Music wrote: > I played my concert for the English Music Festival, in a small church in > a small village called Sutton Courteney, quite close to Oxford. The > weather was terrible, and many of the roads were flooded. Despite that, > about 40 people turned up to hear a concert dedicated to the 'English > Guitar'. I played the only repertoire I know - Oswald, Bremner and some > Scottish manuscripts - and there were questions afterwards as to why I > didn't play English music, considering it was an English music festival. > Well, it is hard to put a programme together of concert pieces by > English composers for the English Guitar. So much of it was by Scots, > Italians and Germans. .in equal amounts? Lots of Italians and Germans. Not so many Scots, I think - but I've only seen one Scottish MS (MS -225-82 it says on the microfilm). And that looks more interesting as a source of Scottish tunes at a particular time, than a source of guittar music.
> I gave a little speech stressing the point that we > are in the early stages of examining the instrument and its repertoire, > and hopefully someone will try to resurrect an English repertoire in the > not too distant future. I play Scots music because that is what lay > around me. I found six manuscripts for the instrument, all Scottish, all > containing Scottish music. I'm convinced there must be a huge amount of > English manuscripts waiting to be found. Maybe. The situation in the 18th century is pretty much the same as the century before and after. There's precious little music by English composers for plucked instruments after the Jacobeans. A few English names in de Gallot, for example. And for nineteenth century guitar? Pratten, Dibble (!), Shand. But there were some publications, if not MSS, for guittar by English composers/arrangers: Ann Ford, Thomas Bolton, George Rush, Edward Light, Thomas Thackray and, no doubt many others who wrote tutors (the ones that weren't Bremner rip-offs) and compiled the many collections of music by anon. > Anyway, I feel I've done my > bit. I'm more proud of my Oswald recording than any of my other > recordings. I feel he wrote superbly well for the instrument, always > staying within its limitations, unlike other 'more advanced' composers. > I wish more people would play the instrument rather than argue about it. > This is a discussion list! But it's hard to get the tone right - a spirit of friendly disagreement. Taro Takeuchi is a great enthusiast of the guittar. He's got eight or nine instruments and he played one of them at the last Lute Society meeting in London. He says he plans to produce a CD. He likes some of the pieces of Thackray. (Thomas Thackray of York). I visited Taro recently to have a sight-read through some duets. I took the easy parts. It's tricky getting one guittar in tune and getting two in tune and with each other is not easy (maybe that's why the accompaniment is often for a violin or a guittar.) Duets are fun to do. Anyone interested? I'm just an amateur but I like to both play and to discuss (argue about) the instrument. At the moment I've got a seven-string guitar set up in the tuning of the French equivalent of the guittar, the 'cistre ou guitthare allemande' and playing through lots of pieces. Lots of fine French songs with accompaniments and numbers for French operas. Lots of very folky sounding allemandes (light years from the 17th century allemandes) - and lots of outrageous rip-offs of music previously published for the guittar. > As for whether it was English, Scots, German, Italian or > Portuguese...over to you, my friends. > > Robert Charles John MacShannon Rennie Phillips MacKillop (more names > than the English Guitar!) > > > > -- > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > >
