Well, I was very careful to say 'which is often the case with
Foscarini, Bartolotti, Visee etc.'
We seem to agree on Visee (most of his guitar works are probably not
conceived on other instruments though) and a quick look on the many
pizzicato works of Foscarini and Bartolotti will reveal that there is
true polyphony in those. Same of course with Guerau, for example.
Indeed there are other genres/compositional strategies, as you
describe, in other works of these same composers. But these cannot serv
as pars pro toto. Probably these different genres were played on the
same instrument, by the same player.
rgds, Lex
Lex,
I think where I part company with you here is in thinking too
academically about part writing for this most peculiar and idiomatic
of
instruments and expecting strict rules of counterpoint to be adhered
to
(eg as summarised around this time by Fux).
You write: 'The one side is what we think we hear. The other is
that
if music has two or more voices, which is the often the case with
Foscarini, Bartolotti, Visee etc., there is a top melody and a
bass.'
It has been previously remarked (not only by me!) that much 17th
century 5 course guitar music is more a melodic line sprinkled with
occassional chords - in fact rather closer to the sort of violin
writing of Biber, Schmelzer, Matteis et al than to contemporary
part
writing on the lute.
One does indeed find contrapuntal passages, or responses, scattered
throughout such works but generally not a consistent two part treble
and bass throughout.
Martyn
PS As a bit of an exception, I would agree though that much of De
Visee's guitar output is in two distinct parts - but isn't this
simply
because the pieces were often conceived for theorbo (or keyboard?)
as
the staff notation versions?
--- On Fri, 4/2/11, Lex Eisenhardt <eisenha...@planet.nl> wrote
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