Transcription of 5 Course Vihuela Music from Orphenica Lyra Lord Ciaran mac Breandain

Submitted for Display at the Atlantia Kingdom Arts and Science Festival March, 2021

Abstract This project displays the transcriptions of three pieces of vihuela music written by Manuel de Fuenllana, and published in Libro de música para vihuela intitulado Orphenica Lyra in 1554. The pieces were written in Italian lute notation and then transcribed and arranged into modern staff notation. These pieces are of particular interest as the tuning required to play them is for a 5-course guitar as opposed to a vihuela. To the best of my knowledge, these pieces have not been transcribed and published before.

Introduction and Background Blind from birth, Miguel de Fuenllana (c. 1500 – c.1579) was a Spanish composer composed for both the vihuela and renaissance guitar. In 1554 he composed the work Libro de música para vihuela intitulado Orphenica Lyra which he dedicated to Phillip II of Spain. Fuenllana was a chamber musician for Phillip II’s third wife, Isabel de Valois from approximately 1562 until her death in 1568. After this, he continued as a court musician in Phillip II’s court.

The guitar was making great in-roads in the music of western Europe during this time. As we hear from “Capriol” in Arbeau’s Orchesographie (1589): “… at Orleans we always played a galliard called Romanesque on our lutes and guiternes but I found it hackneyed and trite. I learned one on the lute which in enjoyed seeing danced by my companions as I knew how to play and sing it…” Translation as presented in Pittaway (2017)1.

1 Pittaway, Ian. “The pavan, the priest and the pseudonym: ‘Belle qui tiens ma vie’ and Arbeau’s ‘Orchésographie’ (1589)”, 2017. https://earlymusicmuse.com/orchesographie/

FIGURE 1 - QUOTE FROM ARBEAU'S ORCHESOGRAPHIE

Other quotes from the time attest to the spread of the guitar.

“…since the invention of the guitar there have been very few who have devoted themselves to the study of the vihuela. It has been a great loss, because all kinds of notated music was played on it, and now the guitar is nothing more than a cow-bell, so easy to play, especially in rasgado that there is not a stable-boy who is not a musician of the guitar.” -Sebastián Covarrubias Orosco, 16112

“Gautier has told me that having played for two hours on his most excellent lute in the King's Cabinet at Madrid, the Grandees of Spain said that it was a great pity that he did not play the guitar, which tempted him to break his lute over their heads ... “ –Constantijn Huygens, c.16503

The Guitar and Vihuela in Orphenica Lyra Fuenllana’s Orphenica Lyra consists of 182 compositions in 6 volumes. In addition to his own compositions, the music of 17 other composers is included. The volume that I am focusing on in this work is book six, or Libro Sexto. This volume contains music for the 6-course vihuela, the 5-course vihuela, and the 4-course vihuela which he also refers to as a guitar.

The 4-course guitar was popular enough in the mid-16th century for Alonso Mudarra to include guitar compositions in his vihuela book in 1546. Also, Mudarra refer to an “old tuning” and a “new tuning” for the guitar. Mudarra even includes one piece written in the “old tuning.”

2 Cory Michael Gavito, ‘The Alfabeto Song in Print, 1610-ca.1665: Neapolitan Roots, Roman Codification and “Il Gusto Popolare”’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 2006), p. 57

3 Roberts renvoie à Jonckbloet & Land. “Correspondence et Oeuvres Musicales de Constantin Huygens”, La Haye, 1882, p. 61

Given the discussion of an old tuning and the publication of guitar music by 1546, could indicate an early 1500s origin of the instrument.

The 5-course guitar is of specific interest in this project. Juan Bermundo frequently refers to the guitarra de cinco ordenes in his Libro primo de declaracion de instrumetos in 1555. The cover of the sixth book of Orphenica Lyra refers to “vihuela de cinco ordines”, or “vihuela of five courses”. In the first book, as shown in the image below, Fuenllana refers to “…vihuela de quatro ordines, que dizen guitarra” or “…vihuela of four courses which they call guitar”.

FIGURE 2 - GUITAR QUOTE FROM ORPHENICA LYRA

Interestingly, Fuenllana’s 5-course “vihuela” music appears to actually be for 5-course guitar; in order to be played, it requires an instrument to be tuned like the 5-course guitar. It is quite possible that in Fuenllana’s mind, the concept of “vihuela” and “guitar” were essentially conflated. That would make these be some of the earliest 5 course guitar music written. I have not been able to find proof that these pieces have been transcribed and published before; it is possible that this is the first time they have been presented in modern staff notation.

Explanation of Italian Lute Tablature Tablature is a mechanical representation of music. That is to say, it shows how to perform a composition on a given instrument. The music in Orphenica Lyra is written in Italian lute tablature. This tablature shows lines and numbers. The lines represent the strings, with the highest pitched string being shown on the lowest line. This is opposite of both French lute tablature and modern guitar tablature. See figure 3.

FIGURE 3 - ITALIAN LUTE TABLUATURE EXAMPLE FROM ORPHENICA LYRA

The numbers on the lines indicate which frets to press. A 0 is an open string, 1 is the first fret, 2 is the second fret, etc. Over the top of the tablature are shown what appear to be notes. These notes are provided to show the rhythmic duration of the actual notes to be played.

Whole note

Half Note

Quarter note

Eighth Note

Red Notes and Controversy When compared to his instrumental pieces, Fuenllana’s vocal pieces contain red notes in addition to the notes written in black. These notes indicate the vocal melody line. There is some controversy as to whether these notes were to be played on the instrument, effectively doubling the vocal line. “First the song is played over on the vihuela as it stands; and then, when the player hears how it goes, he plays it again singing the notes represented by red figures…It would, however, have been a positive insult to a good singer to play his part for him on the instrument…”4

J. Bal disagrees however, based on his reading of the Avisos y documentos section of Orphenica Lyra. “That is to say that the voice-part is a part of the whole composition (compostura) played by the vihuelista. This must, it seems, to be Fuenllana’s meaning…”.5

In modern music, this is very much a stylistic decision as to whether the vocal line is doubled on the instrument. For purposes of this project, in performing the transcription of any piece which includes a red vocal line, I have included it in the modern staff notation, so as to have the melody present that it may be performed by a solo instrumentalist.

Transcription Process This project displays the transcriptions of three pieces of Fuenllana’s vihuela music from the original Spanish / Italian lute notation of 1554 to modern staff notation. As noted above, due to the tuning required to perform these pieces, they may well be actually written for the 5 course

4 Trend, J. B. “Luis Milan”, Oxford, 1925. 5 Bal, J. “Fuenllana and the Transcription of Spanish Lute-Music”, Acta Musicologica , Jan. - Jun., 1939, Vol. 11, Fasc. 1/2 (Jan. - Jun., 1939), p. 18

renaissance guitar instead of the vihuela. Please see Appendices B-D for images of the original tablature and the transcriptions into modern staff notation.

In order to perform the transcription to modern staff notation, I started with verifying the tuning used; in this case, as noted above, the correct tuning is that of the top 5 strings of the modern guitar, which is identical to the 5 course renaissance guitar. I then went through each note, chord, and rhythm marker in each of the original pieces, converting them note by note into modern staff notation. This process does not readily lend itself to photographic documentation, as it is very much a mental exercise which is then verified visually against the original, and on an instrument such as the guitar.

There are multiple challenges with this process. First, lute tablature is limited in its ability to show certain musical characteristics. For example, different voices not shown. Voices refer to the characteristic of having multiple moving lines polyphonically. These occur with different rhythms and note durations. In the lute tablature, there is only one note duration shown; one has to infer from the sound of the piece if specific notes were to be held while other notes were played.

Second, voicings, even if they sound right, must be playable. Once can decide that a given note sounds correct if it is held with a moving part above it, but when actually performed on the guitar, it becomes impossible to play, either due to the actual note positions or due to the fingering required. Thus, as voicings are added, I had to verify each one on a guitar to see that it was actually playable.

The actual process of adding voicings involves first doing the literal transcription note by note as indicated above. Then, I went back through the piece and looked for places where Fuenllana clearly meant for voicings to occur, and created a second, edited transcription with the voicings added, reflecting the way that the piece was most likely meant to be performed.

The transcriptions shown in the appendices are the arrangements with the voicings added, in order to reflect a more accurate sound in performance. A close examination will show that the guitar tablature differs in some spots when compared to the original. This is by design, since when the voicings are added, the modern guitar tablature is updated to reflect the voicing in the modern musical staff notation.

Summary One primary purpose of transcription is to make works written in archaic forms available to the modern musician. The three works selected for this project represent an unusual set of music from Fuenllana’s Orphenica Lyra in that they were supposedly written for the vihuela, but require renaissance guitar tuning to perform. As a result, these may actually be some of the earliest pieces of renaissance guitar music known to date.

The transcription process was challenging in that the notation does not include the subtleties that can be represented in modern music, such as voicing. As such, transcription also requires some analysis and guesswork to determine where multiple voices would have been played, adapt the musical transcription to include them while not changing the notes as written, and make sure that the voicings are actually playable.

References

Bal, J. “Fuenllana and the Transcription of Spanish Lute-Music”, Acta Musicologica , Jan. - Jun., 1939, Vol. 11, Fasc. 1/2 (Jan. - Jun., 1939), pp. 16-27

Bermundo, Juan.“Libro primo de declaracion de instrumetos musicales”, 1555.

Cory Michael Gavito, ‘The Alfabeto Song in Print, 1610-ca.1665: Neapolitan Roots, Roman Codification and “Il Gusto Popolare”’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 2006)

de Fuenllana, Miguel. “Ophenica Lyra“, 1554.

Mudarra, Alonso. “Tres libros de musica en cifras para vihuela”, 1546

Pittaway, Ian. “The pavan, the priest and the pseudonym: ‘Belle qui tiens ma vie’ and Arbeau’s ‘Orchésographie’ (1589)”, 2017. https://earlymusicmuse.com/orchesographie/

Roberts renvoie à Jonckbloet & Land. “Correspondence et Oeuvres Musicales de Constantin Huygens”, La Haye, 1882

Trend, J. B. “Luis Milan”, Oxford, 1925.

Appendix A – Orphenica Lyra Cover Page

Appendix B – De la Missa de Ave Maria de Morales

Appendix C – Seguese Seys Fantasias del Author

Appendix D – Fantasia F.