A wonderful exposé of a highly diverse topic! A perhaps interesting side note: The earliest use of (lute-)tablatures around 1500 coincides with the upcoming »fashion« for nobles and wealthy citizens to play music themselves, as amateurs, hence the sudden explosion of prints and manuscripts containing lute tablatures and general popularity of the lute for the rest of the century and beyond. This makes sense of course, as a system like this tablature is very practical for »ignoranti« wanting to play music as it doesn’t really require knowledge of modes, solmisation, clefs and such skills. Tablature makes starting very convenient. Professional lutenists were of course all trained as musicians and didn’t have to rely on tablature, but it still became widely used for its practicality. With the right training 3-4 parts can almost be read like a »score« from tablature, for example when sketching out a piece as happens on some fascicles of the Herwarth Ms. (BSB mus.ms.266) (J.A. Owens writes about this in »Composers at Work«, 1998). There are even examples as (in-)famously in Vicenzo Galilei’s (yep, Galileo’s father!) treatise on intabulation »Il Fronimo« (1584) where all examples are given in italian lute tablature with many cases of 4-5 voice chords that are (nigh-)impossible to actually play given the limitations of the human hand. There, the tablature is used as a kind of »score« leaving it to the lute player to choose which notes to actually play and which to leave out. When voice-crossings or pauses occur, the musician is of course still expected to know the original polyphony as tablatures don’t usually indicate those.
You forgot to acknowledge that thanks to the tablature system, as lute players we know which frets are to be used. If it were notation we could have had several possible interpretations of many fret choices for the same notes thus resulting in different sound since using alternative string implies thicker or thinner sound, higher or lower on the neck...all this changing the sonority. Thanks to tab we know how the composer wanted it to sound.
Beautiful. However, what is shown are published scores, and it leaves an open question: how did the composers actually compose the polyphony in first place? Did they notate their thoughts by direct writing of the part books, or in a tablature, or with some kind of private notation? Did these work notes survive?
If such notes did survive, would we be able to read them? Not being mean, I kind of doubt that any "rough drafts" like this would have stayed... With frugal practices such as scraping of vellum, and writing on slates or other "erasable" surfaces, anything not yet meant to be seen by others would have been ephemeral. Of the many, many things I'd do if given a chance for time travel a la Doctor Who, I'd absolutely go "raid" the homes and libraries and work rooms of so, SO many 16th Century musicians. I mean, I'd also like to meet them, but actually seeing and understanding HOW musicians did things back then? From observations with my own personal eyeballs??? Anecdotal evidence or not, what a dream for even the most under-educated lover of early music... (I'd also definitely visit even older times obviously but, different subset of musicology there)
I enjoy this channel so much! Perhaps I'm not its intended audience but as a primarily non "classical" musician it's so fascinating to see the way in which Early Music was a "living" tradition in which performers engaged dynamically with the music. Also it's refreshing to be reminded that the view of harmony and cadences from a modern perspective is not the only way in which to look at things. I could have left this comment on many other videos in this series, particularly the continuo and cadence ones. Please keep up the wonderful work!
Thanks so much for the video! I've been wanting to learn how to read the new German keyboard tablature to be able to read some of Buxtehude's and Bach's manuscripts.
It is so funny, since the organ tablature notations was actually very popular in France, Germany and the Netherlands in singing until the 1950's. Instead of using letter names, solmization letters (d,r,m) or ciphers (1,2,3) were used, and above the written rhythms.
I smile a little bit everytime you say ''Cabezón'' because it means ''Big headed'' in spanish, my mother tongue, and I feel childish ans silly lol Anyway nice videos Elam! As someone who is not deep into musical theory and plays drums and guitar as a hobby, I can follow it pretty nicely. If only I had you as a music teacher when I was a kid,. I'd have chosen to study music!
Tus videos son la clase de historia de la música que deseé toda la vida, es para ver cada video varias veces y aprender más en cada una de ellas. Muchas gracias.
Can you guys make an episode about musica ficta and alterations? As you mentioned this topic in a few videos lately, I think that many viewers would like you to dig into it more thoroughly. Hope to watch more fantastic material about early music from you!!! 😃🎵
Good job! An interesting side note. Throughout the period of the division methods, the majority of the tunes chosen to illustrate the principals as examples are from one or another of the partitura prints. That seems to imply that the performer(s) should have a contextual awareness while dividing.
05:30 wait. 1568, and these are completely recognisable Arabic numerals, including zero. I need to go back and do a timeline, but I feel like histories of mathematics and accounting have missed something here.
How did composers of this era notate their own work in the process of composing polyphonic music? Did they use something like a partitura/score format in order to more easily make sense of how the parts were interacting? Also, were they typically proficient with 'perfect instruments' that could realize their polyphonic ideas in real-time as they were composing?
These are excellent questions... There is a book that tries to answer some of them: Composers at Work - The Craft of Musical Composition 1450-1600 by Jessie Ann Owens (books.google.ch/books?id=9Xc_EXNgf00C&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false)
THANK YOU! So the vertical lines from intabulaturas meant for lute are meant as illustration of the lute itself, with its strings being illustrated by horizontal lines. Maybe similar to modern guitar tablature? So if I’m looking at some very old manuscript that is meant to convey music, I had better remoember that when I encounter those lines, that they aren’t necessarily illustrating counting or timing. THANKS FOR SHARING!
We can only imagine how they rehearsed. However, from my own experience of working with parts, once you get to know the piece you can find places in the middle of the piece to start together. It takes slightly more time than just saying the bar numbers, but it's possible.
So sorry, but your "literal transcription" of Cabeçon's intabulation is completely wrong. Each 'cifra' is meant to sound until a change is made. For example, in measure 1, the A (3) is a whole note, not a half note. It sounds until another 'cifra' or rest appears. Each rhythmic symbol represent the smallest unit present in any given beat, NOT the value of any and all 'cifra' that appear under it, as in measure 5, bass voice is E half note + E half note, and NOT E quarter note + E 16th note. Cabeçon's print is entirely unambiguous in this instant; there is nothing missing in the notation, nothing "odd" or in need of "imagination to complete." [8'36"] Spanish keyboard tablature is in fact partitura, open score, plain and simple, with perfectly aligned note placement, unlike the mensural partiture developed by the Italians. Your appendix explanation of Spanish tablature also contains an error: "As soon as this should change, even if the change occurs in only one voice, the new note value will appear above the first note whose value changes, and will apply until further notice." You'll notice that in measure 2, the new new rhythmic symbol does not apply to the note over which it appears. Rather, the symbol tells the reader that from 'this point forward until a change is made' this symbol represents the smallest rhythmic value that will appear. I enjoy your videos IMMENSELY, but here you seem not to have mastered an understanding of that particular notational method, with all due respect.
Thank you so much for this! I added a correction to a new "ERRORS" section in the footnote page (www.earlymusicsources.com/youtube/intabulations). In addition, I corrected the description of the Spanish tablature on that page. Do let me know if it's ok! Many many thanks!
Hi... So, first... Great video... I can't stop rabbit holing trough this whole channel... Second... The link to the footnotes appear to be broken. That didn't happen with the other footnotes I checked.
Thanks! the link seems ok no? www.earlymusicsources.com/youtube/intabulations You can also visit the website and easily find the page on the youtube page. Have a nice day!
@@EarlyMusicSources that one works, thanks a lot! But when I try to open it from the video description I get a 404 error (I'm browsing from a cell phone, not sure if it's related)
I wonder if you would consider a print like that an early form of partitura ks4.imslp.net/files/imglnks/usimg/9/91/IMSLP557478-PMLP898488-kochanowski_gomolka_psalter_1-0001.pdf Even without bar lines the voices aligned one below another make the music pretty easy to follow. The original print is quite old, almost as old as the partitura you present in the video.
Could someone tell me what is the painting on the right at 1:26 ? I totally fell in love with it: the owl, the house, it's just awesome. I just could not find it in the EMS iconography database. Thanks!
@@EarlyMusicSources He's the best :D Thank you! And of course also for the awesome work you do - I am studying for my early music degree exam right now and your videos are preventing my brain from angrily leaving my head forever. Many thanks!
I transcribed two of these, over the past week! The di Becchi and Gabrieli. dfwviols.com/new/2018-10-06-01/ dfwviols.com/new/2018-10-06-02/ Now you've got me interested in versions of Rore's Ancor. I transcribed a couple bastarda versions which are up on IMSLP, a few years back. I've got scans of the Cabezon and Ammerbach, but those are going to take a lot more work. [Edit, I went ahead and did the Ammerbach too. It was a lot less work than I expected, only about 3 hours work. dfwviols.com/new/2018-10-06-03/ ]
