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

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