lilypond-user
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Lute tablature


From: David Raleigh Arnold
Subject: Re: Lute tablature
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 18:15:16 -0400

On Thursday 22 May 2003 11:43 pm, clive CATTERALL wrote:
> > As for every lute player in the world preferring not to have
> > notation, Thurston Dart, Diana Poulton, and others would be very
> > surprised to hear it.
>
> Diana Poulton wrote in her booklet "An Introduction to Lute Playing"
> in 1961:
>
> "Except for a small amount of music written in the last years of the
> popularity of the lute, all its music is written in a special
> notation called tabulature.  This notation came into being to answer
> the special needs of the lute and other instruments of the same type,
> and for this kind of instrument it has a number of advantages over
> staff notation in representing precisely the composer's intention. 
> When it has been mastered it is much easier to read onto the lute tan
> staff notation.  Familiarity with its working also frees the student
> from dependance on modern transcriptions and provides the key which
> opens the door to the great wealth of lute music both English and
> foreign in its original form.
>
> I strongly advise every beginner to make the initial effort to learn
> this notation.  It will repay the slight extra trouble.
>
> There is however, one weakness in tabulature which is a serious
> drawback to the novice.  It has no means of distinguishing the
> individual parts which are combined together to form the harmonic
> structure of a composition.  This was probably of no consequence to
> the 16th or 17th century player who, soaked in the idiom of his time,
> would at once perceive the movement of individual parts.  To the
> beginner, this charectaristic aspect of the music may not be
> immediately obvious.  Transcriptions into staff notation have
> therefore been added to all the pieces, to make clear what cannot be
> expressed in the tabulature."
>
> Sort of covers everything doesn't it?

Almost.

>  Can we draw this aspect of the
> discussion to a close now, as IMO the merits of tabulature itself are
> a little off topic?

And they were not discussed.
>
> If people want to use tabulature why should we not want to produce
> it?

Nobody argued that.  DaveA

-- 
The biggest losers of all are the winners of an unjust war.
The wars are not over.  Just the winning part is over.
Bush lied.  Thousands died.  dra@ http://www.openguitar.com




reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]