I will try and keep this message short - but there are some quite important
issues at stake. Please press delete now if you are not interested.
Grenerin himself
speaks
of 'songs with accompaniment of the guitar', and not of 'songs with the
accompaniment of the guitar and theorbo' or anything.
I will repeat what I said earlier...
...because Grenerin has not written a lengthy preface covering every
conceivable aspect of how these pieces could be played, you think you can
interpret what
he says in the narrowest possible way.
He has not mentioned the theorbo in the introduction at all. He has
however said that the simphonies can be played by the bass viol, 2 violins
and keyboard. Played in this way the bass viol and keyboard will both be
playing the bass part - it will be duplicated.
At the beginning of the symphonies there is a note...
"a deux dessus de violon avec la basse" - for 2 violins with the bass -
which rather suggests that there could/should be a completely separate bass
player even if there is no theorbo player..
Then
"Compagnement of the guitar and the theorbo". - accompaniment for guitar
and theorbo.
It was you who argued that the
text implies that the accompaniment was intended for this combination.
I think this is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of what Grenerin has
said. It is one alternative out of several possible ones.
The important difference between Grenerin's guitar continuo and most other
realized accompaniments is that with him the bass is in principle the
lowest
voice. It is really a figured bass in tablature.
This is true up to a point. However the sinfonies for starters are in
3-part counterpoint and as notated in the tablature the lowest part which is
essential to make sense of the music would barely be audible played on the
guitar. Note particularly in the first piece on p.68 at bar 4-5 the bass
line of the guitar is up an octave bringing it into the same range as the
violins. This is part of the opening imitative entry which needs to stand
out. Throughout the guitar realization doesn't always reproduce the
correct rhythm of the bass part which essential to the part writing. There
are also 6/4 chords in three
places and other chords which are not in the correct inversions.
I haven't time to analyse all the other pieces but I assume that you have
never actually tried to play them as you haven't answered my query.
Where do we find similar continuo tablatures made by his [Corbetta's]
followers?
This is typical of the crude statistical way in which you try to interpret
surviving sources. Corbetta's pieces may be the only pieces of this kind
which made into print. This doesn't mean that they are atypical, unique
or anything else. They are an example of what he and presumably other
people did which we can emulate.
As the English prime minister George Canning said in 1827 - I can prove
anything by statistics except the truth.
I would be interested to see what would come out of attempts to
extemporize a basso continuo, making use of the instructions from
Corbetta's 1671
book.
The why don't you make some attempts at doing so and post some examples for
us to study. Everything you say seems to be theoretical rather than based on
actual practice or
experimentation.
>> I wonder why you are so anxious to prove that when accompanying the
guitar was never supported by another instrument.
Only you seem to think that I am.
I don't think anyone else is interested.
Mission? So far I am not convinced really, by what are supposed to be
black swans.
Well - there are plenty of black swans in England. Your knowledge of
ornithology is
obviously limited.
Monica
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