Martyn
I am not going to comment in detail on your pathetic attempt to
discredit everything that I say. If you think that your rant at the
beginning of your message of 14th January, sent to both the vihuela and
baroque lute lists, constitutes general politeness you have very
strange ideas as to what is good manners.
I am now trying to reply to what you have said in your previous message
but I am not sure that it is worth the effort.
Monica
----Original Message----
From: hodgsonmar...@cs.dartmouth.edu
Date: 30/01/2018 10:35
To: "mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk"<mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk>, "vihuela@cs.
dartmouth.edu"<vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Subj: [VIHUELA] Re: Moravsky MS (CZ Brno D189) - a fresh tack! 2
Dear Monica,
I don't usually 'knee-jerk' these things but was truly astonished at
your wild reaction (below) to my calm email yesterday in which I
had
carefully tried to avoid our earlier combative exchanges and present
a
different (ie non-subjective) approach in a non-confrontational
manner
- 'a fresh tack'......
I'll also be interested to see what communications you privately
sent
to me that I've leaked in an open public forum in my mailing of
yesterday. As far as I can see, the only intimation to anybody else
that you've privately communicated is my opening phrase in this
email
"As you now know" ............
I have already explained that reading our previous communications
has
so far clearly failed to influence each other - but just because I
disagreed with you doesn't mean I didn't read them! In fact
yesterday
I raised this very matter and intentionally wrote (see below) "Our
exchanges of 'textual analysis' have clearly failed to persuade each
other of our respective cases and therefore, to make any progress,
another tack is now required: one more forensic perhaps and closer
related to contemporary organological, musicological and source
evidence."
All the quotations I used from you are from your open public
mailings
to this forum and are taken verbatim and were not edited - perhaps
you
changed your mind subsequently.
Finally, I do think general politeness is important in these
exchanges
and thus I'll be interested to read of the "torrent of personal
abuse"
directed towards you - other than, naturally, simply fair comment.
regards
Martyn
__________________________________________________________________
From: "mjlh...@cs.dartmouth.edu" <mjlh...@cs.dartmouth.edu>
To: VihuelaList <vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Cc: Martyn Hodgson <hodgsonmar...@yahoo.co.uk>
Sent: Monday, 29 January 2018, 20:28
Subject: [VIHUELA] Re: Moravsky MS (CZ Brno D189) - a fresh tack!
Obviously it will take me some time to reply to this message which
in
part is a response to a message which I sent to Martyn privately.
It will be all the more difficult because he has clearly not read
any
of my messages and has consistently misrepresented everything that I
have said in them.
I will just say at this juncture that he may be entitled to send his
messages to all of the lists if he wishes to but I don't think that
he
is entitled to send a torrent of personal abuse to any of them.
Watch this space!
As ever
Monica
----Original Message----
From: [1]hodgsonmar...@cs.dartmouth.edu
Date: 29/01/2018 17:16
To: "[2]vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu"<[3]vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Subj: [VIHUELA] Re: Moravsky MS (CZ Brno D189) - a fresh tack!
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Martyn Hodgson <[4]hodgsonmar...@cs.dartmouth.edu>
To: Monica Hall <[5]mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk>; VihuelaList
<[6]vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu>; Baroque Lute List
<[7]baroque-l...@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Monday, 29 January 2018, 17:01
Subject: Moravsky MS (CZ Brno D189) - a fresh tack!
Dear Monica,
As you now know, I haven't yet replied to your latest open
mailings since these had both ended by saying that you 'were going
to leave it for now' and I therefore took this as meaning I might
soon
expect something further. Accordingly, not wishing to respond in
a
piecemeal and disjointed manner, I deliberately delayed replying
and
awaited your further thoughts. However, I shall do so now.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Regarding copying things to other lists, just to be quite clear, I
generally copy things to other of Wayne's lists if they're
relevant
there. Hence why gallichon/mandora stuff (but usually not guitar)
can find its way onto the lute lists (or, indeed, elsewhere) - it's
not
a fiendish plot of any kind! But on with the motley..........
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Our exchanges of 'textual analysis' have clearly failed to
persuade
each other of our respective cases and therefore, to make any
progress, another tack is now required: one more forensic perhaps
and closer related to contemporary organological, musicological
and
source evidence.
Firstly though, to summarise our respective positions:
- as I understand it from what you have written, your position
is
that the vast majority (about 98%) of the some 124 works for
plucked
instruments in this MS are for a six course gytarra and that just
three are for a mandora (according to you a twelve course
instrument
with
five fingered courses and seven free basses - you stated that
"The
mandora has seven unstopped basses" );
- mine is that the 28 pieces notated with a sixth course are for
mandora and that the remainder requiring just five courses are
principally for gytarra (although, as I was at pains to point out
earlier, any passably competent mandora player would easily be
able
to add a low sixth where suitable in the guitar pieces and
similarly,
in many cases, a guitarist would be able to play the errant low
bass
an
octave up by employing the open third course). The couple of
pieces
which have the seven additional free basses notated also have a
left
hand fingered bass notated in the usual register and, whilst we've
not discussed this so far, I believe these additional low course
numberings are therefore simply later additions to these two
pieces
(note also
that the scribe left off adding these low basses half way through
the piece numbered 45! ).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1. DATE OF D-189
You stated that the MS could have been written "anytime in the
eighteenth century" - but with no evidence for this assertion. I
do, of course, understand why you favour such a wide range of
dates
since it may help give some credence to employing a six course
guitar
(developed, in fact, only later in the eighteenth century) for all
the plucked works in this collection
However, others date the writing of this MS considerably earlier,
including:
James Tyler - 'early 18th century';
Gary Boye - 'beginning of the 18th century';
Ernst Pohlmann - 'um 1700' (around 1700);
Jaroslav Pohanka (Principal editor of Musica Antiqua Bohemia) -
'vor
1700 geschrieben' (written before 1700);
My own dating (based on stylistic traits and the piece attributed
to C. Loschi) is 1700 to 1720.
Accordingly, to summarise, the best date range estimate for
compilation of this MS lies between 1690 and 1720.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
2. CALLICHON/MANDORA
Around 70 extant historical mandoras/gallichons have been
identified
made between 1688 and 1780 (most are listed in Dieter Kirsch's 'La
mandora au XVIII siecle): the vast majority (97%) of these are six
course instruments but a couple have more courses - one is 8
course
and one 9 course . These two are both later eighteenth century and
thus
too late to be the sort of instruments originally employed for D-
189.
Extant instruments also well reflect contemporary iconography
showing the overwhelming predominance of the six course mandora;
and
similarly with extant tablatures - though a very few do contain
some
pieces
for 8 or 9 course mandora (such as Univerzitna Kniznica Bratislava
Ms
1092
which contains galant/classical music c.1770 requiring a mandora
with eight courses). Note that these mandoras basically had these
few
additional courses on the same peghead (like earlier lutes) and
did
not employ the much longer extensions as found in the theorbo,
archlute
or, for that matter, the arch/theorboed guitar known from the
seventeenth century onwards.
Historically, the upper five courses of the usual six course
mandora/callichon were tuned in precisely the same intervals as
those of the guitar. The mandora sixth course was commonly tuned a
tone
below the fifth (as, of course, found in D-189), or a third or a
fourth
below it. Tablatures show that the additional basses of the rare
8/9
course instrument merely fill in the notes between the fifth
course
and the
sixth a third or a fourth below it and do not extend the range any
further downwards.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
3. ACCORDO GYTARRA ET MANDORA
The tablature system with five lines on f.48v. between the first
double bar lines gives octave tuning checks in the usual manner.
It
shows
that the upper five courses of the gytarra and mandora were tuned
in
the
same intervals with an extra course indicated below the line for
the
usual six course mandora of the period (the six course guitar not
then being known). The telling example of the Rondeau (C. Loschi),
originally for a six course instrument but later arranged for just
five courses (Rondon 75), very well illustrates the differences
required
in intabulating the same work for the six course mandora and the
five
course gytarra.
The staff after this has numbers below for an instrument with
seven
additional bass courses - but only two intabulated pieces out of a
total of 124 works have had these numbers added. I therefore
believe
that this section was added later - perhaps when a novel theorboed
guitar was acquired (again note that the scribe couldn't be
bothered
with adding these new low basses all the way through piece 45).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4. SIX COURSE GUITAR IN BOHEMIA, MORAVIA AND AUSTRIA IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Six course guitars first appeared in Southern Spain in the 1760s
and
a little later in Italy in a six string form, but only appear in
German speaking lands from the 1780s (the earliest extant one
being
by
Michael Ignaz Stadlmann, Vienna 1787). In c.1810. the Viennese
guitarist
Simon Molitor also tells us that around 1790 the guitar entered
Austria
'where earlier it had been very rarely seen' and that at the same
time a sixth string/course was added.
As an aside, Molitor also tells of meeting a mandora player in
Vienna (perhaps Joseph Zincke?) around 1800 (they were still
around
then!) who said that he now used single strings instead of double
courses since he found it easier to tune...........
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5. CONCLUSIONS
5.1. A multi-course theorboed mandora with twelve courses never
existed and, indeed, even the rare mandoras with up to a maximum
of
three
basses are not known in the period covered by the dating of D-189.
Accordingly, the most likely, and reasonable, identification of
the
couple of works for an instrument with seven extra basses is the
arch/theorboed guitar.
5.2. The six course guitar is not known in the period covered by
this collection (est. 1690 - 1720) and thus could not have been
the
instrument employed for the pieces requiring a sixth course.
5.3. The tuning chart 'Accordo Gytarra et Mandora' gives the
octave
checks for tuning instruments with up to six courses, and thus
serves for the upper five courses of both the gytarra and the
mandora
- but
only the mandora for the sixth course .
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
6. Finally, when I first came across this MS some years ago, I
wondered if Gytarra (or Chytarra) might be a colloquial
Bohemian/Moravian
synonym for the Mandora. But there was no independent supporting
evidence and, moreover, strongly against this proposition is the
precise wording of 'Accordo Gytarra et Mandora' (ie tuning of
gytarra AND mandora) which requires two clearly different
instruments - but
both having the same basic tuning for five courses. As mentioned
earlier, if it had said ' Gytarra aliter Mandora' (or similar)
things might be different.......................
regards
Martyn
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Incidentally I don't know why the duet Boure (f. 69v) for Mandora
1 and 2 does not employ the sixth course: perhaps the composer
preferred this particular piece with these instruments this way or
maybe they
didn't have two guitars available? The last is not as daft as it
may seem: at this time the mandora was immensely popular in this
part
of
the world with almost all known mandora makers working in this
area
of Bohemia, Moravia, upper Austria and South Bavaria (roughly
bounded
by Wurzburg, Innsbruck, Linz and Prague) - see Kirsch. MS sources
with
music for mandora outnumber those for guitar from this area. Also
note Molitor's report.
Similarly, regarding f. 48r with the 'Fundamenta Gytarra', this
simply contains common thoeretical information for beginners as
frequently
found in tablature books from these lands. They generally (as with
D-189) cover the generic principles of notation (tablature
letters),
time signatures, note values and tablature flags, ornaments, etc.
and, as in this case, apply to all the plucked instruments
represented in
the following tablatures - here the mandora, gytarra, and
theorboed
guitar. Obviously, a seperate 'Fundamenta' page is not needed for
each plucked instrument represented in the same MS! The practical
information overleaf ('Accordo Gytarra et Mandora') gives the more
specific information on tuning, etc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PPS The dotted separation lines are an attempt to avoid Wayne's
robot collapsing paragraphs etc in general circulation - we'll see
if
it
works.....................................
MH
.
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--
References
1. mailto:hodgsonmar...@cs.dartmouth.edu
2. mailto:vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu
3. mailto:vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu
4. mailto:hodgsonmar...@cs.dartmouth.edu
5. mailto:mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk
6. mailto:vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu
7. mailto:baroque-l...@cs.dartmouth.edu
8. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
