Subject: Re: [VIHUELA] Re: Four c. guitar - strumming
(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 will try to reply to this message point by point......
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.
In the 1960s it became very popular to play the guitar and lots of little
"hold down a chord" tutors appeared for players who suddenly wanted to do
just that! This doesn't indicate that no one had played the guitar
previously or had strummed accompaniments to popular songs. It was a
sudden craze - and indeed different ways of indicating the chords without
staff notation were devised or re-surfaced from earlier times.
There is a rather similar situation at the end of the 16th century
particularly in Italy - where the guitar may have been less popular than
Spain or even France - and suddenly became popular with the development of
solo accompanied song.
The existing repertoire for the four-course guitar is quite small (Gerard
Rebours has the actual number on his website! ...about 400?).
The operative word is "existing". All of these French books
(with the exception of Phalese - which consists largely of pieces taken from
the earlier books) date from the 1550s. I don't think we should assume
that no-one had played the guitar before then or that they stopped doing so
in 1560....
Most of the Spanish stuff is really very sober - just like the vihuela
repertoire.Not obviously strum material.
That is true but Mudarra does includes a version of the romanesca which is
based a regular chord sequence which points towards a popular tradition -
these grounds existed long before the 5-course guitar came on the scene.
The vihuela books are intended for serious musicians rather than
dilettantes. And there are only 7 of them..
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)
This may be an exception but it doesn't indicate that it is less typical.
This is more a question of what happens to get published and what happens to
survive - accidents of preservation..
I don't seem to have received this message from Jocelyn but I'm glad she
seems to agree that strumming is sometimes appropriate.
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!
I an afraid Jonathan Le Cocq's article is largely nonsense and I am not sure
whether the Lute Society would have published it if they had realized this.
You should read Veronica K Laforge's response in Lute 1998. The fact that
the voice part is included in the guitar doesn't rule out the possibility
that it might be sung. There is no golden rule that the instrument must
not double the voice, or vice versa (what about the hymns we sing in church)
Some of the vihuela books do include various instructions about this. If
you
are accompanying yourself it might be quite helpful to include the voice
part when playing.
Even if the arrangements of these songs are intended for instrumental
performance only there is no reason to suppose that singers didn't work out
their own accompaniments to them.
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.
The point about the cittern is that there is no indication in the music that
it is strummed although it would certainly be helpful for the player if the
direction of the strokes was indicated. Absence of information doesn't
prove that the music must be played in one specific way.
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.
I don't think there is anywhere where you can't strum...some people even
argu that you can strum only two courses................
(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).
That's not a 6/4 chord............
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.
Well this is what Sanseverino says in 1620... He clearly regards strumming
as being the proper, natural and old style and anything more fancy as too
like the lute. He is referring to a long standing tradition - not just
something which has recently become popular.........
"Finally, it seems to me that the Spanish guitar ought to be played with
full strokes and not otherwise, since if one plays it with diminutions,
ligatures or dissonances, it would be more like playing the lute than the
Spanish guitar and making diminutions with such an instrument not only
causes it to lose its proper, natural and old style, but also removes the
harmony entirely. It is enough if each player uses his [right] hand in
various ways, according to the extent of his talent. In this way he will
achieve the true style and manner of playing the Spanish guitar."
But later? Merchi et al? Or the thousands of
pieces from the 19th century?
In some circumstances why not? Merchi includes a table of alfabeto chords
in staff notation. When they occur in the music why should they not be
strummed?
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.
Nothing comes from nothing...nothing ever did.......
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.
And no particular reason to think to think that they weren't given the very
little evidence we have.
Regards to anyone who has got to the end of this message.
Monica
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"
<[email protected]>
Cc: "'Vihuelalist'" <[email protected]>
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
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