Le Roy: Helas mon dieu

Another song from Le Roy's Premier livre ... (1551), this one by Jean Maillard, and another for which I have not been able to find the original.

Jean Maillard (b. c 1515, no record after 1570).
From Wikipedia

The title of the song translates as “Alas my god”, so Le Roy's entabulation for guitar was never going to be a jolly one.

I always try to analyse the structure of a piece, which is easy to do in a dance or simple air, but not in a fantasia or a discursive song such as this. In the end, I had to resort to scissors and paste (literally) to understand how it’s organised. It’s generally easy to detect when the end of a section is coming because it is heralded by a cadence (such as in bars 9 and 18) built on the dominant chord of the harmony to which it is about to resolve.

§A: 10 bars starting emphatically in G major, resolving to A minor.
§B: 10 bars continuing in A minor but resolving to G major.
§§ A’, B’: variations on A & B, and often (but not always) more decorated than them.
§C: 11 bars starting with a D major chord, and ending in A major.
§D: 9 bars, finally resolving to D major.
§E: 15 bars, set in G major, and ending in a cadence in D resolving in the note G4 in the chord of C major in the next section.
§F:  21 bars resolving to G.
§F’: variations on F but with more divisions.

Fingering indications help to emphasise the strong and weak beats, and hence the rhythmic structure.  Le Roy indicated the UNaccented notes, dyads or triads by a small dot under them. Mostly they follow the rules discussed in my post “Authentic (?) Renaissance right-hand fingerings”, and summarised below, so I have not marked them on the transcript. Deviations from the rules, often providing syncopation, are indicated conventionally using the p-i-m-a system.

The general rules were as follows (though some authors regard i and m of equal value):

(1) accented single notes (on the beat) were accented using p or m, with p obviously for the bass line;
(2) chords on the beat were played p-i-m-(a);
(3) unaccented single notes were played with i (and possibly m) except that the bottom voice (bass) was played with the thumb;
(4) unaccented chords or part chords with i-m-(a);
(5) with runs of shorter notes, 1st, 3rd, 5th etc notes were accented (m or p) alternating with i on the weaker notes (2nd, 4th etc);
(6) it is sometimes recommended that in duets (two musical lines) p-m is used on the beat and p-i on the weaker notes.

Available to download free in the following formats:

• pdf
• TablEdit
• MIDI

SOURCE 
Transcribed from the original tablature of: Premier livre de tabulature de guiterre, contenant plusieurs chansons, fantasies, pavanes, gaillardes, almandes, branles, tant simples qu’autres le tout composé. par Adrian le Roy. Paris, 1551.
Facsimile online at: https://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/36992e38-4a04-c705-affa-253d7b309c67/1/
(Permanent link: http://purl.org/rism/BI/1551/23)

Le Roy: Je sens l'affection

In past posts I have largely passed by Le Roy's entabulations of popular songs of the time, so now I am going to redress the omission with a piece based on a song by Claude Boyvin. I can find no information about Boyvin or about the original song, which seems difficult to re-create. from Le Roy's guitar solo

Adrian Le Roy.
From Wikipedia (where else?)

Having made my transcription I consulted Keith Calmes’ version for classical guitar and, if I thought he had a better treatment, I shamelessly copied it.

EGA1 writes on the subject of song entabulation in the 1500s :

“Since solo arrangements of songs did not need to take texts into consideration, it allowed guitarists to freely alter the forms of their vocal models”.

Bearing this in mind, I have tried to divide the piece into sections where it seems that a new strain begins, but these are of uneven length. The penultimate bars of each section are variations of the motif that I have discussed in "Solus cum sola", but predating that piece by about 50 years. 

Most of the piece is set in G major, but sections C and D are mostly in C major. You will see that the main time signature is 2/4, but with incursions into 3/4. Calmes indicates that a bar of 3/4 should be played in the same period of time as a 2/4 bar.

Some single-bar motifs are repeated (5 = 12 = 25; 44 = 51), but subsequent bars are dissimilar.

If the entabulation follows the original, the song must have had quite an irregular structure. Perhaps it is best to regard this piece as a kind of fantasia. Since the title means something like "I feel the mood" (according to EGA1 affection meant the influence of a piece of music on the emotions), this seems not unreasonable.

As regards fingering, Le Roy indicated the unaccented notes, diads or triads by a small dot under them. Mostly they follow the rules described in my post “Authentic (?) Renaissance right-hand fingerings”, and summarised below, so I have not marked them on the transcript. Where Le Roy's indications differ from these rules, however, I have indicated them conventionally using the p - i - m - a system.

The rules:
(1) unaccented notes are played with i and (in chords or part chords) the other fingers;
(2) notes on the beat are accented and played using p or m;
(3) with runs of shorter notes, the 1st, 3rd, 5th etc are accented,
(4) dyads and chords are played with p, i, m, a as necessary.

You are free to download the transcription in the following formats:

• pdf
• TablEdit
• MIDI

Source
Je sens l'affection is transcribed from the original tablature in: Premier livre de tabulature de guiterre, contenant plusieurs chansons, fantasies, pavanes, gaillardes, almandes, branles, tant simples qu’autres le tout composé. par Adrian le Roy. Paris, 1551.
Facsimile online at: https://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/36992e38-4a04-c705-affa-253d7b309c67/1/
(Permanent link: http://purl.org/rism/BI/1551/23)

Reproducing a Le Roy piece for Renaissance guitar in the original format

I have long admired the clarity of Adrian Le Roy's books of tablature for Renaissance guitar published in Paris in the 1550s. I wondered if I could achieve the something similar using the music processing program TablEdit.

This is the way I normally present tabs using TablEdit:

The tablature is laid out as closely as possible to standard (mensural) notation, so that it can be read either without knowing the tune or having the actual notation to refer to.

This is what Le Roy's original tabs look like. You can see how clear and concise they are.

Original at Royal Holloway College. (Permanent link: http://purl.org/rism/BI/1551/23)

Now, could I turn "modern" tabs into a similar format without losing all the benefits of the program?

Well, first I had to get hold of the fonts. I could always have written my own on FontForge, but I'm not very good at it, and that would have been rediscovering the wheel. Fortunately I found an excellent set of fonts at:
 http://www.websentia.us/sibeliusExtras/LeroyEarlyMusicPackageforSibeliusv101.zip
The accompanying notes do say that the font is not really suitable for Sibelius, but I have found that in TablEdit they are perfect. There is a manual here.

By selecting the right fonts, removing most of the formatting (stems etc) from the tabs, and using texts for the note length symbols, I managed to achieve this:

The fancy initial font is Goudy Initialen

Apart from the different page orientation, I think you'll agree that this is pretty close.

And to prove that underlying music (playable by midi) exists, here is the notation version encoded in the same file:

So, I'm feeling pretty pleased. It's wonderful what you can do on a rainy afternoon.

Holborne: Ploravit Pavan (Pauana Plorauit)

Another delving into the Holborne archives. A transcription and arrangement from the digital facsimile of Matthew Holmes' Lute Book Dd.2.11 f. 10/1 at Cambridge University Library. The MS was completed about 1600.

"Ploravit" in the Matthew Holmes Lute Book Dd.2.11

Little is known about the composer, but I have found an online account here: http://www.hoasm.org/IVM/Holborne.html

This lachrymose pavane (ploravit means "he has wept") was considered by Diana Poluton to have been written by Holborne as a tribute to the younger John Dowland's "Lachrimae Pavane". You can find my version of "Lachrimae" here. The first few notes did seem to ring a bell, and as you can see from the opening bars of both versions below there is a close similarity. After this, however, Holborne goes off in his own direction. 

The first bars of pieces by Holborne anad Dowland

When transcribed for ukulele, Pluravit is in the unusual key (for the instrument) of B minor, which is a good way of getting into a new key, and in some places unexpected fingerings. Also, I have transposed it into the more usual key of C minor, which allowed me to fit in the roots of the tonic chord (Cm) and the fifth (G) on the open lower strings. You can access both pieces in the links below and see which you prefer.

Holborne also published a consort version of the pavane, in 1599, but whether it or the lute MS version came first I do not know. In the first two sections the upper voices of both versions are very close, but part of the way through the third sections they diverge.

It is quite unlike "Lachrimae" and doesn't really have a catchy tune. The harmonies are engrossing and, to me, unexpected, but rather than being a lament it seems more suitable for a funeral procession. There are some consort performances online, and they certainly emphasise this impression. I have made MIDI versions so that you can hear the piece in simulations for ukulele and recorder consort.

I have worked out the approximate harmonies in terms of modern chord symbols, and there is no discernible pattern, but for the record here they are given below. It's all a bit rough and ready, and with loads of passing tones and suspensions that I haven't attempted to indicate. (/ = 1 beat of the previous chord.)

A reminder: Bm is the tonic (I), F# the dominant (V), Em the sub-dominant (IV) and A the flattened 7th. In lines 3 and 6 the harmonic centre seems to move from Bm to A. Section 2 ends in F#, but then section 3 begins with F#m. As was traditional, each section ends with a major cadence.

Bm  / / A    | D / G / D    | F# Bm / C#  | F#  ?  Em  D |
F# A F# /    | Bm / / A, Bm | E Bm F# /   | Bmaj / / /   ||

A / / /      | D / / /      | E D A E D A | D Bm A E A   |
D E F# A     | Bm / / F#    | Bm F# Bm /  | F# / / /     ||

F#m / D A    | Bm / / /     | Bm Em Bmaj  | E D A /      |
E / / /      | A / / /      | E / / /     | A / / /      |
Em Bm F#m Em | F#m D / Bmaj | F# / Bmaj   | Bmaj / / /   || 

The arrangements are available to download freely in the following formats:

• pdf (Bm)
• pdf (Cm)
• TablEdit (Bm)
• TablEdit (Cm)
• MIDI (Bm, "ukulele")
• MIDI (Bm, "recorders") 

Holborne: Heartsease

Another lute piece by Anthony Holborne, who had a strong influence on his younger contemporary John Dowland.

Heart’s ease, or The Honesuckle, was a lively Elizabethan almain that Holborne also arranged for a consort. You can hear a lively concert performance here. I have just found that the cantus part of the song is practically identical to the upper voice of this arrangement (phew!). You can tell the melody in the score because all the stems point up.

The only significant divergence is in bar 20, where the lute version shows a C in the top voice whilst there is a C# in the cantus; I have gone with the C# here, though I know that Holborne did like to sneak unexpected notes in.

Arranged from the digital facsimile of Matthew Holmes Lute Book  Dd.2.11 f. 44/2  at Cambridge University Library.

A heartsease or wild pansy (Viola tricolor).
They appear spontaneously in my veg garden, and are probably a hybrid swarm of the native plant with cultivated pansies, of which they are an ancestor. Culpepper reckoned it was a powerful anti-venereal , but in A Midsummer Night's Dream it's used as a love potion.

Hearts ease receives a mention, either as a song or as a flower, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew (under its alias "love-in-idleness") and Romeo and Juliet:

Peter: Musicians! O! musicians, ‘Heart’s ease, Heart’s ease:’ O! an ye will have me live, play ‘Heart’s ease.’

First Musician: Why ‘Heart’s ease?’

Peter: O! musicians, because my heart itself plays ‘My heart is full of woe;’ O! play me some merry dump, to comfort me. 

[A dump was a dirge, so what is a merry dirge? The humour escapes me.]

According to abcnotation there are two tunes under this name. They give these words, but I can’t make them fit to the present piece, though they can be stretched to fit the first section if it’s repeated:

1. Singe care away with sport & playe,
Pasttime is all our pleasure.
Yf well we fare, for nought we care,
In mearth our constant treasure.

2. A cooper I am, and have been long, 
And hooping is my trade.
And married man am I to as pretty a wench
As ever God hath made.

Fit or not, they do summarize the feeling of the piece.

Available for free download in the following formats:

• pdf
• TablEdit
• MIDI (with a "flute" playing the melody)

Holborne: Pavane The Countess of Pembroke's Paradise

Following the previous post of Holborne's "Countess of Ormonde's Galliard", here's another of his pieces dedicated to the nobility. I imagine that the Countess of Pembroke in the title was Mary Herbert (neé Sydney) (1561 – 1621) who was active in the world of letters at about the time this piece was written (v approx 1600), and in whose circles he was known and respected.

The Countess of Pembroke, painted by Nicholas Hilliard.
From Wikipedia.

This arrangement is made from the digital facsimile of Matthew Holmes Lute Book Dd.9.33 f. 70 at Cambridge University Library. Sarge Gerbode (the Indefatigable) has published a transcription from the Welde Lute Book which is almost identical to this one, but with slightly fewer notes in the lower voice, and with ornaments indicated (which I have shamelessly copied from, using the symbol ⨳). Why these particular notes were chosen for decoration I couldn’t imagine. Perhaps they were used whilst playing the repeats.

This is quite a chirpy little piece, divided into three sections, with the penultimate bar in each using variations of the “riff” that I have associated in this blog with Dowland’s “Solus cum sola”, but which appeared in Le Roy about 50 years earlier. The third section is quite entertainingly syncopated, with the short scale-fragment D-C♯-B-A appearing three times, but not symmetrically.

Available to download free in the following formats:

• pdf
• TablEdit
• MIDI

Enjoy!