Dear Candace, As often as not, transposing the voice part to match a lute in G brings the singer's notes into a sensible range. For example, airs de cour which imply a lute in A tend to have quite a high range. By transposing down a tone for the sake of a lute in G, you avoid those horrible high squeeky notes like top g" and a".
Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Candace Magner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 7:10 PM Subject: Re: Airs de Cour - transposing the voice > Dear Luties, > > As a singer I can tell you that we almost never care if we have to > transpose. The voice is infinitely transposable -- well, not *infinitely*, > but until a transposition puts a song out of our singing range it is not > difficulty at all to sing in another key. Those singers who sight-read music > the best have, counter-intuitively, more trouble. We tend to look at a note > on the staff and know how it should feel in our voice, so a piece with wide > interval jumps might land us in the 'wrong part' of a chord (choosing the > 5th instead of a 3rd, for example). Those who are 'ear people' have no > trouble at all. Those few with perfect pitch go crazy, but they are used to > that ;-) > > As a baby baroque guitarist, I can say that I would MUCH rather have the > instrumentalist play where they want, in whatever A-tuning they have (A=440, > A=415, whatever) and do the voice transposition in my head, than be playing > and have to transpose. > > Incidentally, this is the sort of 'transposing' we do when we are reading in > clefs. If I am reading soprano clef instead of a [normal] G-treble clef I > just read intervals, I am never thinking actual pitches. > > Candace
