[VIHUELA] Re: Four c. guitar - strumming

[Stuart Walsh]

(I prefer to reply after the message, so you read the the message and 
then the reply ("bottom posting" as it is called, which sounds faintly 
ridiculous). But Monica has asked me to reply at the top.)

I rather incautiously claimed that strumming on the guitar emerged only 
at the end of the 16th century. Obviously that's a daft thing to say: 
how could anyone know? But evidence for strumming on the guitar? With 
the development of alfabeto and the 5-course guitar in the 17th century, 
strumming is talked about a very great deal and it is notated - it's 
what the guitar is all about at this time.

The existing repertoire for the four-course guitar is quite small 
(Gerard Rebours has the actual number on his website! ...about 400?). 
Most of the Spanish stuff is really very sober - just like the vihuela 
repertoire.Not obviously strum material.  The Leroy books in France have 
fantasies, settings of chansons, dances with elaborate divisions, and 
there is no textual evidence for strumming nor little place for it. The 
fourth book of Brayssing is particularly sober with fantasies, psalms 
and lengthy chanson settings. Joceyln says she can't imagine the setting 
of La Guerre without strums (presumably the setting here, rather than 
the Pavane and Galliarde de la guerre set by Leroy) and it would 
certainly be a striking effect in this one piece - but is there anywhere 
else in that Book (Book 4) where strumming strongly suggest itself? 
Obviously, if you have some sort of prior commitment to the intrinsic 
strumminess of the guitar you can invent where it might be. I only have 
some pieces from the Gorlier books - but again there are sober duos and 
some religious things as well as dances and the  dances written out for 
fingerstyle play, not chords. I think you could play much (most?) of the 
existing repertoire without even having to consider  
possibility/appropriateness of strumming. (The Braye/Osborne MS is one 
small exception, of course)

Jocelyn says that strumming is important in the songs. (books 2 and5?). 
Jonathan LeCoq wrote an article (The Lute 1995) looking at the 
possibility that these songs were never meant to be actually sung and 
are solos (as they appear in Phalese 1570) so there would be no need to 
add strumming - which isn't there. Or, if sung, get the singer to shut 
up a bit!

References to the cittern of the time don't seem to me to be relevant at 
all (unless we are talking about fingerstyle play, which presumably we 
are not). When played with a plectrum it is not a matter of choice: to 
play a chord you have to move the plectrum over the strings (strum) . On 
a guitar you can pluck (in different ways) OR strum.

Martyn suggest that strumming disguises the sound of some chord 
inversions - but there are many places where you can't strum and just 
have to live with the sound of the rootless chord anyway. (There are 
examples of this even in the 18th century on the English guitar where 
pieces in F major will end on a chord with the bottom note A, even when 
it would be possible to play  F below it).

But underlying it all  seems to be some kind of commitment to the 
instrinsic strumminess of the guitar ('intrinsically natural', 
'idiomatic' as Jocelyn puts it). Well strumming is certainly the thing 
of the 17th century guitar. But later? Merchi et al? Or the thousands of 
pieces from the 19th century?

Flamenco and modern popular guitar uses strums but that doesn't make 
strumming ancient and the 16th century four-course guitar repertoire, as 
it exists, doesn't seem to exhibit any necessity for strumming except 
for a bit of colour, here and there (La Guerre, Les Bouffons). The 
guitar can 'do' strumming but it isn't obliged to, as it were.

Monica says that I'm adopting a lutecentric (I just made that word up) 
view of the four-course guitar. But on the evidence of most of the 
repertoire, the little guitar does seem to being treated as a little 
lute or vihuela. Now maybe other people of the time were strumming from 
dusk until dawn - but there is no particular reason to think they were.

Stuart




For starters Foscarini does not claim to be the first person to have
combined tablature with alfabeto or to have written pieces in mixed 
style.

The point made by myself and others is that his is the first surviving
printed book
to include music of this kind.

There is at least one Italian ms. - I:Bc Ms. V.280 - dated 1614 in which
guitar music is written out in tablature on 5-lines and although the 
chords
are apparently intended to be strummed because there are stroke marks
beneath them some of the chords are almost certainly intended to 
consist of
fewer than 5-courses.    There are also some obscure passages in the 
alfabeto
pieces where figures seem to be used to indicate short passages in two
parts.

There is no evidence that strumming emerged only at the end of the 
16th century.   What did happen at the end of the century is that the 
5th course was added to the guitar - or at least became more common.

These things never happen overnight and are seldom the invention of an
individual.   Notation evolves as musical styles change and always lags
behind.   (The very first essay I had to write at Uni was on this 
subject!)

Returning to the 4-course books, as I originally pointed out these are
printed using the same font of type as the lute books published by 
Leroy &
Co.   At least one of them includes music for cittern printed in the same
way although - since the cittern is played with a plectrum the chords 
must
have been strummed.   The font of type probably didn't include any 
means of
indicate elaborate right-hand technique.

Since the lute (I believe) was also originally played with a plectrum 
it's
hard to believe that chords were not occasionally strummed even if 
there is no indication of this.

Many of the 4-part chords in these books are the standard alfabeto 
chords minus the 5th
course.   Les Bouffons is a classic example since it is based on a 
standard
chord sequence -

I   IV   I   V   I   IV   I   V   I

and the chords in alfabeto are

A       B      A     C      A     B     A     C     A

i.e.

Gm   Cm   Gm   Dm   Gm  Cm   Gm  Dm  Gm

They didn't suddenly start strumming them when they added the 5th course.

My fingers don't end up miles away from the strings when strumming and I
have no difficulty in playing pieces in mixed style - and I'm only an
amateur!   Leaving out the first course is standard practice - De 
Visee and
others even puts in dots to indicate the ones to be left out.  It is also
standard practice to strum the inner three courses on the 5-course 
guitar.
When playing
the baroque guitar you should not play close to the bridge at all.   
That is a lute thing  This is what Santiago de Murcia says-

"The usual method of all beginners is to place the little finger 
beside the bridge of the guitar, so as to steady the hand, because 
many are unable to strike the strings with the hand free, but only in 
the aforesaid manner.



This [manner of playing] will not be seen used by any expert who plays 
this instrument with any skill, especially if the works being played 
are delicate with strummed chords because these must be played in the 
middle of the instrument. The hand should only be placed on the bridge 
when it is necessary to play loudly, as when accompanying another 
instrument."



You shouldn't be playing the guitar as if it were a lute.



That will have to do for now - but



Please, Please, Stuart when you reply to messages can you put your 
reply at the top.   As far as I am aware this is standard "netiquette" 
or what you will - practice.   Otherwise the messages are a complete 
muddle!!



Monica



. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stuart Walsh" 
<s.wa...@ntlworld.com>
Cc: "'Vihuelalist'" <vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Monday, August 02, 2010 11:11 AM
Subject: [VIHUELA] Re: Four c. guitar - strumming


Here's 'Les Buffons' as in the Phalèse edition of 1570 and in Geisbert's
1969 trancription. Giesbert has added fingering and strumming symbols 
that
are not in the original.

http://www.pluckedturkeys.co.uk/PhaleseBouffons.jpg


Now some people, like (I hope I'm  right in this) Monica and Martyn 
think
that a piece like this (and many others) might - or even would - have 
been
strummed. Whenever I have had a run through of this repertoire - and
pieces like this - I've never thought of strumming as first option but
something that might just be added in places.

Martin Shepherd pointed out some examples of strumming in the lute music
of the time but it would seem to be fair to say that out of the 
thousands
of lute pieces from this time when the lute was the pre-eminent
instrument, strumming occupies only a minute fragment. So strumming  was
not a typical or common practice on the lute, it would seem.Strumming
block chords on guitars (on all strings) emerged at the end of the 16th
century (of course, correct me on this if I'm wrong!) but  playing this
version of Les Bouffons with strumming would involve the mixed strumming
and plucking style that Foscarini claimed to have invented in the 17th
century.

I play Les Bouffons (and pieces like this) fingerstyle and the 
fingers are
in position to play the punteado,fingerstyle bits. One of the issues of
the mixed style of the 17th century is that if you do a fancy strum then
your fingers end up half a mile away from the strings and then you 
have to
get them back to do some fingerstyle play. Also in Les Bouffons, in the
second bar of the second section, if you are strumming, you have to do a
strum which omits the top course. That's a bit tricky to do and the
arranger didn't include the addition of another note on the top course
(fret one) which would make a simple downward strum easy to do and 
hardly
interrupts the melodic line such as it is.


Stuart







To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html