Dear Monica, Allison's _Psalmes_ are printed as a table book, similar to the books of lute songs by John Dowland and others. The Cittern parts are in French tablature, and are written upside down on the page above the Cantus and Lute music. The next page has the Altus upside down, the Bassus sideways on, and the Tenor the right way up. If the cittern player were looking at this book, he would find it difficult to read the other parts, apart from the Altus. In his introduction to the Scolar Press facsimile edition, Ian Harwood writes:
"There are a good many discrepancies in Allison's book, mainly between lute and cittern, which are too numerous to list here. Sometimes one finds a major-minor clash, which can usually be resolved by reference to the voice-parts. At other times, the cittern may have a chord using the note of the Bassus part as a root position, when in fact it is a first inversion. Both kinds of error, not infrequently found also in instrumental broken consort music, suggest that the cittern part was built up from the Bassus, without much reference to the other voices." Much of this duplicates what you were saying about alfabeto chords for the guitar. The chords for the guitar and the cittern must have been created from the bass line, but without reference to anything else. Some English viol manuscripts have extra part-books for the theorbo. These theorbo bass lines are unfigured, inviting the same sort of discrepancies we have seen with the cittern and the baroque guitar. With all of these instruments you would stumble along when playing the music for the first time, but thereafter you would hopefully remember the gruesome major-minor clashes, and get it right next time. Some of the 6/3-5/3 clashes would not matter so much, particularly chord IV (CEG) and chord IIb (CEA), which together produce what could be an acceptable II7b (CEGA). Whether or not you think these accompaniments may be described as "continuo" is a moot point. My view is that they are all continuo parts. After all, a theorbo man reading a figured bass (which may or may not have appropriate figures for every note) and interpreting those figures as best he can, is no different from a theorbo man reading an unfigured bass and using the Rule of the Octave to achieve the same result. The guitar continuo is realised in the form of alfabeto, and the cittern continuo in French lute tablature, presumably for people who were unable to realise a figured or unfigured bass line themselves. Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. -----Original Message----- From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf Of Monica Hall Sent: 18 December 2011 21:40 To: Stewart McCoy Cc: Vihuelalist Subject: [VIHUELA] Re: Strumming as basso continuo That's interesting - but surely a competant cittern player would not play them as writen but would correct them? The point I was making is that - yes - the chords have been derived from the bass line but they are wrong because they do not take into account the voice part as well. They do not observe the rules for accompanying a bass line. You wouldn't play what is written and there is indeed some evidence that guitarists were savvy enough to correct blatant errors. Monica ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stewart McCoy" <lu...@tiscali.co.uk> To: "Vihuela List" <vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2011 9:31 PM Subject: [VIHUELA] Strumming as basso continuo > Dear Monica, > > A similar thing occurs with the cittern parts of Richard Allison's > _Psalmes of David in Meter_ (London, 1599). They would have been derived > from the bass line, but it would have been an unfigured bass, so > major/minor and 6/3-5/3 discrepancies would have been inevitable. > > Best wishes, > > Stewart McCoy. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
