Well, the change in barring from the J-bar to fan barring caused rather
drastic change
to the acoustic qualities of lutes, and that in turn caused a rather
drastic change in
tessitura and musical style.
RT
On 8/31/2017 1:02 PM, Christopher Wilke wrote:
Really interesting question Danny. One thing that surprises me about
when the new turnings developed is that more of the old music wasn't
adapted to them. (As far as I know.) Violinists have never stopped
playing Corelli or Bach despite significant changes through the years
to the construction of the instrument and bow. With the adoption of new
tunings, however, it looks like our guys essentially dropped the
majority of a legacy repertoire without much concern.
Imagine it: You're a lutenist back in the day who has just gone over to
the new tuning dark side. There are exciting things you can do with the
new tunings, but you don't exactly have hundreds of pieces from which
to choose. Even though the old pieces are a bit out of fashion
stylistically, aren't there a few favorites you'd like to keep? And
wouldn't it be a great exercise to learn the new fingerboard layout by
adapting some of the old pieces you've played for years?
This appears to be what Weiss did when he went from 11 to 13 courses.
It seems one of his first "compositions" for 13 courses was his
arrangement of Gallot's L'Amant Malheureux in London. Gallot's original
actually only uses 9 courses (it completely avoids the first two
courses). Weiss holds pretty closely to this in the A and B sections.
However, in the written-out ornamented repeats, he uses the newly
expanded open bass courses to free up the left hand to play filigree in
fairly high positions. Thus, it appears he used the architecture of a
piece that was well known to him (Weiss also left arrangements of the
L'Amant in Rohrau and Paris) as a platform to explore the resources of
the 13-course lute before composing much original music for it. Of
course, Weiss had an advantage because the two instruments share
11/13ths of the same language. It's amazing to see in this one piece
how the addition of just two extra notes could change the idiom.
I can't say I'm that familiar with the transitional period. Did more
figures from the period do more of this sort of thing than we think?
Chris
[1]Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
On Thursday, August 31, 2017, 10:58 AM, Jean-Marie Poirier
<[email protected]> wrote:
A paper I wrote, initially for the French Lute Society will appear in
one of the next a LSA Quarterly, in Doug Towne's translation, and deals
partly with this subject...
All the best,
Jean-Marie
--------------
>Dear Musicological Hive Mind: I have often heard it said that we are
the first generation of lute players to play so many different
instruments and tunings, from medieval to 6-13 courses to theorbo,
archlute and romantic guitar. Obviously Dowland never played Weiss
(unless he had a Tardis) but do we have any evidence for how long
Renaissance lute music was played beyond the death of the composer?
Would you ever hear a concert that combined Dowland with Blow or
Purcell (to stay in one country)? Milano and Monteverdi? After the
transition, would a performer own lutes both in d minor and viel ton
tuning (aside from an archlute in Italy).
>
>If the answer is we don't know beyond personal opinion, that's fine
but I'm curious as to any surviving evidence.
>
>Thanks
>
>Danny
>
>
>
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