Carré: Sarabande

Frontespiece of Carré's book of guitar music.
Facsimile of the original available at the BNF here

This sarabande, published by Antoine Carré in 1671, is the source of the arrangement published by Gaspar Sanz in 1674 which I posted here recently. The versions are very similar, although the appearance of the originals quite different, as Carré's is in French tablature (see below), and Sanz' in Italian/Spanish format. You might want to perform them in chronological order.

Facsimile of the original, in French tablature.
The calligraphy is elegant, but the score is not easy to play from. Note lengths above the stave refer to the fingerings shown beneath, in the normal way. The strummed chords, however, are indicated by note length symbols within the stave (stem down = down-stroke and vice versa) immediately following the chord, but the only fingerings shown are for the notes stopped by the fingers, whilst un-fingered strings are not marked and implicitly assumed to be open when strummed. Quick to write but hard to play.

You can find the transcriptions here:

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Cromwell: Suite of English Tunes

At last, some easy pieces. I have taken them from a transcription in my new favourite book: James Tyler's (2011) A guide to playing the Baroque guitar, pub. Indiana University Press, which I shall mine for further pieces to arrange and post here.

Lady Elizabeth Southwell, neé Cromwell. Portrait by Kneller.
From Wikipedia.

The original MS was, according to Tyler, compiled ca 1684 by The Rt Hon Lady Elizabeth Cromwell (1674 – 1709), so she must have been about 10 years old at the time. It is sad to note that she died of consumption aged only 34.

It's all harmless stuff, with some strumming and lots of single-string playing, made livelier by the appogiaturas (fingering the note above the main note and quickly pulling-off.) The sections in each tune are marked with double bars, and Tyler says that as they are dance tunes each section should be repeated: it's all up to you.

As usual with transcribing from pieces for the re-entrant guitar, I have indicated where the tabs for re-entrant and low-G uke diverge.

You can find the transcriptions here:

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Sanz: Allemanda la Serenissima

Sanz' engraving of the piece, published here. (It's quite a big download.)

Yet another excursion into the early Baroque.

This Sanz piece gave me a bit of a shock: it looks pretty easy on the page, but when you start to play it, you have to go from pluck to strum very rapidly, and the chord changes are rapid too. I suppose that the only answer is to practice. So, if you feel like an exercise in nimbleness in both hands, why not have a go.

You can see a dashing performance on Baroque guitar here. The player, Xavier Díaz-Latorre, seems to use modern rasgueado rather than simple brushes across the strings.

NOTES ON NOTATION

The main aim of aim my transcriptions is to make pieces I (and hopefully you) can enjoy playing on the ukulele. They are obviously strongly informed by the original idioms, but it is not possible to sound just like the originals. For that, one would have to buy a reproduction instrument, in which case this humble amateur blog would be irrelevant.

** For ukes with a low 4th: the double asterisks have been inserted where it is not clear whether to play the note on
(a) the lower string, as in the tablature, or
(b) since Sanz used a re-entrant tuning on the 4th course, to play it an octave higher, or
(c) if the 4th was tuned in octaves, both.

In the MIDI version I have set the volume of the note that I feel to be less appropriate to pp. You may feel differently.

If you have a uke with re-entrant tuning, you get more of a capella effect by using the starred notes on the 4th.

Of course, notes on the 5th course of the Baroque guitar have to be tabbed an octave higher on the uke anyway.

James Tyler points out that in the strummed variations, because of the re-entrant tuning, the chords are not rooted, but are blocks of sound. The combination of such chords with single-note passages, does not really lend itself to identifying individual voices as do, for example, the lute solos of John Dowland. I have, however, indicated bass notes with a descending stem where they may be held for longer than the rest of the chord: this tenuto adds to the continuity of the piece.

You can find the transcriptions here:

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Sanz: Zarabanda Francesa (1:12) in Am

Facsimile of Gaspar Sanz: Zarabanda Francesa, in Instruccion de musica sobre la gvitarra Española, Book 1, Plate 12 (bottom). There are two more pieces of the same name in this book. More details are appended to the score.

A really simple little piece, tuneful and fun to play. You can see a fine performance on Baroque guitar by J-F Delcamp here. He plays at about the same speed as the MIDI version posted below: 80 bpm.

It's a good way to get to grips with alternating plucking and strumming (brushing). As a relative beginner I have experimented with different ways of strumming the chords: using the thumb or a finger tip, or the whole right hand. Fwiw, on my particular uke I find a strum with the edges of the index finger nail sounds well with plucked strings. James Tyler says that strumming should be over the finger-board, whilst plucking would be nearer the sound-hole.

I added a final bar, and that sounds better with a rasgueado (strumming with the digits from little finger to thumb). I learned a lot from the tutorial by the brilliant Rob MacKillop here – he really gives his Baroque guitar a bashing!

A zarabanda was a stately Spanish dance in triple time, adopted in French as a sarabande. It had been suppressed by Philip II of Spain in the previous century because it was so lascivious. So, the challenge is how to play this piece on the uke with a stately lasciviousness.

You can find the transcriptions here:

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Sanz: Pavanas por la D, con Partidas al Aire Español

 Facsimile of Gaspar Sanz: Pavanas por la D.
'D' refers to the Abecedario symbol for the Am chord on the guitar, and hence Dm on the ukulele.
(The English and French titles on the top line refer to other pieces on the same page.)

This is a charming, melodic little piece, and good fun to play. The there is a statement of the main theme in bars 1 – 16, followed by a variation in bars 17 – 32; these are both in the style we are used to in lute transcriptions. The third variation is in campanelas style: sounding like little bells.

I have posted two versions: one for re-entrant uke, which (especially in the campanelas) should sound quite like the original, which was written for re-entrant guitar. The low-G uke version makes some use a bass line, but this necessitates playing the high G on string 2 where the melody demands, and makes the campanaleas somewhat more convoluted.

I have little else to say about the piece, except that the falling scale fragment in bars 26 to 28 sounds really Spanish to me.

I hope that you enjoy playing it.

Note added 10/2/18: This is an updated version of the original post, with two revised arrangements. If you have the earlier version you might like to replace it.

Note added 8/3/18: You can read an analysis of this piece here: https://www.thisisclassicalguitar.com/baroque-guitar-for-smarties-by-clive-titmuss/

You can find the  re-entrant version here:

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... and the low-G version here:

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Sanz: Passacalles por la Cruz

Facsimile of Passacalles por la cruz, by Gaspar Sanz (1674)

Although Gaspar Sanz was a priest as well as a musician, the "Cruz" or "✠" in the title has no religious significance but indicates the name of the chord in the abecedario system (see post here), namely the chord fingered (1st string first) 0–0–0–2. On the ukulele this gives us Am. But, as in Renaissance music, there is a reluctance to end on a minor chord, as the final chord here is A5 – i.e. the third is missing. In fact, the whole score seems to drift between A major and A minor.

This piece is an exercise in different styles. Most sections are of 4 bars. From §§ a to f we have some fairly orthodox divisions, rather like the fantasias of le Roy and Mudarra from the previous century. Then §§ g to j are 'campanelas', starting first with what we now refer to as campanella style (with successive notes played on different strings; not so easy with linear tuning), and them moving to something more like a peal of bells. I can't ascribe §§ k (which has 10 bars) and l to any particular style.

Finally, §§ m to u are labelled 'cromaticos'. §§ m to q have a falling, chromatic movement, reminiscent of Purcell's Dido's Lament, which was published in the next decade (uke arrangement posted here): all very melancholy. The final sections have a more upward movement, and if not cheerful, at least indicate resignation. Well, that's how it seems to me.

You can hear a performance on the baroque guitar here.

Details of sources etc. are appended to the music files.

You can find the transcriptions here:

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Sanz: Chacona

Gaspar Sanz (1640 – 1710). This detail from the dedication page of Instrucción de música may be an image of Sanz
From WIkipedia

Gaspar Sanz (1640 – 1710). This detail from the dedication page of Instrucción de música may be an image of Sanz

A neat little dance tune, and not too difficult to play (or, indeed, to transcribe). The compromises of transcription from Sanz' presumably re-entrant tuning to a low-4th tuning are explained in an earlier post here. I have repeated the original graces as far as possible, but I think that the trills could be better played as mordents: you can hear it played thus on a Baroque guitar here. According to James Tyler, the appropriate trill within a phrase would be a quick pluck, then hammer on next higher note, then pull off.

A chacona was a quick saucy dance imported to Spain from South America about 100 years before this piece was written, and over the next 2 centuries it evolved through a stately 3/4 dance into an instrumental form (the chaconne). It seems to be indistinguishable from a passacalle or passacaglia, which also originated in Spain and followed a similar evolution.

It consists of nine, 4-bar phrases variations based (except for the last) on the following approximate harmonic sequence, which was not rigidly imposed, and has other passing chords in the piece:

I     | V or vi or ii | vi or IV or ii | V(7) ||

In each variation, the four bars follow a particular pattern following the harmony, rather like a riff in jazz.

You can find the transcriptions here:

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• TablEdit
• MIDI (sorry about the trills, which sound more like tremolos)