Tagliate chords

[Natasha Miles]

Hi everyone,

I am currently carrying out research into alfabeto chord charts and was wondering if anyone had ever come across tagliate chords in a song accompaniment.  They're certainly rare in this context, but I have found them in one or two sources.  Just thought I'd ask, but I won't get my hopes up.

Thanks

[Tonyyyy]

Thanks Natasha.

[Monica Hall]

These are Ricci's lettere tagliate.....they are the ones which are found in most of the little alfabeto books.

[Juan Pablo Pira]

And speaking about those books... Is there any source where you can get the melody to those tunes?  I suppose most of them were known at the time and no one needed the notation, so it's likely I'm out of luck,

However, there is one that keeps me wondering.  There is a Litanie dei Sancti that shows up in one of those books, I was wondering if there is any plainchant book where one can get the melody.

[Natasha Miles]

This is precisely the area of research I'm undertaking at the moment.  The dissonances are meant to be included yes.  The notations clearly indicate the inclusion of open strings.  If you open the image that Monica posted above, you can see it says 'la quinta va vota', 'the fifth course is open'.  Millioni and Pico's notations also make the inclusion clear by notating zeros on the open courses.  You're right that in some cases the melody was well known enough that the chords alone would have been sufficient, which makes reconstruction a challenge for us.  There are a few cases where I've managed to come across a melody.  Pico's book, the one with the Litanie dei Sancti, has a song in it called Avrilla mia.  This was obviously quite popular as it appears in Marchetti's 1660 book too.  It's a song by Kapsberger, published in 1619, so I was able to find the melody from that source.  Another popular song that appears in alfabeto books is Clorida, which appears in Marchetti and Carbonchi's books.  This is a song by Stefani published in 1618.  So in some cases, with detective work, it is possible to find the melodies.

[Rob MacKillop]

I've not looked into this at all, Natasha, but I'm wondering if there are connections or correspondences between these tagliate chords and the dissonances found in such 'chromatic fantasias' by Sanz and others. There is a wonderful 'Fantasi de falsas' in the (I think) Coimbra mss, which I recorded in video here: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXqBwKGAWEo 

 

[Monica Hall]

Thanks Rob.   Good to have the opportunity to hear it played so effectively.   I think pieces like this and Sanz are much more sophisticated harmonically than the  lettere tagliate which really only occur in strummed music in alfabeto.   They consist mostly of leaving one course unstopped but in the music itself it seems that the dissonance is a sort of appoggiatura which is usually followed by the proper chord in full.   That's a wild generalization of course.   There is an interesting chromatic passage in the long prelude in D minor in Murcia's Resumen de acompanar - he has "borrowed it from anonymous keyboard piece in and earlier manuscript source.    Are you familiar with that?

[Rob MacKillop]

I read through it years ago, but can't remember much about it, sadly. Also, I never really did much alfabeto, concentrating mainly on solo works. I think I missed a lot of interesting things, so I'm pleased people are doing research into it. I'm fascinated by the genre of chromatic fantasies and false resolutions. They seemed to go out of their way to tickle and confuse the ear. Wish I'd been able to present a few transcriptions to my harmony teacher, many years ago. He would have run out of red ink, correcting all the mistakes. Ha. Makes me smile.

[Natasha Miles]

I haven't got to that stage in my research yet, but you're right, there's some wonderful harmonies in Sanz's music, and also in some much earlier music by Valdambrini (1646). The next stage of my research is to look at strummed dissonances in the mixed/lute style tablature repertoire.  I've been very much focussed on the early decades of the seventeenth century so far.  By the time we get to Sanz, the trend in composition is the punteado (plucked) style, and dissonant harmonies are more often than not reduced in texture to less than five parts (though Sanz was clearly a composer who delighted in inserting passages of strummed chords with rich harmonies, as he does it quite often).  Continuo guidelines treating dissonance normally give examples to be plucked rather than strummed, so in that respect tagliate harmonies are more relevant to the first half of the seventeenth century.  That's not to say that they disappear in the latter half though. 

[Monica Hall]

I think Alex Dean and Aidan O'Donnell have found voice parts for at least some of the other songs.   You need to trawl through their dissertations.   The Litany in Pico's book must have a plainsong chant associated with it.  Probably very simple and repetetive.  

[Natasha Miles]

Yes, in fact today I borrowed a copy of my supervisor's Promtuarium Chorale to look up the melody.  Haven't been able to compare it with Pico's accompaniment yet, but I'll upload whatever I come up with.

[Juan Pablo Pira]

Since the Litany is the kind of thing that is played only in Church -Who would play that to amuse herself?- Is this evidence for the use of the guitar in a liturgical context?

 

The Litany of the Saints is used in few occasions... for example, the Paschal Vigil (in Mass), the taking of perpetual vows,  and the ordination of priests.

 

Before the emergence of the so-called "guitar masses", in the 60s, there are very few mentions of guitars being used inside a church.

 

Could this piece be the granddaddy of all guitar masses?

[Monica Hall]

It seems that the surviving copy of Pico's book belonged to a convent in Tuscany - there is a note somewhere on it on it saying "Pertinet ad Con.tum S.Anthimi."   There was such a Convent in Tuscany and Pico was Florentine.   So it seems likely that the nuns and other people performed the Litany as part of their devotions quite possibly with guitar accompaniment.  I suppose they may have done so on the occasions when it does form part of the liturgy but I expect there were other occasions when it was performed too. I trawled various sites on line trying to find the music without success.   I expect everyone is familiar with Monteverdi's Vespers and with the Sonata sopra "Sancta Maria ora pro nobis".  The same very simple chant could perhaps be used with this Litany too.   The guitar was  used in Spain and the New World but in the accompaniment of villancicos in the vernacular rather than the Latin parts of the Mass.