy. It's a great find. Thank you again, Rob.
(While you're on the TME page, scroll down further and you'll find
the
text and musical examples from Thomas Morley: A Plaine and Easie
Introduction to Practicall Musicke.)
To get on or off this list see list information at
[3]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
References
1. mailto:jimkim...@gmail.com
2. http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/tme/16th/16th.html
3. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
