Lots of lutes

My recent concert in Pau included a number of French Airs de Cour for voice and lute from the early seventeenth century. More than a thousand of these were published, in beautifully-produced editions.

The voice parts are written in conventional musical notation and the lute part in tablature. An unexpected problem arises. My lute is tuned in G. However, the songs we chose for the concert appeared to require lutes tuned at four different pitches (G, A, C and D) in order for voice and lute to come out in the same key.

What's the answer? Well, for most of the songs I ended up transposing, which is a shame since it completely changes the fingering of the lute parts, rendering the tablature useless.

So, should I have four lutes by my side, switching instruments for each song as required? It seems impractical, not to mention expensive. Is that really what the composers intended?

Jonathan Le Cocq also thought this was odd, and published a study about it in the Lute Society Journal, 1992. 68% of the air de cour repertoire appears to require a lute in A, 27% a lute in G, and the rest lutes at other pitches. However, the A-lute pieces are strongly associated with a certain set of keys: C major, D minor, and G minor. Played on a lute on G these would come out in B flat major, C minor and F minor. It's possible, then, that the songs should sound in those keys and that it's the voice part which has been transposed up by a tone, to avoid having to write too many flats. In other words, I can stick to playing everything on my G-lute and the singer can adjust. That's just fine.

As it happens, though, lutes did exist in many different sizes and pitches. As Matthew Spring explains in his book The Lute in Britain, many continental lute duets are for instruments at different pitches, often a tone or a fourth apart. Trios are found for lutes at the unison, fourth and fifth, and Adriaenssen's quartets require lutes in A, G, E and D. So maybe I need to buy more instruments. Lots more instruments...

Elementary (2)

Now that looks a bit better, doesn't it? This is a sneak preview of the same page from Dd 2.11, but taken this time from the copy that the Lute Society will be using for its facsimile publication. Legible! In colour! Place your orders now.

Elementary

Cambridge University Library MS Dd.2.11. The very title makes the heart beat a little faster and sets the mouth watering, doesn't it? Alright, I admit it's not the most thrilling of names. But it's possibly the most important source of English lute music. Copied by Mathew Holmes in c. 1588 - 1600, it contains 200 pages and 325 wide-ranging pieces of music.

The bulk of the music is by the great English lute composers of the time such as John Dowland, Anthony Holborne, Francis Cutting, Francis Pilkington and John Johnson. But there are also appearances by continentals such as Francesco da Milano (from 50 years earlier), Emanuel Adriaenssen, Alfonso Ferrabosco, or Matthäus Waissel. As well as the expected pavans, galliards, fantasias and the like, there are also lots of short page fillers, little pieces lasting maybe 30 seconds with colourful titles: Clement's squirrel, Hunting of the mouse, Go merrily wheel, Playfellow, and various Jigs and Toys.

I'm lucky to have a photocopy of the manuscript, but it's a poor quality copy and often illegible, as the picture shows. So I'm delighted that the Lute Society is publishing a smart new facsimile edition in 2010. I am putting together a concert programme of music from Dd.2.11 which I'll be performing in several concerts in May 2010. One of them is planned to be at the second European Lute Festival in Germany, where Ian Harwood will also be giving a talk about the manuscript. Ian is president of the Lute Society, and the scholar who did the pioneering research on the Holmes manuscripts, and it's a privilege to be working with him.

My picture isn't just a random page. The manuscript contains several vocal intabulations: arrangements for solo lute of polyphonic pieces originally for voices. This particular one seems to have been unidentified until now, so I was rather chuffed when playing through the manuscript to find that I recognised it. It's an arrangement of the 5-voice motet Verbum Iniquum by the Spanish composer Cristobal de Morales, which also exists in printed versions for lute from Germany (Newsidler, 1544), Spain (Fuenllana, 1554) and France (de Rippe, also 1554). It seems to have taken another 40 years to reach England.

From harmony, from heav'nly harmony, this universal frame began.

Now pay attention. This diagram (click to enlarge) reveals the secret of life, the universe and everything. It appears in Marin Mersenne's Harmonie Universelle, volume 2 (1637). It depicts the great Lyre of the universe, governed by the divine Orpheus, who tunes all the parts of the world as he pleases. At the top right you can even see a divine hand emerging from a cloud and turning a tuning peg.

The diagram equates musical notes and intervals, on the right, with the planets and their orbits, on the left. It seeks to demonstrate that the universe is constructed according to musical principles, with the same fundamental ratios governing both. Whence the 'Music of the Spheres': the idea that the planets produce harmonious musical sounds in their movement.

Mersenne was inspired by the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who had finished his book Harmonice Mundi on this topic less than twenty years before. Kepler, in turn, was influenced by the lutenist and music theorist Vincenzo Galilei, father of Galileo Galilei.

There's an interesting article about Kepler by Andrew Brown on the Guardian website.

Wild Barley

In 1596, William Barley published three books of tablature, one each for the lute, orpharion and bandora. They are among the very few printed sources of English solo lute music.

In the introduction to the orpharion book, he explains that the pieces for lute can also be played on the 'stately Orpharion', and vice versa. But since the orpharion is strung with wire strings, and the lute with gut, the orpharion requires a 'more gentle & drawing' stroke than the lute. The right hand must be easily drawn over the strings, and not 'suddenly gripped or sharply stroken as the lute is', otherwise the wire strings will clash together and make a nasty sound.

He's very insistent on this, and repeats: "sudden and sharpe as the Lute is alwaies stroken." Today, we tend to think of the lute as a gentle, sweet-sounding instrument. Perhaps we're wrong?

The sincerest form of flattery

More from Adrian Le Roy's A briefe and plaine Instruction, published in London in 1574. I love these pictures, which show how to test a lute string before putting it onto the instrument. The good string appears to divide into two when it's plucked, the bad string looks all fuzzy. Note the lovingly-drawn detail: the dainty ruff at the end of the sleeves, the hank of string-gut hanging down on the right, the curly end of the string on the left. (Click the picture to see a large version).


Someone else who clearly liked the picture was Marin Mersenne, author of Harmonie Universelle, a music theory book published in Paris in 1636 and weighing in at an impressive 1,600 pages. Here's his illustration of the same thing:

Definitely a family resemblance.

Por la gracia de dios

This splendid picture is from El Maestro, the book of music for vihuela by Luis Milan published in Valencia in 1536. It shows Orpheus playing his vihuela, and charming the birds and beasts. There's a city on fire in the top right of the picture.

The text around the frame reads:

El grande Orpheo / primero inventor

Por quien la vihuela / paresce en el mundo

Si el fue primero / no fue sin segundo

Pues dios es de todos / de todo hazedor.

The great Orpheus, first inventor

Through whom the vihuela appeared in the world

If he was the first, he was not without a second [?]

Since God is creator of everyone and everything.

Ruggiero Chiesa reproduces this image in his edition of El Maestro (Milan, 1974). Strangely, though, the text isn't quite the same. The last line now reads:

Porque es de todos / de todo hazedor.

Since he is creator of everyone and everything.

God has been excised. Worse, this text makes it look as though Orpheus is being credited with being the great creator. Some mistake, surely.

Howard Mayer Brown (Instrumental Music printed before 1600) also gives the Godless text. I would guess that this was printed first, that someone noticed, and insisted it was changed.

The introduction to the recent facsimile edition by the Sociedad de la Vihuela (Córdoba, 2008) lists thirteen surviving copies of the book, but doesn't draw attention to the changed text or suggest that there was any more than a single edition. Quite a mystery.

You'll find a facsimile of the book (with God) on line at the Spanish Biblioteca Nacional.