#theorbo

[lesser-known-composers]

Robert de Visée (1652-1725) - Prelude in A minor

Brandon Acker playing Brandon Acker playing theorbo, a 14 string lute from the 17th century., a 14 string lute from the 17th century.

[allegorypaintings]

Allegory of Music

Artist: Laurent de La Hyre (French, 1606–1656)

Date: 1649

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY, United States

[gasparodasalo]

Visit Original Link

Marin Marais (1656-1728) - Sonnerie de Sainte-Geneviève du Mont de Paris for Violin, Viola da gamba and Continuo. Performed by Fabio Biondi, violin, Jordi Savall, viola da gamba, Rolf Lislevand, theorbo, and Pierre Hantaï, harpsichord, on period instruments.

[lutes-of-the-world]

How I work:

Modern singer asks me to accompany her on theorbo for a set of two cantatas and a madrigal by Barbara Strozzi (17th century Italian). This is my jam.

Two pieces are in the natural hexachord (C major, A minor) and the third is in the flat hexachord (final of C with one flat in the key signature - that's F Hypoionian). She asks me to transpose the third piece up a minor third to Ab to fit her range. I tell her that would be too harmonically distant from the other two pieces and would sound bad in meantone temperament. I suggest she sing it in Bb.

This involves me transposing mentally. To do this I imagine my theorbo is in an adjacent hexachord.

My theorbo's fretted strings are tuned, low-to-high, ADGBEA, that is, in ascending fourths with a major third in the middle. G - B is UT - MI in the hard hexachord, so I think of this tuning as being harmonically centered there. In order to transpose this piece, I pretend its interior third is C - E, or UT - MI in the natural hexachord.

This yields a new tuning of DGCEAD. Fortunately, this is also the tuning of bass lute and viol and overlaps with that of the guitarron mexicana (ADGCEA). I consider these instruments as being centered in the natural hexachord, and group them mentally as such. Since I read from bass clef on these instruments, I can mentally "code switch" to this hexachordal tuning.

Unfortunately, I will have to play the theorbo normally for the other two pieces of the set. This means I will have to switch mental hexachords mid-set.

The bass lines aren't figured. I have to extrapolate harmonies and add figures myself.

Furthermore, the texts of the pieces are in Latin and Italian. I must draw from my memory of high school Latin class and the subsequent scraps I've picked up accompanying singers and analyzing sacred music.

💪💪💪

[arcenciel-par-une-larme]

Song of Yesteryear -- Ludovico Marchetti, 1892

@merthwyn

[filomena-lindestel]

Nice memory of how my bed looked during COVID lockdowns in 2021...

Three are even made by me, back in the days I still could.

[mrbacf]

Isabella Leonarda: '12 Sonatas, Op.16', Sonata Terza (1683)

[queerstudiesnatural]

me and my friend are starting a movie soundtrack and pop songs cover band 🎶