Dear Monica/Lex, I really wonder if rather too much weight is being placed on the importance of strict part wrioting/voice leading in much of this 17thC guitar repertoire: is it not closer to something like unaccompanied violin music (ie melodic passages/flourishes with chordal movement on principal stresses eg Biber/Schmelzer et al) rather than lute or keyboard writing demanding well defined continuous parts (albeit broken from time to time)? Harmonisation on the 17thC guitar is, it seems to me, more a matter of chord progressions (and defined tonalities) rather than basso continuo realisation. rgds Martyn
Monica Hall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The fifth example on B is > > actually a 4-3 rather than a 6th chord > > and in the first two examples and the > > last two the bass notes are an octave above those written in the bass > part - > > in the tenor register in fact. > > Tenor, yes. But still the lowest note. That was the point. But that is really beside the point. Some of Carre's exercises also use the 5th course as if it were octave strung, although from what he says it seems that he assumed that only the 4th course would be. Also Valdambrini - who specifically says that the instrument has no bass strings. The purposes of all these exercises is to show the correct notes which match the notes given in the bass in a way that can be played on the guitar. The question that no-one asks or answers is how else could you conveniently fit the music on to the fingerboard? But this is a crucial consideration. It is no where explicitly stated that the bass line must be reproduced or that the chords will actually sound as written. The guitar part in Corbetta's vocal pieces simply doubles the voice parts to give them some support and help them to keep pitch. The lowest voice part is providing the bass line - as in Grenerin. You are trying to prove that all the music is actually intended to be played with octave stringing on 4th and 5th courses, but this simply doesn't follow from these exercises. Agazzarri divides continuo instruments into three groups 1. Those which can play the bass line and the harmony - keyboard instruments. 2. Those which can play only the bass part - viola da gamba 3. Those which can fill in the harmony but not reproduce the bass line. Amongst these he includes the "chitarrina". It is not clear whether this is a small guitar or a mandora, but really the 5-course guitar belongs in this group. It can't reproduce a bass line note for note as written and in the sort of circumstamces in which it would have privided the accompaniment alone, this would not have mattered. You are trying to claim for the instrument a role which it was never really expected to play in the 17th century. Monica To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --------------------------------- To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. --
