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| Bars 41 – 51 of this Anonymous piece in the 4th Matthew Holmes Lute Book. The full image can be seen at https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-NN-00006-00036/39 |
I find this piece difficult to get to terms with. How much is due to the anonymous composer, and how much to copying mistakes by an ageing Mathew Holmes, I am not qualified to judge. As explained below, I have done some recasting, which may or may not be appropriate.
After a fairly orthodox first variation, the work becomes quite jumpy: sequences of 1 to 3 bars concluded by a bar with a single block chord.
You will detect my lack of enthusiasm, but I've spent a day on the transcription, so I thought I'd give the piece an airing, albeit as an example of an oddity (or of my ignorance).
Notes on transcriptions
Since bar 21 has only 2 beats scored, I have shortened the single chord in bar 20 to one beat, and concatenated the two bars. In bar 20 perhaps Holmes’ time mark ꜏ (note 3 beats long) was a misprint for ꜓(1 beat). This assumption makes the score look more symmetrical.
Similarly, I have joined bars 29 and 30.
Bar 48 in the original has 5 beats, so I have split it into 2 bars.
It’s all a bit of a mess, and I am not wholly convinced by my tinkerings. Please regard this as a first attempt, which I include in the interests of completeness. I will have to think about it some more.
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