"Tres Libros de Música" de Alonso Mudarra. Seville, Spain (1546)
(English version here)
Audio "Romanesca" by Alonso Mudarra recorded by Al Pérez
or Spotify
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Introduction. The following is one of the chapters that belongs to the PHD (work in progress) “The History of the Guitar” (through its methodology and beyond), original title “La Historia de la Guitara” (a través de su metodología y otras fuentes). The original tablature of “Romanesca or Keep my cows”, which is one of the pieces for Renaissance guitar from Alonso Mudarra’s work, my own transcription and embellishments as well as the Audio track of the piece that I recorded in Madrid in 2003 are included. This transcription was issued by the publisher Alpuerto in Madrid 2004 within “Volumen I Grandes Maestros de la Guitarra.”
In this chapter I would like to expound some of the main ideas from the work of Alonso Mudarra, "Tres Libros de Música" (Three Books of Music). Its importance in “The History of the Guitar” is capital. Original works and transcriptions of well-known works for vihuela, musical genres, embellishments, his own musical notation, the polyphonic concept of the era, a compendium of parts for vihuela and voice and the plucked style are the main features of the work of Mudarra.
We must bear in mind that despite the numerous editions of music for lute in Europe during the 16th century, the lute was not well regarded in Spain (the Arabs had been recently expelled and everything that made reference to them was poorly received). Therefore, contemporary publications for lute at that time are not known in Spain. However, during the sixteenth century numerous editions of music for vihuela were published in this country; a wholly Spanish indigenous instrument which was in decline during the 17th century mainly due to the rise of the guitar. On the other hand, while in Spain the vihuela was losing popularity, in the New World and especially in Mexico, the vihuela established itself. In fact, in this country there is today the figure of the vihuelist.
The contribution made by Emilio Pujol transcribing for modern guitar a series of music publications of the Spanish Golden Age, including Mudarra’s work, is of vital importance. This importance lies in the possibility of opening this repertoire to the performer as well as to the schools of music. Likewise, Pujol’s research is very important because it gives researchers the opportunity to go deeper into the stylistics of the time since his work was the first complete transcription of several music publications for vihuela by diverse Spanish authors in the 16th century.
Nevertheless, Pujol’s transcription is completely literal (number-musical note) and is not subject to the interpretive canons described in the treaties of the time. The strict interpretation of his transcription would be out of style since at that time the music would not be played as written, as happens today with jazz music.
Due to that, Pujol in his transcription adopts the same time value rhythm as Mudarra and it could seem that the music were too slow. The musical notation of the epoch used longer time value rhythms than we use today. That is why recently transcriptions adopt half time value rhythm from the original works of Mudarra. We have to take into account that Mudarra used terms such as “Apriesa” (quickly) to express the tempo.
The statements of the three books will be presented in detail and certain relationships derived from the technique of execution, interpretation and organology of the three main instruments of the epoch: vihuela, lute and guitar will be pointed out. Moreover, the characteristics of the musical notation, embellishments, tempo and rhythm (bars), voice and vihuela, tecnique and stylistics, music genres, along with other contributions by musicologists and performers will be introduced as well.
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