Dear Stuart,
Some years ago Jon Banks made a CD with the early music group
Sirinu,
which included some of those early 16th century lute trios. The
trios
made up about one third of the CD.
I always take Jon's edition to Lute Society playing events, but the
music never gets played. The rhythms are difficult, and few
lutenists
are happy to read staff notation.
Best wishes,
Stewart McCoy.
-----Original Message-----
From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [[1]mailto:lute-
a...@cs.dartmouth.edu]
On Behalf Of Stuart Walsh
Sent: 11 September 2009 23:36
To: nedma...@aol.com
Cc: dem...@suffolk.lib.ny.us; lute@cs.dartmouth.edu
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Imbalance
nedma...@aol.com wrote:
I guess we were pretty good sight readers, Stuart. I had studed
percussion since Jr. High and was playing drums professionally at the
time. The other 'lutenists' were very good players - conservatory
trained - on their respective modern instruments. So we all did well
with the rhythmic complexities. Also, required at the workshop were
daily classes in doing exercises from Hindemith's Elementary Training
for Musicians. By the time you get into the third or fourth chapter
of that, you're having fun with rhythms! As a drummer, it was
actually the rhythmic 'interest' characteristic of much early
music that initially attracted me. Another memorable evening was
spent listening to recorder players trying to read through "Christe
Crosse" from T. Morley's "A Plain and Easy Introduction to Music" (if
I remember the title correctly). One would have to look to
contemporary - or at least modern - musical works to find similar
rhythmic complexity, I think.
Ned
We had a classically-trained violinist stay with us for a while
(Bartok
no problem etc) - and I put some fifteenth century music in front of
her
(I chose something quite tricky!) and she was really quite
flummoxed -
for a couple of minutes anyway, but then sorted it out. What I find
most
shocking/surprising in this kind of music (as it is realised in
modern
editions) is seeing what looks like a simple melodic line which,
if it
were in 4/4 would be a simple as could be. But it's not on the the
beat
at all! But there is a beat and some of the other parts may be
playing
it - or not. (I can put up some juicy examples if anyone is
interested)
Jon Banks has been championing a repertoire (some textless
chansons and
other things) from around 1500 which he argues is for lute trio
(or a
trio of plucked instruments, probably of different sizes). He has
written a book about it and the Lute Society (UK) has published
some of
the pieces. I have worked on some of the pieces (as an amateur)
and I
still don't feel at all confident at trying to play them with
others.
I'd be interested to know who is playing them.
Stuart
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