On Nov 14, 2006, at 6:50 PM, Jim Abraham wrote: > But most lute tablature, at > least in modern editions/transcriptions is usually identified as > being for > one instrument or another, e.g. "for renaissance lute" or even "for > renaissance lute in G." If that's the case, why not just use staff > notation?
Why not indeed! I still think it has to do with the fact that our original musical sources are written in tablature, so we have to be fluent tab readers in order to understand them properly. > Or is it to help the PLAYERS, not the composers, players who > might have to play many different lutes in different tunings, and who > reasonably can't learn all those fingerboards? Sorry if this seems > obvious, > but to me tab seems to have so much going AGAINST it vis-a-vis staff > notation, that there must be one incontestable reason for its > survival. Generally speaking (the big disclaimer!), the idea in renaissance music was not to transpose to different keys on the same instrument. They didn't have keys as we do today. To re-pitch the music up or down they would either move the clef sign higher or lower, or they would play instruments in a higher or lower tuning. Thus, if a lute song went too low for your voice, you didn't re-write the music, you simply put down your G lute and picked up the one tuned in A, a step higher, and played from the *same* tablature. And we continue this practice today, not least for the reason that the big lutes (e.g. bass lutes in D) sound different, have different musical "personalities," to the smaller ones (tenor in G or alto in A). So along with the ability to play the same music higher or lower, we also have a wide tonal palette from the large instruments to the small ones. Hope that helps... David Rastall [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.rastallmusic.com -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
