I suppose this has been noted many times before but Ive been looking again at the music for the Baroque guitar and this time struck by the number of pieces in flat keys: F major, Bb major, G minor and C minor.
Pieces in these keys arent isolated individual numbers but whole suites, passacales or variation sets sitting alongside their equivalents in more familiar guitar keys. Theres nothing like this in 19th century guitar music. There are only very occasional pieces in these keys. Why is this? The addition of the sixth string in yet another flat-unfriendly pitch of E (natural)? Maybe but playing a five-course guitar in F and Bb is quite hard going and the addition of a sixth course doesnt significantly add to the difficulty. My guess is this: the alfabeto system (especially with movable chords) naturally leads to playing in a variety of keys. Its easy to play a simple chord sequence transposed to different pitches. Then the development of mixed tab: strummed chords and punteado naturally evolved out of this (becoming ever more sophisticated). When alfbeto (and tablature) became outmoded, flat keys seemed more outlandish and the more familiar guitar keys became the norm. ----------------------------------------- Email provided by http://www.ntlhome.com/ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
