Hi Daniel,
I agree absolutely. A number of simple works of Jacques de St. Luc
have been included by Anthony Bayles in his "32 Easy Pieces for Baroque
Lute" printed by Tree Edition. A great little edition, ideal for a
Baroque begiiner as I am these days.
Ciao,
Luca
Daniel Shoskes on 28-11-2009 20:33 wrote:
I've been sight reading through the collected works of Jaques St. Luc
and I'm really surprised that he is not better known, or at least
better represented in the recorded lute literature. Other than the g
major chaconne and Stephen Stubbs' single CD (tantalizingly called Vol
1), there's very little out there (also some successful classical
guitar transcriptions). A few things have impressed me:
1) the shear volume of surviving music (close to 300 pieces)
2) the variety of styles. In addition to typical baroque dance suite
movements, there are heavy serious contrapuntal works of significant
technical difficulty as well as light programmatic music including
"grand entrances" for royalty, late Renaissance style Branles, folk
tunes, settings of theatre music and military battles.
3) this is IDEAL music for baroque lute beginners. It's always a
challenge to find music to start with because most Weiss is too
technically difficult and French style brise music is a major
interpretive chore. St. Luc has many pieces that are simple for both
hands and musically interesting enough to want to play for others. It's
also all playable on a 11 course lute, although many basses could be
lowered for simplicity on a 13 course.
4) the style fits in a narrow time period. There are no elements of
Brise (unlike such contemporaries as Reusner and Conradi) but it lacks
the harmonic sophistication of Weiss or even Kellner. Probably the
closest I could compare to would be Losy, whose surviving output is
much more limited.
Here are some examples:
Chaconne: [1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYPJ30TFObY
Suite in D Major, ending with another chaconne:
[2]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHrmyuXjqVk
[3]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doFwL7huJic
[4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gHz0fCvACc
[5]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nc6nCGPCx8
BTW, in addition to some files by Doug Towne on the Fronimo site, the
complete works are available in a version from Christian Lauermann from
Seicento Editions.
Daniel Shoskes
--
References
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYPJ30TFObY
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHrmyuXjqVk
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doFwL7huJic
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gHz0fCvACc
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nc6nCGPCx8
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
