Yes. First and foremost, tablature was created to serve as a short
score of polyphonic music and printed or manuscript tablatures of
polyphonic music were meant to serve as a reservoir of information.
While the ideal is to play every note, I firmly believe that lutenists
always made adjustments, as you have described, for practical purposes.
The idea of 16th-century lute tablatures being compared to a form such
as the preludes by Villa-Lobos, in terms of notes that must be
conquered through disciplined technique, is an absurdity imposed upon
historical music by 20th century guitarists who took up the lute. The
point of 16th-century tablatures was to gain an understanding of the
musical intent in the score and the greatest technical challenge is to
realize the polyphony to the best of one's ability.
I have read V. Galilei's Fronimo forward and backwards, and his remarks
about not making concessions in intabulating polyphony for the sake of
fingering are an admonition to avoid altering the content of the piece
to reduce fingering difficulties because a tablature score is meant to
represent the music. Overcome the difficulties or not, but don't
change the polyphony.
Molinaro was an organist and his tablatures show what is possible but
are certainly influenced by his conscious or unconscious reference to
keyboard practice. Terzi was a freak if he could play all those notes
in his intabulations while observing the tactus. Not bloody likely.
He's probably laughing at us from another world.
If there is one thing I have absorbed over thirty years of lute-playing
and creating countless intabulations of sixteenth century polyphony,
the score is a reservoir of information. It was always meant to be so.
RA
__________________________________________________________________
From: [email protected]
<[email protected]> on behalf of Guilherme Barroso
<[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2020 9:15 PM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Cc: LuteList <[email protected]>;
[email protected]
<[email protected]>
Subject: [LUTE] Re: About vocal intabulations
Yes, indeed.
For me, it makes more and more sense to view these intabulations as
a
way to show the whole vocal piece and not something to be performed
exactly as written.
About the Barrés with any other finger then the first. Has anyone
seen a historical source discuss this? I don't recall seeing one.
Em ter., 28 de abr. de 2020 Ã s 23:04, <[1][email protected]>
escreveu:
This is really quite an extreme example! But maybe with a
different
technique it would be possible e.g. to play the first chord?
Sometimes,
I have the impression that they used also Barrés with the second
or
third finger, which would (theoretically) make it possible to play
the
first chord. Just today I found an similar chord in a piece by
Hurel,
which would need a barré with the second or fourth finger. I'll
hopefully get my new renaissance lute this or next week (7courses,
85cm), I'm very curious to try it! :-) and then still we have to
consider a world without 1. printed full scores and 2. recordings.
So,
in order to study a piece of music, you would have to perform - or
read
it - just by yourself. Maybe this was really kind of "full score"
for
them - you can use it to study the music and counterpoint, and if
you
actually want to perfor it you still can decide to omit some
notes.
Am 28.04.2020 21:25 schrieb Guilherme Barroso:
> Dear Yuval,
>
> Thanks a lot for your answer.
>
> I have a 7c course 60cm lute and it does not get much easier at
some
> places. Of course with your lute, even worse.
>
> But there are some parts that even with a small lute, it is just
not
> possible.
>
> I attach in this email an example from Barbetta's publication
from
> 1582. In the marked passage, already the first chord is not
possible
> to play (this chord appears often in this publication and also
in
> Terzi's books), the next two bars are not better. even if you
find
a
> way to do it by some kind of arpeggio, how make it sound
musical?
>
> Em ter., 28 de abr. de 2020 Ã s 20:50,
<[2][email protected]>
> escreveu:
>
>> Dear Guilherme,
>>
>> it's interesting what Philippe writes about Il Fronimo, it
would
be
>> nice
>> to talk with him about all this stuff. I met him some weeks
ago,
>> and
>> he's the only guy I know who isn't lutenist at all and can read
all
>> kind
>> of tablature fluently - quite crazy!
>> To respond to your question I can only offer a view on my
personal
>> experience as well as some thoughts about it: From my practical
>> experience I had to ask myself exactly these questions when
Martina
>> and
>> me were recording our CD with diminutions. She played them on
>> traverso -
>> so I could just play the madrigals without the canto, which
worked
>> quite
>> well - but also with violone, and for this I had to play all
the
>> voices.
>> Since at this time I had only a fairly big lute (10 courses,
67cm),
>> I
>> decided to step away from perfectly playing all voicing with a
>> perfect
>> voiceleading, and instead making an arrangement which kept the
>> madrigals
>> recognizable, but at the same time quitting some tones of the
inner
>>
>> voices and making the intabulations/arrangements more idiomatic
for
>> the
>> lute, because above all I though it was more important to get a
>> good
>> phrasing and to make good music instead of hurting my hand. If
>> you're
>> interested in the choices I made, you can find some of the
pieces
>> we
>> recorded on youtube.
>> Regarding the amount of instructions about making owns
>> intabulations,
>> Philippe's argument seems not at all unlikely for me. But at
the
>> same
>> time I'm asking myself about the differences in taste then and
now
>> (maybe for them it was most important to render the madrigal
>> exactly? At
>> the end, they lived in a sphere where only polyphonic music
>> existed, so
>> maybe they would have heard the mistakes made by making the
>> intabulations more suitable for the lute?), and also about
which
>> role
>> the size of the lute plays. Did you try to play the
"unplayable"
>> parts
>> on a smaller lute? You could just use an capo in your second or
>> third
>> fret, just to try how it feels with a small instrument.
>>
>> All the best,
>> Yuval
>>
>> Am 28.04.2020 15:12 schrieb Guilherme Barroso:
>>> Dear Lute collective,
>>> For some time i've been thinking about some aspects about the
>>> intabulation of vocal pieces and i would like to know your
>> ideas.
>>> When we look to the gigantic repertoire of vocal intabulations
>> to
>>> the
>>> lute we encounter several pieces that are incredibly difficult
>> to
>>> play.
>>> Intabulations done by Molinaro, Terzi, Barbetta, for example,
>> some
>>> times present passages that are not only very demanding
>> technically
>>> but also with impossible chord positions. Canguilhem, in his
>> book
>>> about Galilei's Fronimo treatise, says that the main goal of
>>> Galilei's
>>> intabulations was to study the counterpoint and composition,
>> not to
>>> be
>>> played. He even compares Galilei's intabulation of Vestiva i
>> Colli
>>> for
>>> solo lute (where the madrigal is complete with all the voices)
>> and
>>> another version for lute and bass solo (where the lute part is
>>> extremely simplified with supression of voices). The lute and
>> voice
>>> version for sure was intended to be performed while the other
>> might
>>> be
>>> intended to be studied. The act of intabulating would be the
>> same
>>> as
>>> making a score for study purposes.
>>> There are a lot of intabulations in the repertoire that are
>> more
>>> concerned in maintaining all the voices of the original work
>> then
>>> making some concessions to adapt it better to the instrument.
>>> Of course, we are dealing with a huge repertoire from several
>>> composers
>>> and several places with specific differences. Le Roy, for
>> example,
>>> is
>>> more willing to make changes to adapt to the instrument, he
>> says
>>> that
>>> the "playability and beauty should come first".
>>> But even very complex intabulations were clearly meant to be
>> played,
>>> like the Terzi intabulations of vocal pieces that present a
>>> "Contrapunto" from another lute. Terzi intabulations clearly
>> prefer
>>> to
>>> maintain the original vocal piece in the intabulation in spite
>> of
>>> the
>>> diffculty to play.
>>> What do you think about this?
>>> When you play this repertoire, do you try to keep all notes?
>> Do you
>>> omit certain notes to make it more playful? Do you make
>> decision
>>> based
>>> on the musical flow?
>>> I am very curious to hear your ideas.
>>> All the best,
>>> --
>>> Guilherme Barroso
>>> [1][3]www.guilherme-barroso.com [1]
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> References
>>>
>>> 1. [4]http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/ [2]
>>>
>>>
>>> To get on or off this list see list information at
>>> [5]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html [3]
>
> --
>
> Guilherme Barroso
> [6]www.guilherme-barroso.com [1]
>
>
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1] [7]http://www.guilherme-barroso.com
> [2] [8]http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/
> [3] [9]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
Guilherme Barroso
[10]www.guilherme-barroso.com
--
References
1. [1]mailto:[email protected]
2. [2]mailto:[email protected]
3. [3]http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/
4. [4]http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/
5. [5]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
6. [6]http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/
7. [7]http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/
8. [8]http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/
9. [9]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
10. [10]http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/
--
References
1. mailto:[email protected]
2. mailto:[email protected]
3. http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/
4. http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/
5. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
6. http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/
7. http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/
8. http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/
9. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
10. http://www.guilherme-barroso.com/
