All good stuff explaining the paucity of many such intabulations at the
time. But, in fact, there are some late sixteenth century MS sources
which do preserve such latin intabulations - even outside Spain and
even of English composers (eg Phillips).
In particular, the largest single volume manuscript source for the
lute, now known as the Thysius lute book, complied by the extremist
theologian Adriaen Smout (1578/9 - 1646) preserves some. Amazingly for
such an extreme Calvinist (he was banished from tolerant Remonstrant
Holland for preaching that blasphemy and heresy should be punished by
certain death - shades of today's sad world) he intabulated many latin
motets, as well as Calvinist psalms, by such as Phillips, Lappi,
Bussoni, Belli, et al. More on this appears in a review in Early Music
Performer 2010 of the excellent facsimile edition produced by the Dutch
Lute Soc. Still available I believe.
regards
Martyn
__________________________________________________________________
From: Monica Hall <[email protected]>
To: Edward C. Yong <[email protected]>
Cc: Lutelist <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, 19 March 2015, 8:47
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Polyphonic Intabulations
Interesting question - I think that part of the reason at least is that
after the reformation i.e from about 1540 very little Latin church
music
was composed by English composers. Byrd was an exception but actually
he
is quite late and he was a crypto catholic. The vihuela books don't
include
intabulations of music by Victoria for example which is late 16th
century.
This may also explain why English lutenists didn't intabulate music by
Josquin etc. They may not have been very familiar with it.
There is also a cultural difference. In Spain the vihuela was often
played
by members of religious orders in their times of leisure - hence the
interest in sacred intabulations. All religious orders were suppressed
in
England by no less that Thomas Cromwell.
Regards
Monica.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Edward C. Yong" <[1][email protected]>
To: "Lute List" <[2][email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2015 4:33 AM
Subject: [LUTE] Polyphonic Intabulations
> Hello folks!
>
> I've been going through intabulations of sacred polyphony for lute,
and
> after an admittedly brief search, I noticed something curious.
>
> The Continentals, particularly the Spanish, seem very interested in
> intabulations of sacred polyphony, but I haven't found any examples
of
> English/British either doing the intabulations or being intabulated.
>
> I've been looking at the Fuenllana, Narvaez etc, and I find Josquin,
> Morales, Gombert, but no Tallis or Byrd. Was English/British music
> entirely unpopular on the Continent?
>
> Curious,
>
> Edward C. Yong
> [3][email protected]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> To get on or off this list see list information at
> [4]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
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References
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