Hi All,
Crawford Young and KES did indeed record the Spinacino duets on that
album, as have (in tribute) Marc Lewon and Paul Kieffer on their latest
disc. Both duos play them very fast, as Denis says, and I don't really
know how much they edited the originals. When I looked at them many
years ago, comparing them with the original chansons, I remember
discovering some discrepancies in the Tenor part, which is a literal
intabulation of the lower two parts of the original (so easy to check).
A brief article by Lyle Nordstrom in JLSA 1969 might be of interest to
those studying the superius part.
As Ron says, some modern lute players have treated Dalza and Spinacino
as Holy Writ, whereas in fact there are many errors. With intabulations,
errors can be relatively easy to spot, but in many of the recercars one
is simply thrown back on one's own ideas of what is possible or
impossible in 15th century music. Some of the most extreme sounding
pieces can actually be turned into music not by artful playing which
disguises the errors but by careful consideration of context and style
and subsquent judicious error correction.
Happy editing,
Martin
On 20/06/2020 22:41, [email protected] wrote:
Hi Frank,
I haven't tried reconstructing the Spinacino duets, but I have reconstructed
intabulations from the Thibault manuscript and studied the Dalza print in
detail. The first thing to remember about both Spinacino and Dalza is the
presence of a considerable number of printing errors. Both Martin Shepherd and
I have written about that in the past, looking at the issue of which discordant
sounds are intentional and which are typographic mistakes. There isn't an easy
answer, but it's an issue that needs to be considered when creating an edition
of music from those prints. If you look carefully you can spot manuscript
corrections to some of the errors in both the Spinacino and Dalza prints.
Martin and I compared all three surviving copies of the Dalza print which
showed that the corrections were made in Petrucci's workshop and not by a
subsequent owner. For those interested, there are lists of the early
corrections in Stanley Boorman's superb Catalogue Raisonne of Petrucci's work. !
Th!
e curious thing in Dalza is that many glaringly obvious typographic errors
were not corrected, which suggests that the same may be true in the Spinacino
print. When working on an intabulation of a vocal composition it always makes
sense to study the original if it's available, and ideally make your own lute
intabulation from it. The points of coincidence and diversion from the original
in an early intabulation can then be seen. We don't of course know if we are
looking at the same reading of the original vocal piece that the early
intabulator had (in this case Spinacino), but it does help a lot in getting a
feel for how close the intabulation is to the original. When you do this It
sometimes becomes easier to spot where mistakes were made in the intabulation.
I appreciate it's a lot of work to go through this process, but it does give a
much clearer idea of what the intabulator was doing. It's also helpful to find,
if available, examples of what other modern musicians ha!
ve !
done with the same pieces. I have the feeling that all or most!
of the Spinacino duets are included on Karl-Ernst Shroder & Crawford Young's
wonderful album 'Amours amours amours.' I don't remember hearing any extreme
dissonances on that album. I imagine that they would have made their own performing
editions from the print in preparation for the recording.
Hope this helps.
Best wishes,
Denys
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
<[email protected]> On Behalf Of Frank A. Gerbode, M.D.
Sent: 20 June 2020 20:29
To: [email protected]
Subject: [LUTE] Re: A strange "error" in Maestro
I am working on an edition of Spinacino v.1 (1507) and have run across
these 2 extremely dissonant duets.
I am not personally a big fan of gratuitous dissonance (diabolus in
musica). Dissonance that serves a purpose, as in Dowland, yes.
Dissonance as a passing note, yes. Dissonance as a cadential
suspension, yes. But minor second intervals on downbeats, not so much.
I would like to "correct" these duet parts so they harmonize instead
of "cacophonizing" with each other, but have no idea where to begin.
Has anyone tried to do this? If I can't find a harmonious solution, I
will just leave the duets as is, though I hate to punt like that,
because who will want to play them as written (except maybe Schräder,
and he is no longer with us)?
--Sarge
On 10/14/2019 23:48, Alain Veylit wrote:
I cannot read this thread without thinking about Spinacino's duets,
particularly the setting of Ghiselin's Jolis amours: are the notes
wrong or is it our ears? Yet, I had found a very convincing rendition
of that duet a while ago on the Net, played as printed 500 years ago
(already!) -- I believe Karl-Ernst Schröder was on one of the 2 lutes
-- Helas, I can no longer find that particular recording on the
Internet any longer. One trick they used to make the half-tone clashes
sound better was to play the piece very fast. It works.
Spinacino's "J'ay pris amours" is still there on YouTube but it is less
striking as an example of utter dissonance to modern ears - see
[1][1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljcq1ETbXkI
--
Frank A. Gerbode, M.D. ([2][email protected])
11132 Dell Ave
Forestville, CA 95436-9491
Home phone: 707-820-1759
Website: [3]http://www.gerbode.net
"The map may not be the territory, but it's all we've got."
--
References
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljcq1ETbXkI
2. mailto:[email protected]
3. http://www.gerbode.net/
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