Vihuela intabulations of Josquin masses: An examination of musical texture and musica ficta (Josquin des Prez, Spain).

摘要

The vihuela de mano was the most popular plucked string instrument in Spain during the sixteenth century. Almost all of the music for the vihuela can be found in seven books printed during the forty years from 1536 to 1576. Of the 690 works contained in them, over two-thirds are intabulations, instrumental arrangements of vocal music. Unique to this literature were the intabulations of 75 polyphonic sections of the Ordinary of the Mass, of which more than half were sections of Masses by Josquin des Prez. Diego Pisador intabulated virtually eight complete Masses. In contrast, intabulations of sections of Josquin Masses appear only twice in lute books throughout the rest of Europe.; Preliminary chapters deal with the nature of intabulations, the dissemination of Josquin's music in Spain, and the vihuela and its technique. Next, the specific Josquin Masses intabulated by the vihuelists, the sections chosen from the Masses, and the musical textures preferred are identified. The vihuelists intabulated excerpts that showed his use of sequence, kinetic rhythms, and homorhythmic, chordal passages near the cadence.; Ten transcriptions to modern score of intabulations by Luis de Narvaez, Alonso Mudarra, Enriquez de Valderrabano, and Miguel de Fuenllana are shown. These transcriptions are assessed for performance practicality on the vihuela and its modern equivalent, the guitar. They are then aligned with scores of the vocal originals and compared. All of the transcriptions matched perfectly to the vocal originals with only slight embellishment and the addition of accidentals, usually understood as musica ficta. The vihuelists raised melodic leading tones and made minor chords major at the cadence. On the other hand, they were reluctant to alter a note not in agreement with the tenor, nor did they always avoid cross relations. A comparison of an excerpt intabulated by two of the vihuelists revealed that they applied musica ficta uniformly. The appendices include transcriptions and comparison scores.