Dear James and Dennis, The distinction I was making between an arrangement (intabulation) and a transcription is not my invention. I am using the accepted music dictionary definitions, and have posted the ones from New Grove elsewhere. Perhaps too much emphasis in music is placed on originality. In some quarters it is a belief that somehow unless one is "original" one's performance or composition is not valid. An ingenious adaptation (arrangement) of a Ravel piano piece surely classifies as an original guitar piece, as original as a branle from the Treasures of Orpheus. It depends on how well you transform it into a guitaristic idiom. And how much more original can you get than Ravel's arrangement of Mussorgsky's piano pieces?
Arrangements appear frequently on serious guitar recitals as well as symphony concerts, with nary a complaint from the critics, or even the purists. And if the arrangement is made by a famous player or composer, that makes it even more acceptable. And Sal cited some strong examples of music by Byrd intabulated by Cutting and by Holborne. Roman cited Bach. And I would add Bach arranged by Stravinsky to the mix. It would be wrong to consider such works inferior, as Thames and some persons like him in the guitar world believe. Similarly I think one often can spot an intabulation by Alberto da Ripa, for example, by his use of a few distinctive, personal motives for ornaments. I am convinced that many such works were published as illustrations of how a master lutenist would embellish a piece with his own style. The originality is not in the borrowed material, but how the master lutenist re-works the material in a personal, distinctive style of ornamentation. The vocal model is just the vehicle. Usually the lutenist does not even make the original intabulation, of transferring notes to tablature. Instead many intabulations take an existing intabulation, remove the encrusted ornamentation, and re-ornament it in the lutenist's own individual style. It is the lutenist's ornamentation that makes it an original work. That is its aim. I touch on this in a paper I read at the international lute conference in Utrecht, and even draw a stemma of the various intabulations of "Doulce m=E8moire." It is easy to tell who cribbed what from whom.<g> It is published in the Acta for that conference. "Originality" has not always been held in such high regard, particularly during the time that the lute was so very much a part of mainstream western music, The cult of originality is really an invention of the Romantics, taking Beethoven as their model. Music became a means for individualized personal expression, using a distinctively personal musical style.. Surely one of the most frequently used compositional techniques in the Renaissance was parody. And even lutenists have used the technique in their work. (Many of Gorzanis's dances, for example, are based on polyphonic French chansons.) The _entire_ compositional process in parody is re-working a pre-existing piece of polyphony by another composer. A recently mentioned case in point would be the masses by Josquin, Obrecht, Agricola, de Silva each based on "Malheur me bat," a chanson sometimes (and probably improperly) attributed to Okeghem. The original, creative work is expanding a three-minute chanson into a 45-minute mass. Many would surely call some of those masses master pieces, although one might argue that there is not an "original" note in them. It is well known that Palestrina composed "at the lute," and specifically his Missa de beata virgine, which he then previewed for his patron by playing it on the lute before it was later sung by the patron's choir. All of the melodies in that mass are derived from the Gregorian chant mass to the Virgin, some of the most beautiful chants in the repertory. But we still consider it Palestrina's master piece. It really is one of the most beautiful masses he wrote (he actually wrote two such masses). And the beauty derives from the borrowed chant melodies. Not much "originality" there, either, as far as thematic ideas go. Several lutenists intabulated movements from Josquin's Missa de beata virgine, which uses the same chant melodies: H. Newsidler (1536), Mudarra (1546), Pisador (1552), Phalese (publ.) (1552), Fuenllana (1554), Ochsenhkun (1558), Heckel (1562). And fully one-half of the lute repertory in the Renaissance (and significant portions in other eras) is the intabulation. Many of these are works by master lutenist-composers, and for that reason alone should not be considered second-rate pieces. Although for many years these works have been passed over by performers, there is renewed, genuine interest in the genre. I am reminded of Jacob Heringman's CD devoted entirely to lute intabulations of music by Josquin on the Discipline Global Mobil label (DGM006). Few lute recitals these days fail to include at least a few intabulations. And Digman makes his own. On the other hand, composers like Byrd have also made transcriptions of lute music. But it would be a mistake to call these arrangements, as Thames would have us do, because the process is one of writing a piece from tablature notation into pitch notation on the grand staff. Eric cites some further examples. It's really music copying that could be done by a semi-skilled music scribe. But we attach undue importance to it because the scribe is William Byrd. But he did no more than what the modern transcriber/editor of lute music does, provide a coherent scoring of the tablature, writing it out on the grand staff. (Incidentally, Thames has misrepresnted what I wrote about music by Byrd in the lute repertory. I wrote that most of the pieces are intabulations of his vocal music. But since some of the dances fall so nicely under the hand when played on lute, one should not exclude the possibility that they were composed for lute. After all, wasn't Ferrabosco one of Byrd's teachers? It remains an open question in my book.) ajn. ----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 11:49 PM Subject: Re: Byrd Hi to all, It seems that Ness is saying that a keyboard composition, reworked (arranged) for lute, can qualify as an original lute piece. Thames is saying, not so. Do I have this right? I'm a little confused about this thread... I've published several books with Mel Bay Publications of my arrangements for guitar: works by Debussy, Handel, Strauss, Bach, Schubert, Mozart, etc. Even though a lot of creative work goes into these arrangements; in no way would I consider them to now qualify as original guitar compositions. I've had a very busy and tiring week, so forgive me if I'm missing the obvious; but it seems to me that Michael has a valid point about all this. Being a nice person and valued musicologist is not the issue here, is it? James -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --