The Transcriber s Art #49 Matthäus Waissel, Prælamulum & Passe mezo by Richard Yates

Transcription

1 The Transcrber s Art #49 Matthäus Wassel, Prælaulu & Passe ezo by Rchard Yates It s not because thngs are dffcult that e do not dare, t s because e do not dare that thngs are dffcult. Seneca, d-1st century AD The delghts and detals of transcrbng tablature have been explored several tes n ths seres, but one topc has never appeared. As years ent by, the osson has becoe ever ore glarng untl I agned t so obvous to readers that there as ust no further possblty of avodng t. And so, unable to teporze any longer, I fnally plunged n. Geran lute tablature has a reputaton for beng arcane and opaque and hdeously coplex. Ths ay be bolstered by the paucty of peces eergng for gutarsts and those fe beng knuckle busters by Hans Nesdler. Ho any gutarsts have thought, If these ere the only ones to appear, ho uch ore dffcult ust the others be? Yet, as you correctly nfer fro the fact of readng these ords, I eerged th y nd ostly ntact. And hle y faclty at sght-readng Geran lute tablature ll never advance beyond the glacal Molto adago, quas arrestato (q =.01) th te and erson n the transcrbng, I began to see hat could be dscovered n that ysterous land. Ths artcle s the account of that exploraton. If t can soften soe of the averson to Geran lute tablature, or even propt a fe forays by other gutarsts nto ths rch lterature, then that s great. And, f t only provdes you th a couple of attractve peces to play n the follong pages, that s fne, too. Geran lute tablature preparng for the leap Most systes of tablature for fretted nstruents are sply varatons on the sae schee. Horzontal lnes represent strngs; sybols on the strngs sho hch fret to stop; sgns above the staff sho the duraton of the notes. The sybols ght be letters or nubers, the strngs ght have the loest ptched at the top or at the botto, and the note duraton sgns ght be flagged or cross-hatched, but these are all sall detals. If you kno one of these systes, you can quckly adust to another. One aspect of ts reputaton s accurate: Geran lute tablature s dfferent. There are no lnes to sho the strngs and, nstead, the sybols theselves convey all the nforaton to produce the correct ptch at the correct place. Each crossng of strng and fret has ts on sybol. Ths, of course, requres a lot of sybols. A further layer of coplcaton s that the orgnal syste as desgned for a fve-course nstruent and as expanded only akardly hen sx-course nstruents cae around. Orgnally, the nubers 1 through 5 ndcated the open strngs that e call the ffth through the frst. For the frst fret and beyond, letters of the alphabet ere assgned: a through e for the frst fret notes, f through k (there as no ) for the second fret, and so on. Ths eans that you run out of letters hen you get to the thrd strng, ffth fret hch s z. To sybols the coon abbrevatons for et and con ere used to fll out the last to slots on the ffth fret. The one for the frst strng looks ost lke a 9, and the one for the second strng soetes looks lke 7 and soetes lke a 2. What about hgher

2 frets? These started over th a for the ffth strng, sxth fret but th a short lne placed over or through t and contnued as before: fourth strng, sxth fret s b th a lne, etc. When ths syste as expanded to accoodate sx courses, at least fve dfferent ethods ere nvented, although they all used captal letters n one ay or another. Hans and Melchor Nesdler used a 1 th a slash across t (1) for the open sxth course, then A for the frst fret, and B for the second. Others, Matthäus Wassel for exaple, started th A for the open sxth course. All of these letters ere set or rtten usng the Geran blackletter fonts such as Schabacher or Fraktur. The follong chart hch uses the Nesdlers notaton for the sxth course s the easest ay to sho the hole syste and s an ndspensble ad hle orkng through a transcrpton: Fgure 1 Geran lute tablature chart Although cubersoe for sght-readng thout a lot of practce, Geran lute tablature at least s ell defned. Hoever, you ll fnd other practcal dffcultes hen orkng th actual prnted or anuscrpt edtons. Whle the blackletter font fales have any of the letter fors slar to the Roan alphabet e use, soe do not. It can take te th a partcular edton to sort out the letter sybols. Typeset edtons are generally easer than handrtten anuscrpts because the sybols are consstently shaped. Hoever, even th these sources, rregulartes n prntng pressure, nk, paper, bleed-through, agng and even the accuracy of the shapes of ndvdual peces of type can rase obstacles to transcrpton. To sho the varety that you ay encounter, here are three saples fro typeset sources: Fgure 2 Ochsenkhu, 1558

3 Fgure 3 Hans Nesdler, 1536 (The dots sho left-hand fngerng.) Fgure 4 Wassel, 1573 Transcrpton takng the plunge I ll step through the process of transcrpton of ust three easures of a Fantasa fro the 1574 anuscrpt collecton of usc by Melchor Nesdler ttled, Teütsch Lautenbuch Darnnenn kunstlche Mutete leblche Italansche Frantzoessche Teütsche Stuck froelche Teütsche Taentz Passo e ezo Saltarelle vnd dre Fantaseen Alles t fleß außgesetzt auch artlch vnd zerlch Colorert. Ths saple s sall enough that you can follo along usng the chart above to get a feel for the steps nvolved n the transcrpton. Fgure 5 Manuscrpt of Melchor Nesdler, 1574 By coparng the saple th the chart of sybols n Fgure 1, you can see that there s reasonable atchng of letters th the anuscrpt th one excepton. The fgure under the 5 that starts easure three s a puzzle. It looks a bt lke a 9 but cannot be that because the frst strng s clearly an open strng as shon by the 5 above t. We ll have to resort to deducton and context to deterne the note. A frst clue s that the n belo t s clear and s a thrd strng sybol, so the ystery sybol ust be on the second strng. It certanly s not one of the other thrd strng sybols 3,, o, t or 7, but stll t does not look uch lke the d. Placng d there does ncely coplete a nor trad, akng t a

4 uscally plausble note. Further clues can coe fro lookng for other exaples of that sybol n the anuscrpt and seeng ho they are fored. Wthout draggng you through each exaple and ts context, I have collected all of the d letters n the pece and put the nto Fgure 6. Fgure 6 arous foratons of d There s a lot of varance n ther foraton but e can also see a slarty aong the and they all ft uscally nto ther respectve contexts as d. Such detectve ork s necessary hen orkng th these anuscrpts, but s less frequent as you becoe falar th a partcular scrbe s hand. Replacng the handrtten sybols th a standard font gves us Fgure 7. Fgure 7 Unfor typeface Whle t s possble to next go drectly to a standard notaton verson, I fnd t useful to convert the Geran lute tablature frst nto gutar tablature to check for errors. An ndspensble tool at ths stage s a good tablature progra. To y knoledge there s only one progra that handles Geran lute tablature: Frono by Francesco Trbol. Whle t s not ntended to be a full-featured usc processng applcaton, Frono s exceptonally useful for anagng the de varety of tablatures, and can even convert to staff notaton. The output of Frono s converson s shon n Fgure 8. Fgure 8 Gutar tablature (Renassance lute tunng) Fnally e have a verson that can be played relatvely easly to see ho t sounds. But alost edately e run nto a proble. The second chord s rong soeho.

5 Recheckng the steps e have taken reveals no error n the transcrpton. The only concluson s that the error s n the orgnal anuscrpt. Ths s not an uncoon obstacle n orkng th anuscrpts and tablature, and here t forces us to nfer the correct note fro the fngerng context and knoledge of the uscal perod and ts style. Whle other resolutons of the proble are possble, the ost parsonous s sply to ove the bass note don a full step. It s no only a sall and falar step to convert the tablature nto standard notaton and then to separate the pled voces as n Fgure 9. Fgure 9 Standard notaton th polyphonc nterpretaton Matthäus Wassel Wassel as born n 1535 n hat s no Bartoszyce, Poland. In hs thrtes he ade an extended tour of Europe to study th the leadng lutensts and then, after to decades as rector of a school and as a parsh prest, he began publshng lute books. In the course of ths ork he had access to the copostons of leadng coposers of hs te. Hs publshed collectons do not alays ake clear hch are hs orgnal copostons and hch are adaptatons of, or orgnal, orks by other coposers. He expanded the coon parng of a theatcally related Passaezzo and Saltarello nto full sutes that ncluded those to dances plus Paduanas and Rpresas for several of the oveents. In for f not n ttle, these consttute soe of the earlest true dance sutes. Præabulu and Passe ezo The to transcrptons presented here, a Præabulu and a Pass ezo, are fro Wassel s 1573 collecton, ttled Tabulatura contnens nsgnes et selectssas quasque cantones, 4, 5, et 6 vocu, testudn aptatas, ut sunt præabula, phantasae, cantones Gerancae, Italcae, Gallcae, & Latnae, passees, gaglardae & chorea. Whle the to are not assocated n the orgnal collecton, I thnk they do ake a congenal par for perforance. One crteron by hch they ere selected as ther sutablty for playng on the gutar n noral tunng. The half-step dfference n tunng of the thrd strng on the Renassance lute can, n soe cases, agnfy the dffculty level hen attepted n gutar tunng. Wth other peces, fngerngs see to st on the fretboard ore easly than n the orgnal. That s the case th ths par.

6 In easure fve of the Præabulu, place the 1 fnger on the F sharp on the frst strng a beat early, before the 3 and 4 fngers need to stretch out to the fourth and ffth strngs. The F sharp n parentheses n easure 23 as not n the orgnal but Sarge Gerbode suggested that t as an error of osson n the orgnal score. I have sporadcally ncluded rght-hand fngerng erely as a gude to avod backards strng crossngs n the scale runs. Ths assues that - alternaton s beng used for ost of these passsages. Many other solutons are possble, of course. Lute technque prescrbes the use of p- alternaton n such runs and I recoend that gutarsts gve ths a try. It can proote a soothness and snap to the gesture that enlvens ths knd of texture. As Wassel explans n hs Lute Tutoral (translaton by Sarge Gerbode), In coloraturas only the thub and forefnger are used, and the thub plucks don and the forefnger up, one after the other, but n such a anner that all coloraturas, hether short or long, are ended th the forefnger. Resources Frono, by Francesco Trbol s the only tablature edtor that allos entry and converson of Geran lute tablature. Sarge Gerbode s a lutenst and researcher hose ebste, has ore than 3,000 peces of lute usc n tablature ncludng extensve transcrptons fro Geran lute tablature. Hs ste also ncludes hs translaton of Wassel s Lute Tutoral perhaps the ost coprehensve of ts knd. Sarge Gerbode s also a psychatrst th a partcular nterest n traua resoluton, so f your attepts at restlng th Geran lute tablature have nduced any stress dsorders he ay be able to help th that, too! The Bavaran State Lbrary has recently converted a large nuber of old anuscrpts and texts to dgtal for and posted the on a ebste to donload. There s an enorous aount of free ateral here that can keep transcrbers busy for years. The search page for dgtzed usc scores s: Please send coents, suggestons and your accounts of transcrpton adventures to: Rchard Yates.yatesgutar.co rchard@yatesgutar.co

7 Transcrbed for gutar by Rchard Yates 6 # 10 # 2 # c a a 2 2 # 1. # Præabulu # -4 2 # a Matthäus Wassel (c ) n # n a 2 12 # 14 # 17 # 20 # 23 # 26 # a # # a # n # # n # J 2 4 a 4 # a # # ( ) J # a # # J # #. J -4 # J # # # 4 3 5

8 Passe ezo Transcrbed for gutar by Rchard Yates c 4 #.. Matthäus Wassel (c ) n. 4. # 3# #. # # 4 # n. 10 2# 4-4. Œ Ó Œ Ó 13 # # # # # # n 16 # #. n # 19 #

9 22 # # # a # 24 #. n a # 27 # 3 4# 2 3 # 30 # # a # # # # # # 1# # 2 n # 36 # # # 39 # # 2 4 # # 42 #

10 45 # # # #. # # # # # a # n #II 3 # 2# # # #II 3 63 # 3 # # 3 1 #