It's a while since I posted a piece by Adrian Le Roy. Recently, however, I noticed mentioned on the wonderful Early Music Muse website that Le Roy had published two pieces in the low F tuning (temple viejo or corde avallée), and I thought "why not have a go?" I have after all, been transcribing and posting pieces by Thomassinus (see post of 13 Feb 2023) set in the same tuning.
Here is the first. It was a simple piece to transcribe, and in the book was accompanied by the melody (below), and as far as I can tell by the antique notation, the top voice of the tabs follows the melody
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| The melody and first verse of the chanson. The meaning of the black diamonds had me stumped, but I have guessed that it means "fill the rest of the bar with this note". Source: Adrian Le Roy, 1555, Second livre de guiterre, Paris .Facsimile: Early Music Online. Persistent url: http://purl.org/rism/BI/1555/7 |
The chord sequence is:
I ♭VII iv V (repeated) I iv iv V (repeated)
The use of the ♭VII (here B♭) is reminiscent of the major form of the passamezzo antico.
You can hear and see a spirited performance on violin and classical guitar here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYw2wjtDKQQ
If you want to try the piece out, you can download the free pdf here
... or a version including what I hope is an accurate transcription of the melody here.
PS Don't forget to tune your 4th string to F3 (Helmholz f)!
