----- Original Message -----
From: "Monica Hall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Rob MacKillop" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 2:21 PM
Subject: Re: [VIHUELA] Re: arch-guitar
Gary Boye has included a transcription of the pieces in his dissertation
on Granata.
The parts on the fingerboard he has notated using the standard guitar
transposing treble clef which doesn't make it easy to see whether there
is any overlap with the bass but on the whole I don't think there is.
Monica
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob MacKillop" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "David van Ooijen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 10:09 AM
Subject: [VIHUELA] Re: arch-guitar
We've been over the gut/string-length issue rather too many times here,
for me at least, but feel free to hack it out again if you so wish,
gentlemen. I'm more interested in WHY anyone would go to the trouble of
adding all those extra strings at the upper octave? There is only one
bar in the two Granata pieces I have (one needs, obviously, to look at
the entire publication) where a ninth course D is followed by an E on
the fourth course, second fret. Such leaps are not unfamilar in other
scores of the period. I say 'leap' assuming the ninth course at the
lower pitch. If it is at the higher octave, why not play the E also as
an open course - if you did a rest-stroke thumb stroke from the 9th
course onto the 8th, you are already there, so why leap up to the
fourth course? The following bass note is the 6th course.
I think the shape of the Grammatica instrument tells us something about
its role - it looks like an archlute (might even be one) whose prime
function is probably accompaniment. That would imply lower octave
basses. Strad The Lad might have had the figure-of-eight guitar shape
in mind, which might have been a completely different instrument to the
one in the painting. And who knows what Granata had in mind? Or Gallot?
I'm enjoying playing it. Wolfgang is a good luthier. The thing works
(albeit with nylgut strings). Trying not to get emotionally attached to
it. On Sunday it will be back in Germany, and on sale from
[1]http://www.zupfinstrumente-emmerich.de/English/index.htm
Rob
--
References
1. http://www.zupfinstrumente-emmerich.de/English/index.htm
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