I don't ignore the point, but, as David says, lutenists tend to ignore the
high octaves. We have discussed this more than once and I am aware that
you, not having the experience of playing the lute, are distracted by the
high octave strings ringing above the other parts.
How do you know I have no experience of playing the lute? You know nothing
about the instruments I play or have played! In my experience when the lute
is octave
strung this is very apparent and and can be distracting.
Yours is an individual
listening habit, which does not say anything about what others, more
experienced with 16th and 17th plucked music, do perceive or like.
Again - how do you know how experienced I am? How experienced are you? I
don't think you very often play the lute these days and did you use octave
stringing when you did? Like you I played the vihuela for many years - in
fact that was how I started out. A lot of people on this list and other
people who
like me play baroque guitar music, regularly attend live concerts and listen
to recordings of this
repertoire have no problem with re-entrant tunings.
Just have a look at the courante or gigue by Bartolotti which I put on
YouTube last summer. Even if you (regrettably) seem to hear it as single
line music,
I never said that I could only hear these pieces as a single line. What I
did say
(among other things) was
The baroque guitar has nothing in common with the classical guitar. Whether
or not there are bourdons, there are always high octave strings on the 4th
and 5th courses. Although it's possible to leave out the bourdons, leaving
out the treble strings is another matter. I have listened to Lex's
recording several times with the music in front of me and most of the time
it is difficult to hear the bourdon on the fifth course because all it is
doing is creating parallel octaves in which the upper part which is more
audible.
In the very few places where it might (on paper) make better sense of the
counterpoint to omit the treble string, as in bar 7 of the gigue, it is
hardly practical to do so. So the imitative entry, where you can hear the
bourdon if you listen carefully, just sounds confused. In the Sarabande the
bass line falls a 7th at the cadence following the double bar - this big
chord I comes out of nowhere! Paradoxically the bourdon on the fourth
often sounds to me more prominent especially in odd places in the
campanellas.
I wish you would read what I say.
Impossible to do
justice to the music on a guitar in re-entrant tuning.
The main difference is that the basses of the lute or the guitar in
bourdon tuning are there in the physical world, while with re-entrant
tuning they are fictitious.
Try telling that to Gordon Ferries, Jacob Lindberg and Rodrigo de Zayas to
mention just three who have made recordings of Sanz music.
This is because you are not supposed to. The note F is not part of the
bass part. It belongs to the
upper part. The bass line goes G# - A in those two bars.
So, for some reason Sanz's observation that the part which is usually
played with the thumb is the bass does not apply here?
There are always exceptions to the rule. Bartolotti indicates that you
should play running passages with alternate finger and thumb on the lower
courses and uses the thumb not only for notes on the lower course in
campanellas, but also in other places where the note on the 5th course
belongs to the melodic line.
I wonder if many here on this list would agree with your analysis of this
particular example.
I think they all have more sense than to start taking sides between us.
You seem to think that it is your perogative to criticise what other people
do even when they are every bit as experienced as you are and when you are
losing the argument you resort to derogatory personal remarks.
There doesn't seem to be much point in continuing with this discussion.
Monica
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