Dear David (van Oijen) and All,
Thanks for raising these issues. In reply there are a few pieces of
evidence and some speculation:
1. By 1610, Dowland is no longer tuning his top strings (note double top
course) as high as they will go, but "must be strayned neither too
stiffe nor too slacke, but of such a reasonable height that they may
deliver a pleasant sound, and also (as Musitions call it) play too and
fro after the strokes thereon".
2. Dowland also reports in 1610, that "some few yeeres after" the
invention of body frets by Mathias Mason, "by the French Nation, the
neckes of the Lutes were lengthned, and thereby increased two frets
more, so as all those Lutes which are most received and desired, are of
tenne frets". Even if he started from a string length of about 59cm,
and even allowing for the decrease in body length which results from a
conversion from 6-7 courses to 9 courses, the resulting lutes with
10-fret necks would have been in the 65-70cm range.
3. Speculation - but Ian Harwood's observations on the sizes of viols
suggest two pitch standards about a fourth or a fifth apart, the lower
of which could well have been in the region we're talking about - about
a tone below modern pitch.
I know Dowland's song books (except Musicall Banquet, which is exactly
contemporary with VLL) date from 1597 onwards and use only a 7c lute,
but still our modern pitch of a'=440 seems an absolute maximum for those
songs and lutes - I think the likelihood is the general pitch was
somewhat lower, and by 1610 definitely lower.
The four-part ayres date from the earlier period where it is possible
that the usual pitch was not much less than modern, but this is indeed
an interesting factor in speculations about pitch as it raises questions
about just how low a bass singer was expected to sing! If I remember
correctly the lowest note is a D, the bottom string of the bass viol.
It is also worth remembering that when all the parts are sung, the lute
is not really needed, so the pitch of the lute becomes irrelevant.
Best wishes,
Martin
LGS-Europe wrote:
Martin
Thank you for forwarding David Hill's email, it does raise interesting
issues.
Just a few points. You wrote:
I have some reasons to believe that Dowland would have expected to
hear his songs about a tone or perhaps even a minor third below
modern pitch
Why?
if we allow a substantially lower pitch, these songs could be sung by
almost anybody, whether they were (by modern classification) a
"baritone" or a "tenor", a "mezzo" or a "soprano".
Yes, but how about the four-part versions, presumably with the same lute.
realities of music making in his time, where no-one got out a tuning
fork at the beginning of a rehearsal.....
True, but there is that same lute again, with the treble tuned up just
under breaking point, hence at a more or less fixed pitch.
Something else. There are some period transposed lute parts, aren't
there? Anyway, there were differenty sized, and presumably pitched
lutes. Playing a lute song on a lute a fourth down makes it very
suitable for an alto. This is what I sometimes do with my counter
tenor, by the way, but more often I transpose just one tone or a third
down. Transposing down a second makes some of the lute parts easier,
strangely enough. Morley's 'It was a lover and his lass' comes to
mind. But that's coincidence, not evidence.
David
----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Shepherd"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Lute Net" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>; "David Hill"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2008 9:46 PM
Subject: [LUTE] lute songs
Dear All,
I just realized that "forwarding" something to the list runs foul of
the "attachments forbidden" rule, so here is the whole thing -
apologies for any duplication:
I'm forwarding this reply to my note from David Hill, sometime
countertenor and fellow alumnus of the Deller Academy and Bob Spencer
(see below for David's comments, which you should read first if you
want to make sense of any of this).
I was unaware of the Wigthorp concordance, and also forgot to mention
some wrong notes which really jarred with one who has been familiar
with Dowland's original since the year dot....
As for consort songs being for "treble" voices, I'm afraid this once
again raises the ugly head of the pitch monster. - if so, then
"treble" often tails off into "alto" without too much difficulty.
I'm not saying there was a "standard" pitch in Dowland's time, but at
the same time we should resist the temptation to project our
assumptions about pitch onto their music.
The problem with the modern countertenor singing lute songs is partly
to do with pitch and partly to do with voice production/timbre. As
far as pitch is concerned, many songs are sufficiently low that a
modern countertenor can manage them (at the top of their range)
without transposition - but then we have problems which relate to any
voice being at the top of its range, in a music which values
speech-like intelligibility. The voice production/timbre issue is
perhaps less serious, but the "head voice" of the modern c/t is not
always conducive to the kind of speech-like expression which seems to
be required for the effective delivery of the poems.
Just a thought about pitch - we tend to think in terms of a'=440, and
therefore in terms of most lute songs being "for" tenor or soprano -
but if we allow a substantially lower pitch, these songs could be
sung by almost anybody, whether they were (by modern classification)
a "baritone" or a "tenor", a "mezzo" or a "soprano". Surely that
fits very well with Dowland's publication strategy and also with the
realities of music making in his time, where no-one got out a tuning
fork at the beginning of a rehearsal.....
Best to All,
Martin
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject:
Re: Down, down, down I fall
From:
"David Hill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date:
Sat, 7 Jun 2008 19:19:40 +0100
To:
"Martin Shepherd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Dear Martin (please pass parts of this on to all and sundry if you
wish!),
I don't have the new Scholl disc, but I do know that
'Sorrow Come' is a 'sacred' contrafactum of 'Sorrow, Stay' by one
William Wigthorp, titled 'Dowlands Sorrow 5'. It's in the British
Library Add. Mss17,786-17791. It's also in Musica Britannica vol. 32.
The underlay (in the music) on 'wretched' is exactly as sung by the
wretched Herr Scholl, I'm afraid, but I agree that he really should
know how to pronounce 'fall' and other words properly.
Scholl's recording of A Musical Banquet, with the 'extraordinary'
Edin Karamazov features some truly cringeworthy wrong notes, leading
me to ask the same question - why did no-one at the sessions correct
him? I love Scholl in later music such as Handel, but this sort of
thing is just wrong. We all know that consort songs are for treble
voices.
This song appears (in this Wigthorp consort song version) on the
Consort of Musick's Complete Dowland box on CD 7, track 1, sung (in
English) by the divine Miss Kirkby.
All of the copious and VERY useful information that came with the
original LP issues of these recordings, however, was omitted from the
1997 CD re-issue.
By the way - it would be most enterprising for the Lute Soc to scan
in all of this insert and cover text from the COM Dowland LP covers,
to make available to members, since almost everyone in the lute world
will have this CD box on their shelves for reference (whether they
like it or not, of course), but not all will still have the LPs!
Chris should have all these LPs as part of the Lute soc library
collection, because I gave the whole set of mine to Bob Spencer in
1992 for his reference, and I believe that Jilly later passed them on
to the Soc.
As you know, I've seriously turned against my own former species, and
I now find it very difficult to tolerate countertenors singing lute
songs at all. There are too many things wrong with it, not least of
which is the necessary transpositions, which really make most
lutenists have to work hard, and as you say, it's difficult enough to
do it anyway, without hurdles. I really don't think that
Countertenors/falsettists EVER sang such songs before the early 50s,
or even that they existed AT ALL outside of chapels. Even alto parts
to madrigals are no fun for falsettists - the range is all wrong,
necessitating 'gear-shifts' into chest register, then back again,
sometimes in mid-word! Once you strip away at what C/Ts may have sung
at this time, you really have to query their very existence outside
of the choir stalls - at least at this period.
As you say, with the 'modern' countertenor, so much is sacrificed on
the altar of making a lovely noise that the poor old music itself
often goes out of the window. And I was as guilty of that as anyone
else. I now recant my former sins of having sung lute songs (even
though I'm well aware that sometimes it sounded lovely - I'm not that
daft), and that I forced lutenists to perform against the grain of
performance practice by sticking everything down a fourth, and will
from henceforth try to do all in my power to help stamp out this
(often) ugly piece of 'mis-information' that still continues to
disfigure our general perception of how lute songs were performed.
A published article is needed, somewhere influential, a
proclamation, drawing together any evidence (or lack of it) for C/Ts
doing Jacobean lute song before 1950. I can't write it - I'm way out
of my depth, but I'm certain that I'm right, and I'm more than happy
to discuss it with anyone willing to commit to this manifesto!
NB. Falsetto C/Ts DID exist by Purcell's time, of course - I'm not
saying they didn't, and besides we have ample evidence in the range
of the voice parts, e.g. the 'split' (for breath) in the two
melismatic phrases of the word 'sing' in 'Mark How the lark and
linnet sing' by Blow - exactly where the break between head and chest
voices occurs. But there, as in the case of early 17th century music,
the evidence lies in the vocal ranges. We just all need to look,
critically.
At any rate, it's probably not as bad as 'By the Streams of Afton
Water'.
Good to hear from you!
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
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