Dear Lex,
You write '.....how can you find the chords to a song if you have no
idea of counterpoint and voice-leading at all...' . Surely this is why
a such a basically simple chordal instrument is so popular even today -
once you've mastered a few chords and have a reasonable ear you're
ready to tackle the mainly straightforward repertoire of songs alfabeto
was used for. Of course, odd clashes would have occurred occasionally
which is why more than just a few alfabeto chords are used in some
songs. But I wonder how much it mattered to the 'non-expert' player
that a passing dissonance which was soon resolved was not slavishly
harmonised.
And again you write '.... I would prefer to take in account that an
experienced theorbist-guitarist would perhaps have tried to expand the
system of alfabeto from within....'. But surely when looking at most
simple alfabeto accompaniments we are not speaking of these expert
practitioners but the more general strumming public who may not have
been up to improvising more than the basic three tonal chords....
Finally if you've ever performed Cesare Morelli's (Pepys guitar
teacher) arrangement of 'To be or not to be....' (an experience of
novelty rather than artistic merit I can tell you) from the later 17th
century you'd not rush to suggest strumming to songs was little
employed by then - little written down maybe. And Morelli, supposedly
a 'professional' of sorts often gets the harmonisations 'wrong'........
rgds
M.
--- On Wed, 17/11/10, Lex Eisenhardt <eisenha...@planet.nl> wrote:
From: Lex Eisenhardt <eisenha...@planet.nl>
Subject: [VIHUELA] Re: Valdambrini's evidence
To: "Vihuelalist" <vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Date: Wednesday, 17 November, 2010, 13:33
While Sanseverino tells us better not to use the guitar for plucking
(in 1620, when alfabeto was the standard notation) we can suppose that
he heard players doing that.
> Alfabeto is a form of shorthand. You can't
> have a system of shorthand which everyone interprets as they wish.
Chord notation (in cifras and alfabeto) was very successful for at
least half a
century. It's indeed a very practical type of shorthand, but to me it
seems odd
to suppose that no player would ever have thought of the theoretical
implications. I mean, how can you find the chords to a song if you have
no idea of counterpoint and voice-leading at all. Perhaps a naive
(singer-)guitarist would just have performed it thoughtlessly.
> And again - in French tablature the chords are written out in full -
no
> ambiguity. Why assume that Italian players did anything different.
Guitar music in French tablature is rather later. Chord notation in
French tablature seems highly ambiguous to me, with regard to open
strings. We have discussed this at length here and could not reach
agreement.
>> > As far as the alfabeto song books are concerned the little
>> information we have does seem to indicate that the guitar was not
>> intended to reproduce the bass line etc. but just strummed the
basic
>> chords. It is an anachronism to do anything much more elaborate
than
>> that if what you are trying to is to re-create the ambience in
which
>> they were first performed.
I could sum up several other things that would spoil the ambience for
me, like improvising far out of the box of modality, accompaniment
with18th c (or 21st c...) tonal harmony, poppy syncopations etc. The
result of leaving out the 5th c bourdon is not inconsistent with the
general style of the time. We, as well-informed hardliners, reach
different conclusions as to whether this could possibly have been done
by a guitarist in the 1620s or 30s. I would prefer to take in account
that an experienced theorbist-guitarist would perhaps have tried to
expand the system of alfabeto from within. I don't see alfabeto as a
completely rigid system, mainly for amateurs, without any relation to
the developments that were going on in the sphere of basso continuo or
solo music. We can assume that the guitar was used as well by singers
and composers such as Falconieri, Marini, Berti and Milanuzzi, who were
often trained in church music, on instruments like the organ or the
lute. This is music from the latter days of the alfabeto song
repertoire, when the genre was at its height. At the same time the
paradigm of the guitar as an instrument of chord strumming was losing
ground.
Lex
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