>Dear Stuart, >In response to your questions below: > >In his introduction to the forthcoming Lute Society edition >Jon suggests that the music may have originally been performed >on a true consort of 5 course lutes tuned a fourth apart, but notes >that in practice other configurations are possible and that the >music will work on three lutes of the same pitch. Using staff notation >for the music maintains this flexibility whereas transferring it into >tablature would necessitate a fixed pitch relationship between the >lutes. > > I think it was Jean-Paul Bazin on the medieval lute list who recently pointed out that Virdung (I think) depicts both a lute and quinterne (gittern) on the same page as if they were often paired. Jean-Paul has a gittern with a top string of d (g,d,g,d): http://www.ensemble-gabriele-leone.org/egl/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=9&lang=
I'm experimenting with a home-made 'instrument' with top string at c, (g,d.a,c -an instrument tuned fully in fourths would lose the low g which often occurs in superius parts). I'm not finding it too difficult to read in staff notation on both instruments. The problem - and the interest- is the music itself. I'm sure it gets easier as it gets more familiar. (I'm not sure I'll ever get to be able to play 'proportions' 9:8 and the like.) >For my own part, I feel that this is a very exciting opportunity to >expand the lute's early repertoire. There is much fine music from >this period that will remain outside of the lute's domain if players >restrict themselves to only those sources that have survived in >tablature. I have for several years developed a lot of my own >repertoire of lute songs and intabulations from choral sources >and find that a very enjoyable and creative way of working. >In my early days of lute playing there seemed to be an unwritten >law that one played lute music from the surviving tablatures, >but these days I think of myself as player of Renaissance music >on the lute. > >The text / commentary of "Early lute tablatures in facsimile" >is in German and English in parallel columns throughout >the book - a very civilised arrangement. It would have been >a great loss to the English speaking lute fraternity if the >scholarship contained in it had not been readily accessible. > > > It's very expensive, though! Thanks for your helpful comments. Have musicians in other countries been persuaded too, I wonder? To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
