Dear Rainer, I'm not sure that Spanish/Valencinian/Milan tablature is to be seen as a variant of Neapolitan tab only. The Munich Denss source suggests that the writer transformed French to S/V/M tablature, judging by the mistakes and corrections he made. For what it's worth, here is what I wrote about the London source in my edition of the ms sources for vihuela de/viola da mano (where the Denss additions are not included for the above reason). <><><> London, British Library, C.48.h.1 Manuscript fragment in: Lucius Marineus Siculus, Epistolarum familiarum (Valladolid 1514), on the flyleaf This sketchy fragment was bound as an already unused piece of paper with the book as a flyleaf, or has been carelessly entered at a later point in time. It is basically written in what is usually called “Spanish” or “Valencian” tablature, (*) which could also be seen as a bottom-up variant of the Italian system, or, perhaps more fittingly, a Neapolitan tablature including the zero. The manuscript uses an unusual rhythmic notation that has led to the belief that the writer was an amateur barely capable of understanding tablature, or that it might show a kind of proto Milan-style tablature.(**) However, its division into groups of four strokes with the ciphers assigned to each stroke via a vertical line clearly hints at an intabulation technique that was used to add up music from different parts or part books together in a single tablature stave.(***) This would also explain corrections where two successively copied notes fall onto the same course. Judged by the structure of the piece it is clearly an unfinished polyphonic composition in three parts. It may be an arranged composition for voices or instruments, or an original composition for vihuela that started life staff-notated. For a workable reconstruction of the fragment, material from the surviving music has been taken to create the missing parts of the superius and the middle voice.
(*) According to Antonio Corona-Alcalde, "The earliest vihuela tablature: a recent discovery," in: Early Music 1992, p. 594–600, this source may be connected to Valencia, as well as Luis Milan’s print Libro de musica de vihuela de mano. Intitulado El maestro (Valencia, 1536). Hiroyuki Minamino made a case for calling the system Valencinian tablature (“Valencinian tablature”, in: Lute Society of America Quarterly 33, no.3 (1998), p. 4–6). However, three further sources of this tablature type stem from Germany, another one from Italy. (**) See Corona-Alcalde, "The earliest vihuela tablature,” op. cit. and Minamino, “Valencinian tablature”, op. cit.. (***) For a similar technique see Emanuel Adriaensen, NOVVM PRATVM MVSICVM (Antwerp, 1592), introduction. <><><> Best wishes Stephan -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Im Auftrag von adS Gesendet: Samstag, 12. Januar 2019 19:08 An: Lute net Betreff: [LUTE] "Spanish" tablature Dear lute netters, I seem to remember that recently somebody posted a list of sources with Spanish/Milan tablature including Neapolitan tablature. In an article by Michael Fink (LSAQ XLIV, No.4, 2009, pp. 29-32) there is a list of such sources: Pesaro, Biblioteca Oliveriana, MS 1144 (c. 1490-95), pp. 101-103 London: British Library, C.48.h.l, See Antonio Corona-Alcalde, “The Earliest Vihuela Tablature: A Recent Discovery,” Early Music 20/4 (Nov. 1992): 594-600. Milan'S Maestro 1536 The Sulzbach books 1536 Barberiis 1549, a few pieces for guitar (the lute music is in Italian tablature) To these I have to add: Manual additions to the copy of Denss' Florilegium (1594) kept in Munich Any other sources? Rainer PS The Neapolitan tablature looks very strange to modern readers since it does not use the "0" for open strings. The reason might be that the zero was not generally accepted as a number in those days. Note: Using the digit "0" does NOT mean that you use the number zero! A clear concept/construction of real numbers was not achievd before the second half of the 19th century. Even in Gerolamo Cardano's (in)famous book "Ars Magna" (1545) with the solution of cubic equations - which he had stolen from Tartaglia and del Ferro - the zero is not used. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
