Theo,
Yes, history is not linear. Baron, coming after
Weiss, is pictured with a 12-course lute on one head
stock - no rider or swan neck. Most of his music is
for 12 course lute as well and those pieces that
require the 13th appear to have had it written in
later.
It is also interesting to note that the pieces in
Dresden give the impression that they were conceived
with 13 courses in mind, yet many of these same pieces
show up in the 11-course London ms. The Dresden
versions of these London pieces often have other
compositional differences aside from the addition of
lower courses.
Harrach, too is very interesting. Most of the
pieces are for 11 courses in which the bass notes in
the upper octave have been dropped down with "5's" and
"6's" obviously added in later. Yet, even in pieces
where this has been done, one occasionally finds
passages that would be difficult or impossible to
perform on an 11 course lute. Maybe this manuscript
was copied by someone who had just gotten themselves a
13-course and wasn't quite fluent with it yet.
Chris
--- Tadeyev <tade...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
> Interesting information regarding the 13 course
> lute. I was never able
> to get a hold of Lundberg's article and it
> is great to get a condensed overview here.
> The only point I want to bring up is that it is
> continuously stated
> that the London MS is meant for the 13 course lute.
> This is simply not the case as (nearly all) of the
> 4's and 5's have
> been added later in a different hand.
> It is also mentioned briefly in the German preface.
> If the information of Lundberg is true, then this
> would seem to be
> strange situation indeed.
> Yet to claim that the London MS (originally) is
> meant for 13 courses
> is also not in the least self evident.
>
> This is just hair splitting of course...I imagine
> that any composer
> worth their salt would be more than glad to
> use/experiment with
> new musical developments of their instrument. And if
> it sounds
> beautiful on 13 courses I am not going to complain
> :-)
> Just my 2 cents
> Theo
>
>
>
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