I last played the broken consorts a long, long time ago with a recorder
and don't remember any problems with the octave shifts. I do remember
some concern about whether the lute was loud enough.
More recently I have enjoyed the CD by L'Poem Harmoniqe Love Is
Strange, which includes broken consorts and arrangements of duets.
Most (all?) of them are played with something other than the standard 6
instruments and the performances really sound great to me. Since
hearing this I am becoming more in favor of looking at these consorts
as scores with possibilities for all kinds of arrangements. The LSA
Quarterly (February, 2008) has an article about playing the consorts
with less instruments by Andrew Hartig "Re-envisioning the Broken
Cosort: Doing More with Less." If any of you, who are not subscribers
would like a copy, email me back with a street address.
Nancy Carlin
These are interesting questions. At the recent Lute Society weekend
Ian Harwood managed to assemble a consort at the high pitch - a
minor third above modern pitch. I played my "A lute" tuned up a
semitone, strung all in gut except for the top string which was
nylgut. For a gut string I think you would need a slightly shorter
string length (mine is 53.5cm).
The treble part was played on a treble violin, the size of which
made holding it quite tricky! The consort sounded good and the
advantage of the high pitch solution is that the flute/recorder
parts fit in the "correct" place in the texture. Ian does however
have a bass flute which allows a low pitch consort to achieve the
same thing. In any case I think it depends which pieces we're
talking about as to whether the octave displacement of the flute
causes a problem or not. Ian's "dual-pitch" hypothesis was
originally based on the sizes of surviving viols, but he also has
theories about the bandora which seem to make a lot of sense. I
can't remember how it all relates to the sizes of surviving citterns
but we used a small cittern for the high-pitch consort and it
sounded fine.
I note with interest that the designation "treble lute" and a high
pitch of about a minor third above modern fits nicely with the
notion that the "mean lute" was about a tone below modern pitch (a
fourth lower than the high pitch) - arguments for which I have made
elsewhere, e.g., in the brief essay on Dowland's lutes which can be
found at [1]www.johndowland.co.uk
Best wishes,
Martin
Sam Chapman wrote:
Dear Lute list,
I'm in the process of organizing a consort in Basel to play, among
other things, pieces from the Morley consort lessons. Having read
various articles on the subject and listened to recordings of the
music, I'm left with some difficult questions:
What pitch should the music be played at?
What kind of flute should be used and should the part be played as
written or up an octave?
Why the designation for "treble lute" when clearly a G instrument is
intended?
These questions and others have been already been tackled by Ian
Harwood in his several articles, but I would be very interested to
hear other people's thoughts and opinions (and justifications). If
you
have experience performing this repertoire, how did you solve these
problems?
Many thanks,
Sam
To get on or off this list see list information at
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Nancy Carlin Associates
P.O. Box 6499
Concord, CA 94524 USA
phone 925/686-5800 fax 925/680-2582
web site - [3]www.nancycarlinassociates.com
Administrator THE LUTE SOCIETY OF AMERICA
web site - [4]http://LuteSocietyofAmerica.org
--
References
1. http://www.johndowland.co.uk/
2. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
3. http://www.nancycarlinassociates.com/
4. http://lutesocietyofamerica.org/
