Do we know anything about his intensions with regard to tuning?
The answer is no. This new manuscript does include some notes explaining how
the guitar, violin, harp, tiple and bandurria can be tuned to play together,
but they are not coherant enough to work out the stringing and may not have
been added by Murcia anyway. The only thing that is clear is that the 3rd
course of the guitar is in unison with the lowest string of the violin -
which we all know anyway.
At least we may assume that he used some method of stringing himself.
In out time there has been a lot of disagreement about Murcia's tuning,
but that does not say that he would not have cared.
Well - everyone has their own ideas based on their own arbitrary and
subjective analysis of the music. But we simply do not know whether he
cared or had any strong feelings on the subject. If he did these are just
as
likely to have been based on what worked best in practice rather than on
some notional idea as to what was theoretically correct.
And we also don't know if he chose to use different methods of stringing
during his lifetime. Or even as Frank Koonce seems to think for different
pieces.
What ambiguous tone quality?
How often do you listen to other people playing this music?
Arguments about whether the music conforms to the rules of music
theory, and the idea that you can leave out one string of a course or
strike it in such a >way the emphasis falls on one or other string are
futile.
Why futile?
Because they don't work in practice and in the end they prove nothing except
that different players today
have different conceptions about the way the music should sound. They
assume that when they play everyone hears the music in exactly the way that
they
do and likes what they hear.
The idea that campanela use of the low courses would point at
re-entrant tunings is mere speculation. I think that it grossly
underestimates the capacities of the 17th century guitarist.
Yet again - re-entrant tunings have nothing to do with campanelas. What
Sanz says is
This is the reason - when making trills, slurs and other ornaments with the
left hand, the bourdon interferes with them because it is a thick string
and the other is thin, and therefore the hand cannot stop them evenly, and
hold down the thick string as easily as two thin strings.
Presumably he was a competant player - at least you have no evidence to the
contrary.
With
bourdons you can have it all, bass and treble. Just a matter of an
appropriate playing technique.
So you say - but what evidence do you have that 17th century guitarists
wanted it all and cultivated this technique? It is you, and other
classical guitarists who want to have it all. The rest of us don't problem
with the idea that an instrument doesn't have to have a bass register to be
effective.
The whole concept of implied understanding of the intensions of the
composer, even if the bass rises above the treble, smells so 'new-agy'
Don't know anything about "New aginess" but the fact is that with octave
stringing the bass rises above the treble anyway. In other words - the
re-entrant effect is constant.
Monica
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