Up birght an early after all. You wrote
<<And yes, I am familiar with invertible counterpoint. Some intervals are
'forbidden'. >>
In fact all intervals are invertible and therefore permissable. The only
possible exception is the 5th but on the guitar this was probably
acceptable.
Nassarre for example writes the following -
"It is true that, when found in the bass by itself, the 4th does not have
the same grade of sonority as others, and for this reason it is counted
among the dissonances. Yet, this is not sufficient reason because
experience shows that on some musical instruments it is used in the bass in
place of the 5th. This is true of the guitar and several others."
<<It would be completely pointless to randomly 'invert' parts of
the counterpoint in Foscarini, Bartolotti or de Visee in many occasions,
which would happen if you leave off the bourdons.>>
It is not completely pointless to randomly invert the parts and the music
work perfectly well if you do. In practice some of Foscarini's 3-part
writing actually works better in that way e.g. the passage in the toccata on
p.105 which starts in the middle of the seventh line down.
Additionally chords of the 7th can be in any inversion and Bartolotti is
rather fond of these.
Finally I was told an amusing anecdote recently... In Carbonchi's 1643
book on p. 46 there is a "Corrente del Frescobaldi." A famous harpsichord
player whose first name is also Lex asked one of his students who was doing
a doctoral dissertation on Granata to transcribe this into staff notation
and was shocked when he saw all the 6/4 chords. When the piece was played
to him on the guitar (with bordons) he was unable to hear any of the 6/4
chords. If he can't hear them I doubt whether most other people can.
Monica
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