Renaissance Ukulele: Cutting: The Wood so Wild

Thursday 26 November 2020

Cutting: The Wood so Wild

Well, it starts off easy ...

"The Wood so Wild" was an air popular in Tudor times, despite which the words are mostly lost. It is based on very simple and familiar chords, but sounds rather strange to modern ears because it is in a mode (Lydian or Myxolidian) that is uncommon nowadays. For more information see https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Woods_so_Wild_(The).

Frolics in the wild wood

It was arranged for lute by Francis Cutting (c 1550 – 1595) from a version by William Byrd, and also by amateurs in The Ballet Lute Book (ukulele arrangement appended) and in the Lodge Lute Book (which is beyond my powers of transcription).

If you search on YouTube you will find a fine version played on lute by the late Julian Bream. To follow his example it should be played energetically, with a strong pulse.

Sources: A transcription of the lute version of Cutting’s piece is published on Sarge Gerbode’s incredible website, but I can’t find its provenance. The very basic piece is from the Ballet Lute Book Trinity College Dublin, Ms 408/2, f. 84.

Available for free download in the following formats:

Why this blog?

This blog is the record of a learning voyage. You are, in effect, reading a fair copy of my self-imposed homework.

I have long been intrigued by Renaissance and early Baroque music of the 16th and 17th centuries, and am slowly learning more about it. I also enjoy trying to play fretted instruments, and currently I am trying to get to grips with the tenor ukulele, which is not dissimilar to the Renaissance guitar. (A smug note in 2019: I now have my very own Renaissance guitar, so I can try out the arrangements on both instruments.)

To these ends I have been transcribing lute and guitar music of the period, for playing on the ukulele. Rather than just file the transcriptions away for my own use, I thought it sensible to publish them in this blog so that others might get enjoyment from them – and modify them.

Many of the easily available arrangements are for the ukulele with re-entrant tuning, but most versions in this blog aim to make full use of the (almost) bass string. The exception is for pieces written for the Baroque guitar, which used various re-entrant tunings. The transcriptions are as complete as possible on a 4-string instrument, in the expectation that you will reduce them further to suit your playing.

I am eternally grateful to the composers (now long dead) of these pieces for their genius, and to those organisations and individuals who have made facsimilies and transcriptions available freely online.

Note: the 'P numbers' attached to Dowland's pieces refer to the numbering in Diana Poulton's publications (see 'Resources' page).

No ukuleles were seriously damaged in the preparation of these arrangements.

Quick links to transcriptions

Catastrophe! Google have broken the links to all my transcriptions, due to improvements (aka dumbing down).

The files are all now on Google Drive: see my post of 7 August 2020 for the link.

Posts after 1 August 2020 should have functioning direct links to the arrangements.

Use the links below for transcriptions arranged by format, and in alphabetical order by composer and title within each format. These apply only to posts before 1 August 2020.

pdf format

TablEdit format

MIDI format

Free TablEdit reader (If you download the free reader you can manipulate the display, and in particular change the display to tabs only, notation only, or both; then you can print in your preferred format. You can't save, though – fair enough!)

To see posts listed by hardness, just click on the page title in the navigation bar near the top of the page.

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Thursday 26 November 2020

Cutting: The Wood so Wild