Has anybody here made transcriptions for harpsichord of the lute works by Losy, or know of any such?
I don’t about transcriptions as such but you can download a few lute pieces in staff notation on Daniel Forget’s website here:
https://luthbaroque.fr/Navigation/Les_compositeurs/Autres_compositeurs/Comte_Logy.htm
I’ll see if I can find anything else.
Best,
Matthew
You can download Tim Crawford’s extensive liner notes on Losy from Jakob Lindberg’s recent CD here:
https://www.eclassical.com/shop/17115/art87/5047887-d68e18-BIS-2462_booklet.pdf
It’s that very CD that has me suddenly interested.
Speaking of Losy, is Weiss’s Tombeau available in staff notation? (I
found the tablature and a guitar arrangement, but no transcription. of
the tablature.)
Hi Dennis,
I found the attached transcription but haven’t had time to check it against the original tablature.
Best,
Matthew
(Attachment Sylvius_Leopold_Weiss_-_Tombeau_sur_la_Mort_de_Mr._Comte_dLogy_arrive_1721.pdf is missing)
sorry , apparently pdf files are not allowed, I didn’t know.
Allowing PDF files is a complex topic. PDF can contain executable code and there is a certain level of risk. Low, but there. I have not yet made up my mind even since creating the site whether to turn on allowing PDF’s or not. I am thinking about it!
It’s amusing that we have immediately jumped to Weiss. When I first heard Losy I was sure it was works by Weiss. They are so similar. I often wonder how it is that they developed such nearly identical musical language and style. Was there a common teacher? What accounts for it?
I tried replying to this message and upload two small jpeg files but they were refused by the Jackrail topic page because supposedly they exceeded the limit of 4 Mb (but in fact they were under 2 Mb). I don’t know what I am doing wrong (maybe my old browser is the source of the problem but I cannot update).
Here is the text of what I wrote, for what it’s worth.
Best,
Matthew
The attached extract from Schlegel & Lüdtke’s ‘The Lute in Europe 2’ (starting ‘In and around Breslau…’) might provide some clues. Sorry for the poor quality but I hope it’s legible.
The writing of Weiss is very idiomatic to the baroque lute and I suspect it might not be particularly convincing transcribed for the harpsichord. Many of his earlier works were for an 11-course instrument (a course is a pairs of strings) although he adapted some of them later for the 13-course lute, which is often the choice amongst lutenists today for playing his music. There are two common types of 13-course lute, the bass rider model (which is basically an 11-course with a piece of wood stuck on the side of the pegbox to accommodate two extra slightly longer bass courses) and an extended neck version (known as a swan-neck) which has diapasons (not fretted by the left-hand) for the five lowest notes. The former has a more balanced sound and the latter, a grander tone with more swagger, the diapasons almost being reminiscent of the harpsichord.
Best,
Matthew