Le Roy: Petite fantasie

A simple fantasy from Le Roy's guitar tutor

A popular music combo of viol, guitar (gittern) and a small lute (it's not a cittern as the strings are attached to the bridge), some years after the tutor was published
From Ward, JM (1981) Sprightly and cheerful musick. The Lute Society

This charming fantasy is built on a tuning exercise. The first few bars are missing due to damage. I have added the original exercise to the end of the setting, in case your curiosity is tickled – it could be used as an introduction to the fantasy.

As the piece is taken from a tutor, and as I still have so much to learn, I have rather emphasised the didactic content. It has been transcribed from remnants of Adrian Le Roy (1569) An instruction to the Gitterne, London, and shown in facsimile in Page (2017) The Guitar in Tudor England, CUP, pp 92 – 93 with a transcription for modern guitar on p 105. Most of the learning in this account is therefore second-hand. at least!

You will find that there are several compositional forms in the fantasy: following some simple scale work, we see:

 (a) a counterpoint of overlapping scale fragments (e.g. bars 16 – 24);
 (b) duets (e.g. bars 25 – 31, 49 – 52); and
 (c) responses between voices (e.g. bars 46 – 50, 54 – 58).

As Page points out, the piece shares some motifs (bars 48 – 52, 58 – 61) with Le Roy’s own “Fantasie première” (previously posted here on this blog), for which it serves as a perfect primer.
 
Le Roy indicated unaccented single notes with a dot (prick) beneath, meaning that they were to be played with the index (or possibly middle) finger rather than the thumb. Other (accented) single notes would have been played with the (stronger) thumb, and possibly the middle finger. This emphasises the rhythmic pattern. (There is some diversity of opinion on exactly how the dots were interpreted.)

Most of the paired notes are played as a duet with thumb and finger, but Le Roy indicated where pairs were to be played with the fingers only. I have expanded every marked (pricked) note(s) using the p-i-m-a system.

I have also expanded on the other rules, but only in the first bar in which they are relevant. At the risk of over-egging the pudding, I have also included the pricks into the tabs as, once one gets used to the system, it is easier to read than p-i-m-a when playing.

In the MIDI version I have tried to represent this by applying the following simple rules:

(a) The first beat in each bar is set at ff.
(b) All other notes are set at f (though possibly the second minim (half-note) should be set at 1.5 × f.
(c) Previous rules are overwritten by the pricked notes, where all notes are set at mf.

Not very subtle, but it gives an impression.

 Downloads

Available to download free in the following formats:

• pdf
• TablEdit
• MIDI   

Osborn commonplace book part 2: three short pieces

Some simple Tudor strums with ersatz elaborations

There is very little extant Renaissance guitar music written in England, but in The Osborn Commonplace Book there are a number of pages dedicated to the instrument. I have previously blogged most of them here (in revised format). For the sake of completeness here are three more.

Having complained in an earlier post about the lack of a discernible melody in song intabulations by Le Roy, I now (inconsistently) present these rare but minimal pieces.

Two simple galliard strums from The Osborn Commonplace Book, f. 47r
A bit like a fake book, but without the melody.

Facsimile: https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=2007314&solrid=3435118

Basically, the first two pieces are a pair of simple strums entitled "gallyard", possibly to a melody or dance which we do not have. In transcription I have followed the original manuscript closely, and presume that the syncopations across bars are what was intended. (The bar-lines in the MS refer, I think, to sections of the original air or verse.) I used stem directions to make for clear reading rather than to represent different voices – though the first string may contain an echo of the original airs.

The modern ukulele player will find the chord shapes reassuringly familiar. There is often no attempt to root the chords, which implies strumming: you presumably bashed away to your heart's content.
They do, however, make thin pickings for the ukulele player, so I have presumptuously added some variations to the first two (the galliards), along the lines of Le Roy's elaborations in the previous post . All a bit of fun, but they are quite playable. Have a go!

Note added 10/7/2020. The day after I made this post, a copy of John M Ward's Cheerful and Sprightly Musick dropped through the letterbox. I hadn't realised it, but the book contains transcriptions of all the Osborn guitar pieces. Brilliant!

It transpires that Ward barred these galliards not in constant 6/4 time, but in a mixture of 3/4 and 6/4. This format certainly skips round the syncopation across bars in the 6/4 version. For the uber-geek I have added a link below to a pdf file showing the two transcription styles. Something to get my head round.

Analysis

First galliard (No. 10)

The harmonic structure is simple and in the key of C major, using I, II, IV, V:

C G C F / C  |  G / D G /  /  |  C G C  F / C    |  C G / C /  /  |
C C F C /  / |  G / D G /  /  |  C  /  F C  /  G |  G C / C /  /  ||

These are the chords of the passamezzo moderno ground, but in a different order.
See my blog on Renaissance grounds (chord sequences).

Second galliard (No. 11)

Again, simple harmonies (I, (IV), V, vi, ♭VII),:

C / G C /  / | G C G B♭ /  /  | B♭ /  /  C /  / | G Am* / G /  / |
C / G C /  / | G C G B♭ /  /  | B♭ /  /  C /  / |  C G /  C /  / |
C / F C /  G | F G /  C  /  /  ||

[Am* indicates a harmonic movement that may be parsed as Am7 Am6 in modern terminology: quite unexpected in such a simple strum.]

The harmony moves unexpectedly (to modern ears) into B♭ (♭VII), which is typical of the passamezzo antico, although it doesn't follow that pattern.

Verse setting (No. 6, no title)

A rather more complex strum from same MS.

For this piece I had the luxury of transcribing for ukulele with the aid of Page’s version for modern guitar (in The Guitar in Tudor England, pp 143 – 4, see Resources page), which certainly helped with reading the cramped calligraphy of the MS and getting the timings sorted.

Page has reconstructed a three part vocal original;  I have indicated the presumed melody notes by upward stems and by highlighting them in yellow, although they are somewhat confused during the decorated cadences in bars 7 and 15. He also shows how the instrumental part can fit a popular Tudor verse form and also be used as a setting for metrical psalms.

The harmonies are:

F      | A   F    | Am   F   | C        | C            | G   Am    | E        | A      | A // …
Am  | G  Em  | Dm        | C  G   | Am  Dm | G            | A        | D      | D      ||

It is evident that the second half, resolving in A major, does not really reflect the first half, which resolves in D major. The only explanation that I can see is that the final D is the major form of Dm, the relative minor of the first chord, F. If the D is due to the application of the tierce de Picardie then the home key may be Dm.
This gives us the chord set: i, I, ii, II, III, IV, v, V, VII. Phew!

Downloads

A compilation of the three pieces is free to download in the following formats:

• pdf
• TablEdit
• MIDI

Also, a concordance of the two setting possibilities can be found here.

Le Roy: Les buffons (development of pasamezzo moderna and romanesca grounds)

This post shows how simple chord sequences were elaborated.

The other day I was re-reading Christopher Page's The guitar in Tudor England (see Resources page), which illustrates the remaining fragments of a guitar tutor by Adrian Le Roy. The original French version is lost, and all we have are eight pages of the English version published in 1569.

Transcription

The facsimilies are fairly clear, so I thought I'd transcribe four pages that illustrate the development by elaboration of simple well-established Renaissance grounds (chord sequences). They are shown on pp 94 & 95 of Page's book.

The tutor combines the two grounds passamezzo moderno and romanesca to form a piece called Les buffons, referring to a comic or rustic dance style.

• The first page shows the piece in the form of basic block chords, possibly strummed. These will be very familiar to the ukulele player. 
• In the second page the chords are elaborated with simple divisions, indicated as plus diminués. 
• The third and fourth pages show the passamezzo and romanesca more elaborated with more rapid divisions (plus fradonnes).

For the first two levels I have referred to Page’s transcriptions (p. 114).

The term “fredonné” is described by Page as a contemporary term which “expresses the lightness and elaboration of birdsong, or the freshness of youth.” (So that’s what it should sound like!)

On the other hand, Ward (1983) gives a definition from 1611 as: “Fredon: A semie-quauer or Semie-semie quauer, in Musicke: and hence, Diuision; and a warbling, shaking, or quavering”.

In the interests of understanding how elaboration was done (this blog is, after all, a fair copy of my self-imposed homework) I have rearranged the pieces so that all the passamezzi are put together, then all the romanescas.

The usual forms of the grounds were as follows:

Passamezzo moderno: I   | IV  | I | V | I   | IV  | I, V | I  || 

Romanesca:                 III | VII | i | V | III | VII | i, V | i  ||

Both pieces in the tutor are set in C major, which means that the romanesca (which would typically have been in the minor key), here needs flattened III and VII harmonies, i.e. chords E♭ and B♭.

Transcription notes

1. Square brackets in the transcription indicate positions of missing fragments: the fingerings have been entered editorially, the earlier ones following Page, p114.

2. † (in the score): In the original these notes were displaced, I think, one position to the left; I have moved them over.

3. I have preserved the contemporary spellings.

Playing

Le Roy indicated unaccented single notes with a dot ("prick") beneath, meaning that they were to be played with the index (or possibly middle) finger rather than the thumb. I have indicated these by the conventional “i” in the p-i-m-a system. Other (accented) single notes would have been played with the (stronger) thumb, and possibly the middle finger. This emphasises the rhythmic pattern.

The grounds (block chords) could well have been played by strumming or plucking – we don’t really know. If plucked, then the single note on the top string could have been touched by the index finger on the up stroke, whilst the block chords on the 1st and 3rd beats were strummed with down strokes. The 4th beat could, I suppose, be played up or down: Le Roy gives no "prick", so down is the most probable.

Anyway, do give it a try.

Downloads

Available for download in the following formats:

• pdf
• TablEdit
• MIDI (very plain)

Trad (Welsh): Dafydd y Garreg Wen (David of the White Rock)

My previous two posts were transcriptions of songs entabulated by Adrian Le Roy in the 1550s. I must admit that I found them difficult to understand and (to my simple ears) not much like songs.

So, I decided to start with a song I know well, and transcribe it myself. The words of the song, added much later, concern an ailing harpist playing his last tune before he dies. Not a cheerful subject, but a wonderful melody.

Although of chordal structure, it can be harmonised in many ways, and I have chosen two versions as a basis for my own. In the arrangements (see links below) they are preceded by a statement of the melody and lyrics. The lyrics were written by John Ceiriog Hughes (1832 - 1837) who was sometimes known as the “Welsh Wordsworth” for his unaffected style.

The first arrangement is based on a version for (appropriately) harp by John Thomas who was harpist to Queen Victoria. I publish here only the melody and something approaching Thomas' harmonies: the introduction and variations are not really suitable for the ukulele.

The second arrangement is based on a version by Harold Davidson in a community songbook published almost 100 years ago. The harmonies make use of more minor chords, and seem more appropriate to the sentiment of the piece. It concludes with my attempt at writing a variation in the style of Renaissance divisions, whilst using harp-like patterns as far as I can achieve them on 4 strings.

Normally only the first two verses are used, but I have downloaded all five of them and made an attempt at a literal translation. You can see them both in the transcriptions and at the foot of this page.

Available for free download in the following formats:

• pdf
• TablEdit
• MIDI

The sources are:

1. John Thomas in Welsh melodies for the harp. London, Edwin Ashdown, c 1890.
2. Harold Davidson in Daily Express community song book, Ed. John Goss, London, 1927.
3. https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Dafydd_y_Garreg_Wen

REFERENCES

1. Bryn Terfel sings the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dKbGNBYi2k
2. An article on the “Welsh” triple harp: http://teires.tth7.co.uk/en/triple-harp.php
3. The original words: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3500


LYRICS

WELSH WORDS by John Ceiriog Hughes

'Cariwch', medd Dafydd, 'fy nhelyn i mi,
Ceisiaf cyn marw roi tôn arni hi.
Codwch fy nwylo i gyraedd y tant;
Duw a'ch bendithio fy ngweddw a'm plant!'

'Neithiwr mi glywais lais angel fel hyn:
"Dafydd, tyrd adref, a chwarae trwy'r glyn!"
Delyn fy mebyd, ffarwel i dy dant!
Duw a'ch bendithio fy ngweddw a'm plant!'

“Estynwyd y delyn, yr hon yn ddioed
Ollyngodd alawon na chlywsid erioed;
’Roedd pob tant yn canu’i ffarweliad ei hun,
A Dafydd yn marw wrth gyffwrdd pob un.

“O! cleddwch fi gartref yn hen Ynys Fôn,
Yn llwch y Derwyddon, a hon fyddo’r dôn,
“Y dydd y’m gosodir fi’n isel fy mhen,”—
A’i fysedd chwareuant yr “Hen Garreg Wen.”

Roedd Dafydd yn marw, pan safem yn fud
I wylio datodiad rhwng bywyd a byd;
Yn sŵn yr hen delyn gogwyddodd ei ben,
Ac angau rodd fywyd i’r “Hen Garreg Wen.”

 From: John Ceiriog Hughes, Ceiriog, Gutenberg Press.
______

DIRECT TRANSLATION (very literal)

‘Carry’, said David, ‘My harp to me,
I want before dying to make a tune on it.’
‘Lift my hands to reach the strings,
O God bless you, my widow and children.’

‘Last night I heard the voice of an angel like this:
“Dafydd come home to play through the valley”.
Harp of my youth, farewell to your music [or strings],
O God bless you, my widow and children.’

The harp was passed to him without delay
And released a melody never before heard;
Each string singing to say its own farewell,
And Dafydd dies [fades] at the touch of each one.

‘Oh, bury me home in ancient Ynys Môn [Anglesey]
In the dust of the Druids, and this will be my tune,
The day I am laid low [dead and buried]’ –
And his fingers played the “Old White Rock”.

Dafydd was dying, and we fell silent
To see him released between life and the earth;
At the sound of the harp he tilted [dropped] his head,
And death gave life to the “Old White Rock”.

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.