**** Welcome to the "LuteBot Quarterly" **** - the free electronic lute journal - *** #7, Summer 1999 **** *** by Federico Marincola *** The "LuteBot Quarterly" serves to disseminate information on the lute and its charming literature. Each issue contains one or more articles, plus some lute tab source scripts.This document contains inline ASCII graphics which look best unformatted, in a monospace font like Courier. * To receive the latest issue of the "LuteBot Quarterly", send an email to: * To receive the following past issues of the "LuteBot Quarterly", send a request to : ---> LuteBot Quarterly #1, Winter 1998: Vincenzo Capirola and his Lute Book - 1517 (by F. Marincola) ---> LuteBot Quarterly #2, Spring 1998: Adrian Le Roy's "A Briefe and easye instruction" - 1568 (a synopsis, by Ian Harwood) ---> LuteBot Quarterly #3, Summer 1998: The "Honorable homme Maistre Guillaume Morlaye, marchand bourgeoys de Paris" (by F. Marincola) ---> LuteBot Quarterly #4, Autumn 1998: The "Raimondi Manuscript - 1601" an Italian lutebook (by Franco Pavan) ---> LuteBot Quarterly #5, Winter 1999: The Calichon and the Mandora (by Pietro Prosser) ---> LuteBot Quarterly #6, Spring 1999: "The Lady of the Lute": an unpublished interview with Diana Poulton (1977) (by C. Alba) * To receive my Electronic Brochure, send an email to * For further information about the lute and about me, and for links to interesting lute sites, tablature editors, etc, visit my Lute Page: http://www.marincola.com * To subscribe to "liuto-it", the Italian Lute Mailing List, send an email to , with the following line in the body of the message: subscribe liuto-it --------------------------------------------------------------------------- **** Copyright and dissemination ****| Under the Berne Convention, this document, where not otherwise specified, | is Copyright (c) 1999 by Federico Marincola (lute@marincola.com), all rights | reserved. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced electronically on any | system connected to the various networks which make up the Internet, Usenet, | and FidoNet so long as it is reproduced in its entirety, unedited, and with this| copyright notice intact. Web sites are included. Individual copies may| also be printed for personal use.This document was produced for free redistribution. If you paid moneyfor it, not only did you do so unnecessarily, but none of the money wentto the person who did the work of producing the documents.You need not obtain special permission to quote parts of this document foracademic research purposes, as long as you cite the source.If you would like to offer suggestions and ideas, please email me at .-------------------------------------------------------------------------- *** Table of contents *** Part I -- An hypothesis on the tuning of the Italian theorbo (by Andrea Damiani) Part II -- About Andrea Damiani Part III -- About Federico MarincolaPart IV -- Two pieces for the Italian theorbo ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Part I -- An hypothesis on the tuning of the Italian theorbo, by Andrea Damiani (with the kind permission of the SIL - Societa' Italiana del Liuto, English translation by Federico Marincola and Doc Rossi) (1)If you know the XVII-century Italian theorbo repertoire, while reading through pieces you will surely have noticed that some passages don't seem to fit the typical re-entrant tuning of the instrument, for instance when a melodic line moving by step is suddenly broken by the passage from the 3rd to the 2nd course (or the other way round). Here is an example, found in a Corrente from the "Libro di Sonate intavolate su la Tiorba" (Vatican Library Ms 4145, R - Vat., fol. 26v, b. 1-3):ex. #1 |\ |\ |\ |\ |\ |\ |\ | | | |\ | | |\ | | | |. | | |. | | | -0- -0--------|-----3---2-|-3---2---0-|----- -------|-0---------|-----------|---------0--|-----------|-0---------|-0-------0--|---------3-|-----3---1-|-0-------3--|-2---0-----|-0---------|------------|-----------|-----------|----- T T TSimilar situations are rather common in the works of Melii and Pittoni, as well as in some manuscripts, but are carefully avoided by other composers like Piccinini, Kapsberger and Castaldi. Up to now such discrepancies have been explained by the possibility that some composers or arrangers didn't yet understand the peculiarities of the relatively new instrument very well. For instance, K. Mason, talking about the chitarrone tablature included in a madrigal by S. Rossi, suggests: "It is difficult to say whether or not such an accompaniment was acceptable or if Rossi simply did not know how to write for the chitarrone at this early date."(2) Actually, some manuscripts show that at least a part of the early solo repertoire for the theorbo was made from arrangements of lute pieces. The theorbo was originally invented to play the basso continuo, and transcriptions from one instrument to the other where not always satisfactory.(3) Melii himself, in the preface to his "Libro Quinto," affirms that he has included some theorbo pieces "even if this is not my own profession", probably meaning that to follow current fashion he composed for an instrument that he didn't know very well.If it is true that the earlier pieces reflect a lack of knowledge of the instrument on the part of composers and arrangers, the problem would seem to have already been solved: it would be better not to play those pieces full of discrepancies, as they were written by incompetent composers. However, I think we should give Melii, Pittoni and some anonymous composers (who have actually written some beautiful pieces) a chance, and presume that perhaps they were not so unqualified as to ignore the most elementary rules of music. Let me form a second hypothesis; it will need more evidence to be really convincing, but perhaps it is worth experimenting with: as we know, the first two courses of the Italian theorbo were tuned down an octave, but this was not the only possible tuning; Banchieri, for instance, gives a tuning in G with only the first course at the lower octave. Moreover, we know that most of the surviving instruments are arranged to have two strings for each course (4) and, as far as I know, nowhere is it written that these double strings had to be tuned in unison. Perhaps to play the above-mentioned pieces correctly, we should use double-course instruments with the strings of the 2nd course (but not only, as we will see) tuned an octave apart. I got this idea through playing the XVII-century guitar repertoire. Here we find the same problem, but we know that guitarists used a variety of tunings which made it possible to split a melodic line between non-adjacent courses: the so-called "campanelas" effect, as Gaspar Sanz says. Sanz studied in Rome with Colista, who was teaching both the theorbo and the guitar. We know that there were several ways of stringing and tuning the guitar, but what is not usually mentioned is that the 3rd course of the guitar could also have one of its strings at the higher octave. We find this in a manuscript now in Bologna. This particular tuning was noticed for the first time by M. Lorimer, and is a little discovery that has allowed us to play several rather obscure passages in the works by Sanz, Bartolotti and Roncalli (to mention only a few names) in a coherent way.(5) ===== > See the Example #2 at http://www.marincola.com/lutebot7/example2.htm