Dear Stewart,
You write: 'My guess, (and it would be lovely if you could confirm it
to be right),
is that the bourdons were removed for the sake of strumming. Second
inversions were not such a problem per se, especially if there was
another instrument supplying the true bass, but a second inversion
involving a "wrong" note sounding below the bass, or one which was
particularly low in pitch, was not satisfactory.'
As you'll have seen from my previous postings I really do not consider
these inversions problematical (neither I think does Monica but she
can, and will, speak for herself) and indeed even the earlier
generation of 4 course guitarists generally didn't either.
As pointed out recently and many other times over the past year or so
during this discussion thread (how time flies) these guitar alfabeto
chords are a sort of platonic form of a particular harmony. Just as
Plato invents the concept of a form of a chair (his example) but
without relating it to any particular chair to explain how we identify
such an object, so the chord produced by guitar strumming is a harmony.
Such is even the practice today - for example in popular music I really
don't think most guitar strummers are over bothered about the fine
progression of the bass line.
This is particularly the case if the treble of the bass pair is placed
so as to be struck first by the thumb/downwards strum so that there is
a further imprecision in the auditor's ear as to the precise pitch of
the lowest notes in the chord. Indeed, I can well imagine an entirely
different scenario to you whereby the re-entrant nature of octave
basses became an attraction in itself by allowing various idiomatic
styles (such as campanellas) to be developed without drastically
changing the platonic chord ability.
I'm afraid a further problem with suggesting that the avoidance of
bourdons on the 4th and 5th avoids inversions is that it doesn't. Play
almost any common chord other than G, A and maybe B and Bb and you have
an inversion with the third course as the lowest.
rgds
Martyn
--- On Fri, 19/11/10, Stewart McCoy <lu...@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
From: Stewart McCoy <lu...@tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: [VIHUELA] Valdambrini's evidence
To: "Vihuela List" <vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Date: Friday, 19 November, 2010, 13:16
Dear Monica,
Many thanks for your reply to my email about strumming. We agree that a
good guitarist wouldn't always feel obliged to strum every available
string of a chord all the time. We also agree that guitarists had long
been happy with the "wrong" inversion of a chord - in particular,
second
inversions.
Where we differ, I think, is whether someone strumming a guitar with
bourdons may have chosen to avoid some of the lower notes of a chord,
where they would otherwise interfere with a bass line, like the bass
notes played on a spinet for that song by Stefano Landi.
To this I would ask, why is that guitarists in the 17th century chose
to
string their guitars without bourdons? By doing that, they drastically
reduce the overall range of the instrument, and different courses end
up
duplicating each other by sounding notes at the same pitch. It seems a
very strange thing to want to do, yet so many guitarists chose to
string
their guitars that way. Having a re-entrant tuning enables one to play
lots of fancy campanellas, of course, but I suspect that this was not
why the bourdons were removed in the first place.
My guess, (and it would be lovely if you could confirm it to be right),
is that the bourdons were removed for the sake of strumming. Second
inversions were not such a problem per se, especially if there was
another instrument supplying the true bass, but a second inversion
involving a "wrong" note sounding below the bass, or one which was
particularly low in pitch, was not satisfactory.
Assuming that to be the case, the guitarist has two ways of avoiding
those low, unwanted notes. Either he avoids playing them, as Lex has
maintained was a possibility, or he gets rid of the bourdons
altogether,
so that he can strum to his heart's content without having to worry
about having to miss out the odd unfelicitous low note.
Best wishes,
Stewart.
-----Original Message-----
From: [1]lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu
[mailto:[2]lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On
Behalf Of Monica Hall
Sent: 19 November 2010 12:18
To: Stewart McCoy
Cc: Vihuelalist
Subject: [VIHUELA] Re: Valdambrini's evidence
> Triads were not new in the 17th century. They had certainly been
around
> a lot earlier than that, and were pretty well established by the 15th
> century. Composers like Dufay made much use of them. You have only to
> look at 15th-century pieces played on the lute with a plectrum to see
> how a polyphonic texture was filled out here and there with triadic
> chords.
I think you are taking everything I have said literally and out of
context.
There is a
difference between consonances made up of the notes of a triad and a
recognization of the relationship between them. It is not that these
things
are "new" in the sense that no-one had ever thought them before.
Rather
there is a shift of emphasis with the emmergence of the seconda
prattica.
It is obvious in the 4-course repertoire that there are the same chords
which are found in the 5-course repertoire but without the fifth course
and
these may have been strummed. These are on the margins so to speak.
> As far as strumming on the guitar is concerned, the actual notes
played
> cannot always be notated accurately, because a skilled strummer will
not
> strike all the strings of a chord every time. He may, for example,
> choose to strike all the strings for a strong down-stroke, but catch
> just the first few strings with a lighter strum on the up-stroke.
I have no problem at all with the idea that there would be different
strumming patterns to create a contrast in texture but I do not agree
with
you or Lex that ensuring that the chords were in the correct inversions
was
an issue. It is an entirely modern obsession.
Monica
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References
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