Alas - I couldn't access the Youtube site so I can't listen to or comment on
the performance. I don't know why.
I put the original tablaure on my www.earlyguitar.ning.com page - in the
photo section with the recomposed section enclosed in brackets and a staff
notation version - which Django does automatically but very literally - with
the scores.
I think that the problem passage is like that because it does go up to the
10th fret - and if your guitar is like mine it doesn't actually sound too
good up there. Also I find playing chords with a barre above the 5th fret
awkward.
The problem with a passage like this is that the note values are difficult
to sort out - I have come to the conclusion that for reasons to do with the
way music was engraved there isn't always a clear distinction made between
the note values and you just have to make something up - and original
composition has never been anything I would claim to be good
at...suggestions for improvements are always welcome...
The underlying harmonic progression is
e b f# e B e
i v ii i V i
Not a very typical passacaglia progression - really just a take on i V
i.
It is very difficult to judge how talented a composer Foscarini really was
with the music so badly printed. He is certainly one of the earliest if not
the earliest guitarist to have published a sequence of passacaglie like
this.....
Can you put your recording onto your plucked turkey site as I would like to
listen to it?
Cheers
Monica
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stuart Walsh" <s.wa...@ntlworld.com>
To: "Vihuelalist" <vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Sunday, January 03, 2010 11:02 AM
Subject: [VIHUELA] Foscarini Passacaglio
On the ning site Monica wrote: 'Passacalles literally means "pass through
the streets".' Interesting. And so you could be passing through the
streets purposefully or perhaps just meandering about.At the beginning of
his book (his collected works, as it were) Foscarini gives the 'Passacalli
sopra tutti le lettere' which seem to be just four bars with four chords
(not starting on first beat of bar). And, more or less, that's how most
passacalles I've ever seen are structured: a four bar scheme endlessly
repeated. (Some in the Gallot MS don't always fit, though)
But Foscarini's own examples of the passacalles don't fit this at all.
They really do seem to just meander about, always hinting at a typical
passaccalles but never quite being it. Monica has had a go at an edited
reconstruction of one in E minor. *http://tinyurl.com/y8mvxfd (page
17) -Passacaglio Variato sopra l'+*
//
There is no (easily discernible) repeated four bar structure and no
(easily discernible) direction to the music. And it's in two parts! After
57 bars the first part ends and second part sort of carries on in more or
less the same way for another 64 bars. And it's as if Foscarini really
liked the sound and feel of certain chord changes - especially E minor at
second position to B minor with a g in the melody on top.
I've had a go at the first part. Technically it is not difficult piece but
I always manage to make a pig's ear of one bit or another and my guitar
runs out of tone in bars 16-19; it's like squeezing an orange with no
juice left. But I suspect a good player could make something of the piece
and the Part 2 would go yet deeper into the strange little world. Maybe
the use of repicco and trillo would spice it up a bit?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XiJS0GVT5A
Stuart
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