Thanks a lot for the feedback. I'm having a shot at playing the piece a
bit faster. Martyn, I'm still not wholly convinced that this is a dance
piece, despite the title.
Would the Baroque guitar be no more than a 'five-course lute' if it
didn't have the re-entrant stringing it is supposed to have? Well, it
might have been be nice to have a five-course instrument that was fully
musical but cheaper and smaller and easier to play than an 11-course
lute, don't you think?
And there were other plucked instruments around at the time. The Talbot
MS lists citterns, guitterns, orpharions, bandoras, mandores and others.
None of these has the 'peculiarities' of the Baroque guitar - but they
are not merely 'lutes' in another shape with fewer strings.
Here's the Baleto again.
http://www.tuningsinthirds.com/Baleto/Baleto.jpg
And here's a very rough transcription of the second strain of the piece
(starting on line two):
http://www.tuningsinthirds.com/Baleto/trans.jpg
Sorry about my awful handwriting. I haven't written out music by hand
for a long time and I can't remember the conventions for upward and down
stems.
1) is a transcription with the lower bass notes as... bass notes. It's
also what I tried to play on a guitar with octaves on both lower courses
(and with the upper octave struck with the thumb first). The real
problem is the fourth course and I played it almost always with the
fingers - not the thumb. So the bass dominates completely but there is a
slight hint of the octave string. An alternative is to split the course
and just play the lower string. It's actually not that difficult.
Result: pleasant little tune with some shape to it and some credible
harmonies.
2) is a completely re-entrant transcription. All the notes on the fourth
and fifth are an octave higher. I don't know what else to say other than
this is just gibberish. It can't be the unique attraction of the Baroque
guitar to produce this sort of thing, can it? The re-entrantly tuned
citterns don't produce this sort of effect. The bandores and mandores
and the rest have the melody at the top where it should be and the bass
below, where it should be. Melodic lines can be melodic lines and
harmonies can be harmonies just like they are on other plucked
instruments, and non-plucked instruments, and in scores for instruments
and for voices. It really is highly improbable that the Baroque guitar
is so different from everything else.
3) is again for a guitar tuned with octaves on the lower two courses and
with the upper octave struck with the thumb first. But here, unlike 1)
above, the thumb is hitting the upper octave first. I would think that
any thin string, gut or modern, is bound to sing out and be clearly
audible (just like you want it to be in campanella passages). And the
result is gibberish with a bass line.
Or anyway that's my problem with the Baroque guitar. It's the upper
octave on the fourth course. How do you get it to shut up most of the
time? But it's absolutely necessary for campanellas. (Wouldn't
campanellas sound awful if the lines were bobbing up and down octaves.
So why accept bobbing up and down between octaves, sixths turning into
thirds etc outside of campanellas?).
I hadn't really appreciated that there is just one source - Ribayez -
that actually specifies putting the higher of the octaves to the left of
the other on the fourth and fifth course.
Stuart
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