Author: Laura Conrad

• Dowland’s When
  David’s life by Saul was often sought
  . This is actually the second part of a three-part piece; the
  first was Thou
  Mighty God
  , added last week, and the third part is coming next week. This
  typesetting is an experiment in leaving the repeat notation the way
  Dowland wrote it, instead of trying to transcribe it into modern
  structures with first and second endings. I’d say it was a success
  with the Cantabile
  Renaissance Band on Tuesday. See below for a description of how
  this works.
• Odhecatonathon. I’m playing three pieces from the Petrucci
  Odhecaton on Saturday at my recorder teacher’s Student
  Recital, and although we’re all playing directly from the
  facsimile, we found that it’s a lot easier to rehearse if there’s a
  score available. And it’s a lot easier to transcribe them if you have
  a modern score available. The printing is very clear, and much more
  beautiful than the modern printing comes out, but there are cases
  where it’s hard to tell a breve rest from a semi-breve rest from a
  minim rest. So while I had a book with a few scores available, I did
  several.
  • Josquin’s Fortuna
    dun gran tempo
    .
  • Josquin’s La plus
    des plus
    . This is what we’re going to end the set with — the ending sounds
    like a chase scene, but isn’t — it’s just that you can’t tell whether
    the Contra and Cantus are chasing each other because the Tenor is in
    some completely different universe. This is another example of using
    modern segno for the original repeat structure, if Petrucci did intend
    the Segno for
    a repeat.
  • Josquin’s O Venus bant
    .
  • Isaac’s
    Benedictus
    
  • Hayne’s Ales regres
    

Repeat notation

I wrote about this problem last
week. This week, I decided that this was just another case of a
modern innovation that people who want to do music the way they did a
few centuries ago should abandon. So rather than set When
David’s life by Saul was often sought
with a first and second ending, and some parts having a tied note
across the repeat, which I always find confusing, I’m just putting
segno’s in where Dowland did.

One reason this is a better notation for Dowland’s polyphony than
the more modern repeat structure is the difficulty in finding a good
place for the begin repeat. If everybody’s notes were ending on the
beats all the time, there would be no problem. However, in this
piece, there are very few places where there isn’t some part holding
the note over. A releated problem is that Lilypond refuses to print
the whole score unless I break some long notes up, because Lily
refuses to put only part of a note on a line (or indeed, to put only
part of a measure on a line).

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.

Anthony
Holborne wrote very polyphonic dance music. I’ve just put 5
pieces up. They’re a lot of fun — if it’s too complicated for your
group to sight read all at once, read two lines together.

The next Dowland is If that a
sinner’s sighs be angel’s food. It’s a little easier than the
last one, althought the inner parts are still pretty wild and crazy.
I sang Altus when we read it first, and then switched to Bassus on
serpent, and the Bassus is a lot easier. Our group finds it more
comfortable down a
third.

I’ve also added an English singing translation to Vive la
Serpe by Sermisy.