No doubt the lute was part of the compositional process as Jessie Ann
Owens asserts, and it is difficult to draw any definitive conclusion
about the exact role of the instrument from the brief bits of
information in the letters concerning Palestrina. One detail that might
make some difference to the way we interpret the documents, however, is
that the term used in the letter is "porre sul liuto," translated by
Strunk as "to set on the lute" but literally "to place on the lute". In
sixteenth-century Italian usage, this is the common equivalent of what
we now would express as "to intabulate". Galilei, for example, writes
more precisely in his Fronimo and uses the phrase "intavolare sul
liuto" for the same thing. Strunk's translation is misleading inasmuch
as "to set" in English can be construed as part of the compositional
act. Hence, I think it is quite reasonable to conclude that the
wording implies that music composed in some other way was "fitted to
the lute". The phrase at the end of the quote makes it clear that the
process was not a simple linear progression from composition to
intabulation, but that the process involved aural judgment, revision,
correction, etc. the lute very much a part of the composer's toolkit.
JG
On 25/02/2010, at 12:29, David Tayler wrote:
I think Howard is right on as far as the process goes. I don't think we
can rule out the lute in any way based on this quote a far as being
part of the compositional process. It may have been used for thematic
material, for harmony, or any number of things, but it looks like a
direct reference.
The lute would not have had to play the full polyphonic web to be used
as a compositional etch-a-sketch.
dt
At 05:09 PM 2/24/2010, you wrote:
\On Feb 24, 2010, at 4:13 PM, John Griffiths wrote:
> the evidence about Palestrina and the lute suggests not that he
> composed on the lute, but that he intabulated his new
compositions and
> tested them on the lute before releasing them.
I'm not sure what "tested" or "released" would mean in this context,
but at least in English translation, the letter from Annibale
Capello to Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga of Mantua of 18 October 1578 seems
to say Palestrina was using the lute to compose:
"Having passed recently through a serious illness and being thus
unable to command either his wits or his eyesight in the furtherance
of his great desire to serve Your Highness in whatever way he can,
M. Giovanni da Palestrina has begun to set the Kyrie and Gloria of
the first mass on the lute, and when he let me hear them, I found
them in truth full of great sweetness and elegance. [] And as soon
as his infirmity permits he will work out what he has done on the
lute with all possible care.
This seems to say that Palestrina had composed on the lute, and
would expand it into the vocal parts as soon as he got well. The
Duke apparently thought that Capello meant to say that Palestrina
was writing lute music, as two drafts of a letter from a ducal
official to Capello that Jeppeson found in Gonzaga show, or at least
thats how Jessie Ann Owens reads them. The first one says:
"His Highness [the Duke] commands that Your Lordship [Capello] tell
Messer Giovanni di Palestrina that he should take care to get well
and not hurry to set to the lute the Kyrie and the Gloria with other
compositions, because having at hand many other talented men [i.e.
in Mantua, I think] there is no need for compositions for lute, but
instead for compositions made with great care."
The second draft says Capello should tell Palestrina that he "not
hurry to set the Masses to the lute, since [the Duke] desires that
they employ imitation throughout and be written on the chant"
This is all at pages 292-293 of "Composers at work" which I pulled
up on Google books by searching "jessie ann owens" palestrina lute.
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