Hi Rob, Crawford Young has a trick of playing w/ a quill and he's able to use a few other fingers now and then. That may work for the "noodles over tenor" recipe that was popular. Eg, the spagna, Comme femme and De tous biens (from Segovia) as well as earlier sources from the Buxheimer and Locheimer pieces.
The nice thing about tenors is that they don't go down so far as the bass notes we're so used to in the 16th century. So fair game may also be that huge burgundian repertory where you simply play the tenor + cantus. If you want to do it "right", go quill on as much as you can. Of course, decorating the Cantus to your heart's content or even discarding for a Rob MacK specialized contrapunto certainly seems acceptable. To me, at least. I have this idea in the back of my head that Spinacino put so many of his pieces in horrible keys (usually up a minor 3rd) so they could also be playable on a 5-c. If you look at his setting of Tandernacken it's a nearly exact setting of the Segovia version - but, up from a comfortable-for-6c to an almost-doable-on-5c. If you were to play it on a 5-c tho you'd only be missing a few notes and usually they'd be available up an octave. Spin's Amours amours, Malor me bat, Haray tres amours and Cent milles ecus (all Bk 2) among many others also fall into that category. There are ocasional bass notes on the 6th but you can _almost_ work around them. And being Spinacino, they are handfuls and often dreadful handfuls. Find the originals where you can and see what's going on and what you can remove to make it work. The music is really quite nice. It's just unfortunate that it requires so much work. Haray tres, at least, is short, very faithful to the original - when you tear down the window dresssing - and not especially impossible. Being a transitional period of luting (5c -> 6c, quills -> fingers, mss. -> prints, Burgundians -> Frottoles, etc), I can certainly see Petrucci's/Spinacino's ideas of keeping as many options open as possible. Who knows where if printing this printing music concept is even going to sell?? Lute players?? I found I was able to set a few Dalzas for the ren guitar (and that's removing 2 courses) and they are a lot of fun. Yes, they were poo-poo'd on this list as being inauthentic but of course you're on firmer ground. Maybe the suite in Bb with the 5th course down a tone would work (and maybe discordato the 4th, too, so you can easily get to the sub dominant?). As I see it, Petrucci sold you the music and a suggestion of how to make it work and it's up to you to actually make it work on the instruments you have. But keep flogging it until morale improves. Sean On Apr 19, 2014, at 9:13 AM, Rob MacKillop wrote: Hi folks. I just got hold of a very fine 5c lute made by Bill Samson, and have just spent half an hour reading through the pieces on Timo Peedu's Ning lute page: http://lutegroup.ning.com/profile/TimoPeedu I'm wondering what one does with a 5c. I used to have one twenty years ago, and just made up stuff, and played single note voice parts with a harpist playing one or two other lines, working from vocal music. But I haven't played a 5c for nearly two decades, and I'm sure there must have been a lot of research done in that time. Hopefully someone here can get me up to speed on all things 5c... It is tuned to f sharp (440 pitch) but could go up to g quite easily. Rob MacKillop www.robmackillop.net To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
