The next Dowland is Thou
Mighty God
. It’s actually the first verse of a three-verse through-composed
song. But it was more than the Cantabile Renaissance Band could actually chew on in one meeting,
so we’ll be continuing to work on it over the next two weeks along
with the next parts.
It was also a good morning’s work figuring out how to translate the
17th century notation into what we’re used to. It’s a good
demonstration of how differently Dowland’s musicians thought about
things like fermatas and repeat signs than we do.
After the A section, the facsimile has a double bar in all
parts. It took me quite a while to twig to the fact that that double
bar is a full stop — all the parts have different length notes before
the double bar, but although by modern counting some of them cross the
bar, that isn’t the way Dowland sang it.
Instead of a modern repeat sign, which means, “At the end-repeat,
go back to the begin-repeat”, Dowland used a relative of the segno.
He seems to have thought of it something like, “This second segno is
the corresponding place to the first segno.” So instead of writing out
first and second endings, he writes a second beginning at the
end of the repeated section, and inserts the first segno where the
repeated section starts being the same as the first time through.
This means that the segno marks are frequently in different places in
different parts.
In the case of this piece, Cantus, Altus, and Bassus all repeat
quite straightforwardly, but the Tenor finishes the phrase before the
repeat sign after all the other parts have started the new phrase.
But on the repeat, Dowland wrote music for that part that went with
the phrase after the repeat. So the tenor part has a long “second
beginning”. Rather than inflict a long “first ending” on everybody
for the sake of the tenor’s “second beginning”, I have taken the
liberty of unfolding the Tenor repeat, and inserting double bars in
the Tenor part where the repeat signs are in the other parts. In
rehearsal last night, it was confusing, but not obviously more so than
any other decision I might have made.
LayMusic.org 