John Dowland: Resolution, P13

 Falls quite nicely under the fingers, phew!

The significance of the title “Resolution” is obscure. According to Diana Poulton’s biography of JD, a version of this piece arranged as a song is dedicated to Oliver Cromwell’s uncle, who wad knighted in 1603.

She describes the mood as “solemn”, but I can’t find a published performance on lute. I have played a MIDI version of the lute original, and it sounds not particularly sombre to me. And on the uke it’s quite spritely and tuneful, even at 35 bpm. You can find a MIDI lute version HERE and decide for yourself.

 Notes

The piece is in 3 sections, the statements of the first 2 followed by challenging divisions which I have not treated. The third section is shown in the original as repeated unchanged.

The cadences in bars 5 and 15 are found in many of Dowland’s pieces, and the earliest version I have found is in Le Roy, published about 1550.

Bar 17 is reminiscent of the beginning of “Greensleeves”.

Bars 6 and 13 look rather daunting, but they do fall under the fingers quite well. I find alternate thumb - index finger plucking helps me keep my place, and it is authentic to the style of the period too.

You can download two versions for the low-G ukulele:

1. A voiced version HERE.

2. An unvoiced version HERE. (In this file I have removed the voicings, so the note durations show you not how long the note sounds for but how long to wait before you pluck the next note. In general, let a note sound for a long as feasible.)

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Adapted from Poulton D, Lam B, Eds. 1995. The collected lute music of John Dowland, Edn 3. Faber Music, London.

Dowland: Mrs Brigide Fleetwood's Pavan (Solus Sine Sola), P11

 What's easier to play – the voiced or unvoiced version?

Some six years ago I posted an arrangement of "Solus cum sola, P10", a quite lively piece. You can read the original post here.

The present arrangement "Solus sine sola" ("A lone man without a woman") is much more serious and melancholic in tone, especially on the lute. It is quite a challenge to create melancholia on the chirpy ukulele.

I slavishly followed Poulton & Lam's transcription in making a copy of their lute transcription, the first time I have done this. 

My version, as close as I can get, to Poulton and Lam's transcription. They found 3, and occasionally 4, voices in the MS. Quite a challenge!

Then I edited it to transfer what notes I could from the lower 2 courses to the upper 4. This was then playable on a ukulele with the 3rd tuned down a semitone to B3. I had to reduce the number of voices to 2.

The next stage was to "correct" the fingering on the 3rd string to the standard uke tuning of C3. There seemed to be a lot of barrés in second position, so I dropped it a whole tone and everything fitted nicely (mostly) under the fingers.

In my new campaign to make my arrangements more accessible I have also prepared an unvoiced version. To look at the notation rather sets my teeth on edge, but I must admit that I find it easier to get the timing of the 2 voices right without voicings. It is after all, closer to what JD wrote. Perhaps we can say that the voiced version is for understanding, the unvoiced for playing. 

You can download the pdfs here:

Voiced

Unvoiced

John Dowland: Farewell, P3, simplified

 A fairly simple version of my favourite piece by John Dowland

Continuing my campaign to simplify my rather full transcriptions of lute music for the ukulele, here is my new easy-ish version of 'Farewell' (originally 'Farwell'), P3.

You can read the original post here.

A fantasy can be difficult to get to grips with, because it does not have a pronounced melody such as one finds in lute versions of songs or marches. Here, I have adapted the earlier transcription to make it rather simpler, whilst still maintaining the “melody” line that I sing in my head as I play the piece. This is, of course, mostly the upper voice, but sometimes the other voices where they carry the “tune”. I have also included some, often bass, notes that emphasise the beat, especially where the upper note is off the beat. For example, in bar 5, the absence of a note in the upper voice at the beginning of the 3rd beat is emphasized by the inclusion of an obviously bass note on the 4th string. In the interests of simplicity I have not included rests.

The first 7 bars are quite simple, and much as JD wrote them.

Incidentally, I have found that by filleting the piece I have come to understand and appreciate it more. In particular, the chromatic scale fragments are more apparent.

I have adopted (through gritted teeth) the notation convention that all the notes on a stem have the same length, which is used in a number of publications. This does make the piece easier to read, if not to interpret. It echoes the Renaissance tablature convention where the indications of note length tell you not how long the note sounds for, but how long you wait until you play the next note. (Playing back such notation literally via MIDI is not, therefore, a pleasant experience.) 

In summary, the general rule is: hold a note for as long as you can. 

You can download a free pdf of the simple version HERE.

SOURCES

GB-Cu:Cambridge University Library Dd.5.78.3 (1600), f.43v. Encoded and edited by Sarge Gerbode. 

Formatting informed by reference to a piano version by Peter Warlock (IMSLP) and to Poulton D, Lam B, Eds. 1995. The collected lute music of John Dowland, Edn 3. Faber Music, London.

John Dowland: Lachrimae, P 15 (simplified)

 My first attempt at an uncomplicated arrangement.

In all my previous posts I have been at pains to make the fullest possible arrangement, with all the voices that I can manage to include. This does not make for the easiest pieces to play, although ultimately very satisfying, and giving some feel of the original.

I have noticed, however, that other arrangers more skilful than me have made pieces that are much easier to play. As far as I can see they tend to concentrate on a chord-and-melody transcription without too much counterpoint. And, all their notes on a particular time-point (i.e. on the same stem) are of the same indicated duration, even though one would spontaneously hold many of them (especially in the bass) for longer.

The first 4 bars of my original (? over-the-top) arrangement of Lachrimae...

... and this is the way that I have simplified it.

You will see from the images above that I have:

(1) favoured the song melody, and (but not in this sample) simplified the melodic line where the lute original was ornamented;

(2) removed a lot of the counterpoint, but left in enough notes to emphasise the beat where the melody is syncopated;

(3) used tied rather than dotted notes, which I find helps getting the timing right;

(4) made all the notes on a stem the same duration, and put the stem directions all upwards;

(5) fattened up the chords at the beginning of each bar.

I had to decide whether or not to include the stems in the tab, and I have left them in, because it saves having to read the notation for note duration and the tabs for the fretting at the same time.

To download the pdf of this simple version, click here.

I hope you have fun.

John Dowland: Farewell (P4) (An in nomine)

What a challenge! Hard to understand, harder to arrange, even harder to play. 

Well, Autumn has arrived again here in Wales, so I'm back in uke transcription mode.

I made these arrangements from a version in: Poulton and Lam, 1981, ‘The collected lute music of John Dowland’, Faber & Faber. I would never have managed transcribing the MS off my own bat.

First, a description of the piece by the great Nigel North:

“Dowland's Farewell on "In Nomine" stands in a unique position within his lute music. By his curious choice of musical materials in this piece, Dowland is locating himself at the absolute center of English instrumental music. A century before, the Englishman John Taverner had composed a popular Mass on the plainsong Gloria tibi trinitas. The Benedictus of Taverner's Mass circulated seperately and quickly spawned a huge complex of instrumental pieces emulating it. These pieces became vehicles for composers to show off contrapuntal mastery and clever invention. Every important English composer in the sixteenth century seems to have written at least one piece of music for instrumental consort that uses a long-note cantus firmus taken from Taverner's "In nomine" section; later composers such as Christopher Tye and William Byrd left numerous "In nomines." This lute work is Dowland's only contribution to the genre, but is the only surviving "In nomine" for it. 

“Dowland [mostly] places Taverner's cantus firmus melody baldly in the highest voice, and weaves a fantastic net of counterpoint beneath it. Indeed, though he titles the piece "Farewell," a name he uses for only one other lute solo (a highly chromatic and difficult one), it properly belongs with his many Fantasias. The lower "voices" of the lute gradually shift through a number of different contrapuntal gambits and textures -- different imitative motives, syncopation and chromaticism, a dancelike change of meter, hocket, culminating in virtuosic passagework at the end. Dowland took a generation of music for five people and proved he was capable of playing it with five fingers.” [allmusic.com]

I have checked with Taverner’s "In Nomine" (available on IMSLP) and the theme (mostly in the upper voice) in Dowland’s piece agrees very closely with Taverner’s cantus firmus or superius, but the notes on the lute are struck twice in each bar. Both pieces set in Dm (which transposes to Em on the uke). The main deviations, are in bar 6 (Tav. has C, Dow. has A) and bar 55 (silent in Tav.).

An extract showing two particularly complex bars / measures. The cantus firmus is obvious in the notation as white notes. The second and third voices progress with their own rhythms, and in the 2nd bar the lower voice has a semiola rhythm. You can see how difficult it has been to fit all this onto a uke!

In transcription, some bars are much as in the lute original; these are: 1, 3, 4, 16 – 23, 27 – 29, 37, 38 and 54. In other bars much use is made of strings 5 – 7 on the lute; in some cases I have raised these notes by an octave if they contribute to the performance with little distortion of the music or of the fingers. 

The 1st voice or cantus firmus is generally evident by being a white note, whilst most of the others are black. It is not always possible to hold notes for as long as shown in the notation.

In many places, in a single bar, the 2nd and 3rd voices are syncopated to different rhythms (see image above), which it is not always possible to represent within the limited scope of the ukulele. My practice has been to substitute an appropriate note where there was one in the original, to maintain the rhythmic feeling. 

After much thought I have mostly combined the 2nd and 3rd voices in the notation to avoid a confusing forest of stems and make the timing clearer – but thereby obscuring which voice is which. When you see the original tabs as illustrated above, you will see that one is only told when to pluck a note, not its length or where it fits in the voicing, so in this transcription we can sympathise with the original lutenists.

It might well be a good idea to hold the notes in the lower voices for as long as feasible to maintain continuity. I have tried to indicate appropriate notes with a tie symbol immediately following the note. (This also improves the smoothness of the MIDI playback.) The main exceptions are in bars 44, 48 and 52 where Poulton & Lam found a hemiola rhythm in the 3rd voice, and which I have tried to indicate by stem direction.

I have made 3 versions of P4 for the ukulele.

The first arrangement [click to download] has been made for a ukulele with the 3rd string tuned a semitone lower than usual, to B3, giving the same intervals as between the upper four strings of a lute. I find that, not surprisingly, this places the notes more conveniently under the fingers than in the conventional tuning, although presenting some unfamiliar chord shapes.

The second arrangement [click to download] has been adjusted to the normal low-G uke tuning, but is a bit harder to play.

The third arrangement [click to download] has been raised from Em to Gm, to give a bit more scope for the lower voice. I have tried to indicate the voices by stem direction. If you would like the easier (?) to read unvoiced version, please ask. In any form, it's a real finger twister.