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Thanks, had not seen him play before. So the Narvaez was weird for me because he altered the harmonic structure. He twisted the F-C-Dm-A, F-C-Dm-A-D major formula of Guardame las vacas, into Dm-C-Bb-A-Dm somehow. In addition, because the vihuela is so close to guitar on the fingerboard (as I have been pointing out), he transposed the key from Am to Dm, also weird. The original piece Narváez calls "primero tono" which would be D minor/dorian, in A minor Capo 3, means he wants us to transport the mode from Dm down to Cm, vocally speaking. It is interesting because this is an instrumental version of a song that would have been sung back then (in Gm). Mudarra has the first ever guitar pieces (4 string ukulele type instrument) published not long after Narvaez, and it is in Dm (capo 5 so Gm, Segundo tono). Here is Segovia hacking through the Narvaez in Am, which makes more sense to me, on a modern guitar.
Here is the history of the song form, and a commenter pointed out the first appearance is "Calata" on f.46 of Joan Ambrosio Dalza's lute book (Venice, 1508), but he references it as a Spanish song.
Here is a full documentary as well...nice example of a rare peghead negra at 6:56, and his collection at 10:10. They say at 12:30 that Llobet turned him on to the vihuelistas, but here again I can't account for the knowledge of that pisador "rondeña" getting into their fingers before Pujol who was only doing Milan in 1928, the same year Montoya is recording for cante with Rondeña. The association with Llobet is still curious to me. At 30 min he is using Hernandez y Aguado guitar.
I went for years without listening to Yepes. Upon returning I find I like him even better than before. His tone quality is so secure--uniform, but with subtle dynamics and nuance.
I went for years without listening to Yepes. Upon returning I find I like him even better than before. His tone quality is so secure--uniform, but with subtle dynamics and nuance.
RNJ
I’m not much of a Yepes follower, but these kinds of things he handles really well. He separates and colores the voice registers to give that two instrument playing together impression.
Philip Roshegar said some interesting things about Yepes and how he used the bordones in Bach arrangements. Not exactly complimentary. I think I’ll listen for it and see how it compares to the Weiss which is set out on the lute by Weiss.
Ricardo,
On Segovia’s arrangement to A minor, I think he just moved down to open position and the piece naturally transposed itself. Narvaez’s original is presumably played on an instrument tuned in G with the lowered half step on the 3rd string. There were other vihuela sizes, but the common size was 60cm scale in G. But of course there was probably another common one in F that was like a guitar with cejilla on fret one.
As an aside, I listened to a few of the lute/guitar recordings Yepes made in 1972-73 that Philip talked about. They are ok, but the tempos are slow and the music becomes disjointed and ponderous. It’s cerebrally entertaining, I suppose, because a lot of Bach’s lute music is meant to be in a style that breaks the chords into chunks, but the tempos are so slow for me that it leaves the bass notes oddly hanging in a detached way.
I don’t have anything against Yepes, but I have noted in the past when you run into a Yepes devotee they are vituperatively defensive of their guy. I do appreciate how clean his technique and sound is.
On Segovia’s arrangement to A minor, I think he just moved down to open position and the piece naturally transposed itself. Narvaez’s original is presumably played on an instrument tuned in G with the lowered half step on the 3rd string. There were other vihuela sizes, but the common size was 60cm scale in G. But of course there was probably another common one in F that was like a guitar with cejilla on fret one.
Yes I tried to be clear about it earlier, there is not "moving down to open position" transposition, since there was no capo requirement for this music. Brune explained a very logical conjecture to me, that back then the strings for a vihuela or lute were super expensive and not easy to acquire so the idea of tuning them up to pitch for any length of time would have been risky.
Considering we don't know what "standard pitch" really was back then (although certainly lower than A=440), taken together there is a very strong possibility that if we had a Time Machine and could observe these guys playing their vihuelas, they would be in the ball park of a modern guitar. The dissertation I have on Mudarra does not consider all that, however, they do point out that several intabulations compared to vocal part originals imply he used several different tunings, or different instruments, including Standard G, a higher one at Ab, lower at F and even down to modern E.
As I explained these would be "conceptual" tunings or "ball park" if you want. So I have no problem with transporting these tablatures to standard tuning guitars in the modern era. Venegas also has a diagram for his keyboard tablature that matches a vihuela frets to a keyboard such that he wants everyone to use or conceive of a low E pitched instrument and he called it the "Elami" vihuela. He required that to realize all the vocal ranges of the motets he was entabulating. And that right there should be enough to explain WHY we have arrived at the modern guitar tessitura in the first place, and these Renaissance nerds that insist on transposing vihuela music conceptually, is a wasted confusing exercise when they should just talk in terms of modern guitar tonalities for simplicity of concept.
Now having said ALL that, Narváez is a rare intabulator that he has provided an extra cifer to discern the mensural notation "conception" of modes or tonality. So for this piece Vacas, he has bass clef or F clef on the 5th course, 3rd fret, and C clef or middle C tenor clef, on the first fret of the third course. What that means, and seems to confuse all Renaissance nerds as I explained earlier, is he is envisioning his vihuela "AS IF" tuned NOT to standard G, but up to A. Capo 5 on a modern guitar. And You see why Sainz de La Maza arranged it in D minor, therefore. Again, these ideas are erroneous as Brune explained you don't want to tune sharp or whatever, it would be ridiculous, and they did not use A=440 etc etc.
We see how flamenco guitarists managed to slice through all this confusion with a darn capo. When we "talk" about flamenco guitar tonality, we talk as if the capo has been removed, and the Renaissance nerds are doing the exact opposite.
His criticism of Paco de Lucía was overly harsh, and reeks of jealousy or envy. Yepes sounds good but as per usual, timing issues abound. Like Segovia said himself "in the delicate disrespect of the rhythm you define the good vs the bad artist", or something like that, confusing his poor female student. An ironic statement in his case, always slowing down or outright pausing in the tough spots. That is what I hear all the time in Yepes on up to "technicians" like John Williams. They allow the hiccups in the hairy spots.
Speaking of Paco, this amazing performance illustrates the ancient practice of playing a duet in two tonalities (here Paco is literally using Pisador's flemish mass tuning that we today call "Rondeña", and his brother "standard"). Their roles are reversed in the famous Tangos duet on Fuente y Caudal. Compare it to Valderrabano who did the same exact thing:
Two vihuelas tuned a minor third apart is the same concept:
There were probably reasons why I ignored Yepes for years, but I don't remember specifically what they may have been. I posted his "Guardame las Vacas" because I was a little surprised how well I liked it.
On Segovia’s arrangement to A minor, I think he just moved down to open position and the piece naturally transposed itself. Narvaez’s original is presumably played on an instrument tuned in G with the lowered half step on the 3rd string. There were other vihuela sizes, but the common size was 60cm scale in G. But of course there was probably another common one in F that was like a guitar with cejilla on fret one.
Yes I tried to be clear about it earlier, there is not "moving down to open position" transposition, since there was no capo requirement for this music. Brune explained a very logical conjecture to me, that back then the strings for a vihuela or lute were super expensive and not easy to acquire so the idea of tuning them up to pitch for any length of time would have been risky.
Considering we don't know what "standard pitch" really was back then (although certainly lower than A=440), taken together there is a very strong possibility that if we had a Time Machine and could observe these guys playing their vihuelas, they would be in the ball park of a modern guitar. The dissertation I have on Mudarra does not consider all that, however, they do point out that several intabulations compared to vocal part originals imply he used several different tunings, or different instruments, including Standard G, a higher one at Ab, lower at F and even down to modern E.
As I explained these would be "conceptual" tunings or "ball park" if you want. So I have no problem with transporting these tablatures to standard tuning guitars in the modern era. Venegas also has a diagram for his keyboard tablature that matches a vihuela frets to a keyboard such that he wants everyone to use or conceive of a low E pitched instrument and he called it the "Elami" vihuela. He required that to realize all the vocal ranges of the motets he was entabulating. And that right there should be enough to explain WHY we have arrived at the modern guitar tessitura in the first place, and these Renaissance nerds that insist on transposing vihuela music conceptually, is a wasted confusing exercise when they should just talk in terms of modern guitar tonalities for simplicity of concept.
Now having said ALL that, Narváez is a rare intabulator that he has provided an extra cifer to discern the mensural notation "conception" of modes or tonality. So for this piece Vacas, he has bass clef or F clef on the 5th course, 3rd fret, and C clef or middle C tenor clef, on the first fret of the third course. What that means, and seems to confuse all Renaissance nerds as I explained earlier, is he is envisioning his vihuela "AS IF" tuned NOT to standard G, but up to A. Capo 5 on a modern guitar. And You see why Sainz de La Maza arranged it in D minor, therefore. Again, these ideas are erroneous as Brune explained you don't want to tune sharp or whatever, it would be ridiculous, and they did not use A=440 etc etc.
We see how flamenco guitarists managed to slice through all this confusion with a darn capo. When we "talk" about flamenco guitar tonality, we talk as if the capo has been removed, and the Renaissance nerds are doing the exact opposite.
I’m confused about whether we agree or disagree.
My thought is that Segovia just played the Guardame romanza by reading a western notation version straight off of Narvaez’s entablature. Posted here from Dick Hoban’s collection of cleaned up tabs from original sources by Narvaez etc. The way played on vihuela doesn’t change location on the fretboard when it’s then played on guitar, but since the guitar is three steps lower than the standard vihuela, it drops the ‘key’ from Dm to Am automatically.
If I understand what you’re saying is that Sainz kept the original key of the vihuela in G and fitted it on the guitar fretboard in a way that doesn’t follow how it works out in vihuela in G.
Now two things, the vihuela players did have a cejilla to modify keys, but to yours and Brune’s point they had no standard pitch. Pitch of course was different in every region. But the well known anecdote about the string selection for lutes and vihuela was ‘tune the highest pitched string up to where you dare before it breaks’ - so they were probably able to tune each sized vihuela to different ‘keys’. For example the 60cm ‘G’ vihuela could be tuned to F# and the F sized vihuela could go down to E and the E sized scale could be tuned down to D, just like a modern guitar. Add the cejilla to that and the player could reach a variety of keys to accommodate a singers range.
Hence the common Renaissance singer would bark at the vihuelista “Tres por medio, maricon!”
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My thought is that Segovia just played the Guardame romanza by reading a western notation version straight off of Narvaez’s entablature.
Pujol advocated, at least in one case I observed, using the tuning of 3=F#, and arranged ie, used the tabs as a basis but added fingerings and such that might have differed slightly, the pieces in the CONCEPTUAL key of the fingerboard...meaning, he pretended to have the Elami vihuela, which I believe makes sense as to WHY our modern guitar is tuned close to that at the end of the day anyway (modern guitar is the same as Venegas diagram tuned to E, with the only exception being the 3=G not F#). I am not aware if Pujol also used a capo or not like some modern players use when interpreting this material.
Segovia and other classical players are using the tabs as a basis to arrange certain pieces for STANDARD TUNED guitars, ie, they first get the notes in standard notation themselves from the tabs, then arrange the fingerings as they see fit, ignoring much of the implied fingerings from the original tabs...in some cases the conceptual key is also altered. It is glaring to me how the classical guys have generally skipped the cool flamenco related tonalities I am seeing, because they were probably too "weird"....but Manolo Sanlucar would have realized what he missed if he had opened up those tablatures (he mentioned musica ficta and the vihuela in passing as part of the evil ecclesiastical...meaning he read ABOUT it, heard it like I did from Bream etc, and ignored it). It is the taste of the classical guys that has made us miss this important connection in flamenco research.
quote:
but since the guitar is three steps lower than the standard vihuela, it drops the ‘key’ from Dm to Am automatically.
from C MINOR to A minor is what you should mean....and what I was saying earlier is that this is most likely not literal...ie., a supposedly "standard G" vihuela would sound something closer to our modern "E" if we could go back in time and observe. So the IDEA that we need to mentally transpose is redundant exercise and we should actually talk about the tonalities AS IF they are just guitars with the third string dropped to F#. Aka "Rondeña". Any LITERAL transpositions can be dealt with via capo (realizing the Vihuela duets of Valderrabano as exemplified).
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If I understand what you’re saying is that Sainz kept the original key of the vihuela in G and fitted it on the guitar fretboard in a way that doesn’t follow how it works out in vihuela in G.
There is a clarification needed here....Narvaez uses CLEF markings to indicate the true mode CONCEPT...ie, the "key" he is thinking about. This means we have to "imagine" his vihuela is NOT IN G, it is IN A (ADGBEA pitch 6-1). It is using THIS description that Sainz de la Maza interpreted the tabs, which should be in C minor based in the standard tuning, but is up a WHOLE step from Standard, ie, D MINOR. After he gets his notation down he refingers AND REHARMONIZED the whole piece.
My point earlier is again, these mental gymnastics in transposition are over complicating a simple issue. The pitches are ARBITRARY!!! We should be interpreting the tabs as if they are MODERN GUITARS tuned with 3=F# (as pujol did). That would make life both simple in terms of musical translation and LIKELY closer to reality. Even mensural vocal motets were not literal for the voice...usually sung lower in a comfortable range. Modern choirs are doing this ....so why must scholars insist on a "G conceptual key" for the Lute??? It makes zero sense to me.
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Now two things, the vihuela players did have a cejilla to modify keys,
Far as we know, and I think Kitarist pinned it down a few years back to mid 1600's, a hundred years after Bermudo, they DID NOT have a capo. That is why he advocated for the "conception" or MENTAL IMAGE of owning 7 vihuelas in order to realize all vocal motets....He wanted you to theoretically transpose so you could understand all the different modes (otherwise we call them keys like Bach's well tempered thing) on the fingerboard. It gets very messy, but again, Venegas gives us a keyboard that if we pretend it was tuned to some standard, the low E instruments (assuming they are the BIGGEST compared to the others) is pointing in the direction of all this arbitrary pitch and ambiguous tonality, such that we ARRIVE at our modern guitar tessatura.
The valderrrbano duets are arranged for two instruments tuned in unison, minor 3rd (I showed you that above), 4ths (!) and 5ths (!!!). I mean think about how crazy that would be to own that many different sized instruments just to play a few motets. Practicality suggests one would just tune your main vihuela FLAT relative to the higher pitched one.
I see where you are going now. A few things, I have seen direct transcriptions from vihuela tablature to notation, and it should be pointed out that ( in my notion this is a huge over complication of a simple thing) the vihuela is tuned exactly like the Italian Renaissance lute. The tuning is the same at the standard mensure, scale length was about 60 cm, they used another system of measurement, but in modern measurement it’s close enough to call it 60cm for clarity sake.
I’m coming at this from the point of view of a lute maker, the vihuela was a sidebar and the lute family at the time of the vihuela included lutes ranging in size from Descant in A ( equivalent to our current system) and up to the standard in G at 60 cm, and down to the bass lute in equivalent to today’s D, like guitar tuned D to d’.
The renaissance lute tuning is like a modern guitar with the G string lowered a half a step, it’s where the vihuela gets all its size and string length variations. So I see Bermudo as a theorist, not a full on practitioner of the art of playing. That’s the thing, he’s proposing these various string lengths and tunings as ways to get around the range problems, but his work soon becomes obsolete because guess what? Monteverdi comes along, string fabrication techniques improve and then the long neck lutes like Chitarrone happen and the vihuela is no longer needed.
But the body of work exists and it can be played on the renaissance lute in G. Because it’s fact that the G range lute was standard, from the perspective of the Italian and German Renaissance lute makers. The vihuela was also played in Italy which at that time was regionally under Spanish rule. The Austrians and the Spanish were forced fighting over Italy constantly. But during the epoch of the Vihuela big swaths of modern day Italy were Spanish. They both played the lute in G and the sister instrument, the Vihuela in G.
There also was a cejilla I’m pretty sure, and that Bermudo’s work is highly conceptual, but not necessarily the common practice. In fact probably only the most elite people could afford his book and the expense of strings at the same time. Here is a good time to point out why patronage was so important in the times from the Renaissance to the end of the courtly musician, the patron bought the strings for the court bands as a state expense to providing diplomatic music and private entertainment.
Strings were like Brune’ said so expensive that they were used as gifts to courts by traveling diplomats. Queen Elizabeth received strings from various ambassadors and she herself could play the lute.
Back to your point, I see how it could be an oversight by the early 20th century guitarists to cross up how they understood the vihuela tablature because they were in thier own. Since then there has been deep research into this music and reconstructions of the vihuela are now very accurate based on the iconography, the texts and the few examples bumping around of extant vihuelas. The early 20th century dudes got a lot of things wrong, due to their agendas over research.
I see what you’re pointing out that they missed, but today those suppositions have been challenged through the historical reconstruction movement.
1. I’m coming at this from the point of view of a lute maker, the vihuela was a sidebar and the lute family at the time of the vihuela included lutes ranging in size from Descant in A ( equivalent to our current system) and up to the standard in G at 60 cm, and down to the bass lute in equivalent to today’s D, like guitar tuned D to d’.
...2.But the body of work exists and it can be played on the renaissance lute in G. Because it’s fact that the G range lute was standard, from the perspective of the Italian and German Renaissance lute makers. The vihuela was also played in Italy which at that time was regionally under Spanish rule. The Austrians and the Spanish were forced fighting over Italy constantly. But during the epoch of the Vihuela big swaths of modern day Italy were Spanish. They both played the lute in G and the sister instrument, the Vihuela in G.
....3.There also was a cejilla I’m pretty sure,
....4. Strings were like Brune’ said so expensive that they were used as gifts to courts by traveling diplomats. Queen Elizabeth received strings from various ambassadors and she herself could play the lute.
Brune emailed me yesterday to clarify that in addition to not wanting to over tune strings beyond the break point, that they would not want to have a string too low tension either as the low courses would be too floppy. I totally get this point, however, he also said that a set of strings designed for a specific size instrument would not have an allowance beyond a half-step (semi-tone)...which I am having big problems conceptualizing, or accepting for many reasons.
The first glaring reason is that it would render my 7 vihuela settings with drop 6th string UNPLAYABLE, unless you went out of your way to purchase a special string just for those works (one of which is situated in the center of a complete mass meaning you could not play the mass on one vihuela). The second is that having zero flexibility in tuning beyond a semitone, even for a range of instrument sizes in your Rich duke's court collection, renders ensembles dangerous to impossible to realize. Like any and all pieces have to be based on this risky lute tuning situation, or it is just like all out of tune as the flutes and organ pipes or whatever the heck else is happening can't be adjusted either. And that is due to "standard" pitch issues in general that we now have to address via your points that I numbered.
1. You seem to imply that size, ie, 60cm=G STANDARD, is allowing for a modern view that the second fret first course is A=440. And if you are not implying this literally, then you mean a sort of bell curve of pitch range such that situated at the apex of this curve, again, we see second fret first course is A=440. Yes? And therefore relative to this "standard", the other range of instrument sizes would have similar bell curves at RELATIVE higher or lower pitches based on construction. And this bell curve has a variation within say a half-step above and a half-step below? Or else the instrument won't function properly?
I am giving a pretty big allowance there (If what Brune said is true about string sets not even working unless at exact tension), however, I am not seeing such a constraint in any historical pitch evidence I am aware of (including metal pipe organs), so I am super curious where and how historians are arriving at this constraint? And I am not clear if you are perhaps even further implying an even smaller constraint, that historically informed practice means G and only G as we know it today (which is even worse).
2. the "body of work" is the tabs themselves which, if there is a construction standard constraint on PITCH, well, there are huge discrepancies between the in tabulations and mensural notation. We have to now allow many variables of the intent...since we can't "adjust our tuning" to match the vocal score, due to instruments and string limitation, must we accept that the players had different sized instruments in their collection (Mudarra had only ONE inventoried at death, yet his music implies 4 or more), or were bipolar (lets call them crazy) with their feelings about transposing and vocal ranges? Case in point...Josquin same mass is a half step higher in Mudarra than Fuenllana. That means, he wants you to sing HIGHER, or that his instrument was BIGGER? Which is it?
I see, in general, Lute/vihuela guys preferred the range of many motets set a whole step DOWN or lower, than mensural notation. That means either the standard pitch for singing was LOWER, or the instruments were tuned HIGHER than standard. This thing with Narvaez clef changes also implies the same. However, if we consider that even MODERN lute guys are tuning significantly FLAT in general, this entire issue goes away and both pitch and conceptual keys are ARBITRARY. I mean why would a modern guy as below, with modern string tech, not tune to A=440 if to be historically "correct"? 7:57-9 min:
What I am getting at it is that if we triangulate all the info, we are getting at an instrument that can realize the full vocal range (which unlike instrument pitches has NOT EVOLVED in humans in 500 years...the break zone is what it is for human voices), and that range is literally the modern guitar...larger or smaller instruments simply RELATIVE to that. So forcing "G=G standard" as a concept is not literal. For me "G standard" could be anything from E up to A literally, and so we (meaning scholars that transpose lute tabs pretending they are literally in G) SHOULD be using E based on the triangulated info.
3. Kitarist info on Capo linked earlier seems to imply capotasto was for "nut", and there was a "tastino" which is a possible moving fret...can't even say it was a proper capo until 1700s it seems. But if you ever find a clear description of it earlier it would be interesting to know.
4. String prices are going up to that level once again it seems. But yeah, I mean that means to me you can't have a pitch standard, and you will want to tune it as LOW TENSION as possible or the game is over till Christmas.
Here is the pitch standard problem laid out clearly:
You do know I studied with a professional lute maker and I’m not pulling stuff out of my ass?
I also never said anything about standard pitch at A440- I’ve built 4 vihuelas and a couple renaissance four course guitars, I have looked carefully at the genre. I probably know more about it than that guy in the video.
If you want to talk about early gut strings or just 16th century strings it’s a field of weeds and there are many many opinions that carry validity.
First gut string making was a cottage industry, not a uniform corporate culture. There were many regions making strings and at any particular time these regions or even city to city had different levels of technology and string style and quality. There was not a uniform grade of string.
Second, it’s worth reading Oliver Webber’s writings first more insight about the possibilities for pitch and tension. He’s a major researcher in gut string history and performance. It’s generally understood now that the vihuela was strung in unison courses, not octaves, although octaves are permissible (why not) and in light of Webber’s research our understanding of late 16th century strings is complicated.
I categorize the Pujol, Bream, Segovia era of early music performance as heavily colored by romantic music from the 19th century and full of misunderstandings about the vihuela.
Next is the beginning of the ‘historical reproduction era’ from roughly the 1960’s to late 70’s. Then there is a period where the game gets more researched and more accurate. To about the mid 1990’s - after that the last 30 years had been a big expansion in the field and tons of research and that kick off of focused Iberian music research from about th mid 1990’s ( finding Santiago de murcia and more vihuela evidence etc.)
To me the Bream/Pujol era is the dark ages, post 1995 is the enlightenment. To me the enlightenment means dropping the study of the vihuela based on a ‘how it fits in the modern guitar’ model and working with the how does it work on a reconstructed historical vihuela. So the Segovia is beautifully played, but there’s more to be understood from the vihuela itself.
Some of the problems Oliver Webber outlines could have also applied to plucked strings of the 16th century. But with all historical reconstruction stuff, we’re mostly in the weeds.
For me, I’m not that hung up on the gulf between Segovia/Sainz and the contemporary folks playing the vihuela. I like the weirdness of the first recordings they made and how the training the old boys received influences their interpretations. It’s fine. It’s also interesting and very satisfying to hear that music on a reconstruction of a vihuela because it’s very different and the structure / playability and sound of the reconstruction is so intimate. It’s different sound quality from both the guitar and the lute.
If you find things the Segovia/Pujol era people missed that connect it to your *secret project that’s great. For me I’m just interested in making a few more vihuelas on my luthier bucket list. In the meantime I just listen to them. And play a bit of it on my modern guitar.
This must have been in the late 1990’s. I met him in 2000 in Sevilla and he was playing a new vihuela that had an Ebony back & sides with a different rose. I have a memory for these details. He played with a singer.
He was also Paola Hermosa’s teacher at the Sevilla conservatory. I talked to her about him a few years ago before her YouTube channel blew up. She had a few hundred followers and most of them were dorks drooling on themselves that a hot chick was playing the guitar, so when I asked her about Sr. Moreno she was very open and friendly. She’s quite knowledgeable on this stuff being his student.
You do know I studied with a professional lute maker and I’m not pulling stuff out of my ass?
I also never said anything about standard pitch at A440- I’ve built 4 vihuelas and a couple renaissance four course guitars, I have looked carefully at the genre. I probably know more about it than that guy in the video.
I know that is why I was trying to get clarification (like what is the range you are allowing your hand built instrument to be pitched at? That is a constraint). The Bermudo you turned me on to, with the 7 vihuelas, it allows the student to understand conceptual transposition, which is very important because the "G=Standard" is a conceptual key standard, not a literal or even realistic one due to there being no fixed pitch for that "G" and the mensural notion being open to interpretation, ie, can be sung at various pitches as well. The 7 vihuelas breaks you out of the language/mental barrier of "wait....if we are in G standard here, then this motet is in the WRONG mode...." and a huge etc., and that is NOT his own made up idea but a clarification as to what all the vihuela guys up to his time had already been doing.
By my reading of the modern literature where they transport vihuela tabs from various renaissance publications into either language or modern notation, they are placing the key signature as if we must be trapped once again in "G standard" mentality, ALL the time. I am saying this was not the way it was, it was far more liberated from that so it seems when engaging with the materials, and today we still enjoy the same freedom they had, and were teaching, back then, as far as flamenco guitar is discussed, learned, or written down. ("dos por medio, no perdon, TRES por medio ahora" is a concept the vihuela guys seemed to be using in their tabs when they say to intonate the voice, or give clef marks on the string lines, that shift all the time). And all that freedom thanks to the capo. So reading about lute or vihuela (or just talking about what the hell key something is "in") I am constantly having to battle the "G=standard" mental constraints and discrepancies which to me seem imposed by modern thinking.
The lute family has a range just like you said, and at the time it was established that there were standard sizes with similar string lengths to make them tune to a range roughly equal to human voice ranges. Now they didn’t have definite pitches assigned to these string lengths, but they did definitely fit into rough parameters of pitch. So just for ease of talking about it we say the most basic version of a renaissance lute has roughly a 58 to 60 cm scale and that it ends up in pitch roughly at G, although you can lute your 6 course Renaissance lute to higher of lower pitch if you like. It’s really dependent on whether you’re playing with others and you all agree on what A means to you. Modern lute ensembles don’t have to tune to A440; they can pick any A they want, but for expediency that 60cm lute is often referred to as “a lute in G” to distinguish it from other lute’s.
Now because the Vihuela is exactly the equivalent of a Renaissance 6 course lute, but with a flat back and a guitar like body shape, the same size class nomenclature applies to the vihuela, that’s why we refer to vihuela in G or F or possibly E or D or going up a vihuela in A - it’s because today that’s how early music specialists talk about lute and vihuela sizes.
that’s why we refer to vihuela in G or F or possibly E or D or going up a vihuela in A - it’s because today that’s how early music specialists talk about lute and vihuela sizes.
Right thanks for the clarification. You can ignore my gripes that follow, it is not about your knowledge and the general understanding, it is really about the pitch level of singing/key the music should be thought to be "in".
So this statement is basically my point earlier that it is all across the spectrum, yet despite the importance of the "tenor clef and voice/range" in that era (which we have evolved to be the most popular instrument concept on Earth, Guitar E-E with three ledger lines below and above the G clef an octave down aka the tenor clef shifted by one slot), we are forced to relate ALL the musical materials that are transported from voice motet to tablature, AS IF, for no explained reason, the ALTO LUTE is the king (well, it is based on "G" CONCEPT, for which there was no pitch reference).
My gripe is with the "specialists" who place the lower voice lute in the tenor range (matching the modern guitar), and not using THAT as the standard lens of interpretation. I don't mean they should ignore the smaller "alto lute" (in G), but rather, adjust their concept of pitch classifications for these instruments (shift all 7 DOWN a pitch in your list so that the "alto lute" is actually in E). This born out by the fact even modern Lute players are tending toward F for this instrument replica, and taken together with all the materials available during the renaissance...it is all pointing in the direction (by my reading of it) that we have arrived at the modern guitar range and clef (NOT that the lower range "took over", but that was the likely PITCH level intent all along).
As an aside to add to the above, the "5-course vihuela" appears in 1554 Fuenllana. I have already read that most scholars consider this to be the "baroque guitar" (earliest known) based on internal tuning...nobody seems concerned that when you compare the Morales mass in mensural notation to his Arrangement, it would be exactly the pitch level of modern guitar (with 5 strings) tuned a whole step flat. Meaning...what ever this "5-course vihuela" was, it was tuned lower than the standard vihuela, and LOWER than a modern guitar as well. (Meaning he transposed from Gm to Am if we imagine modern guitar relative to score, and not to avoid awkward key fingerings because he next shows fantasias in Gm!) I can't get pitch info from Fuenllana's guitar (4 course) tabs, as there is no outside references.
All I ever hear on these modern "historically informed" recordings of vihuela lute and early guitar, is very unnaturally high pitched twangy sounding music...and if there is a singer these ridiculous high voiced sopranos going at it. I wish we had a Time Machine...but perhaps, our flamenco IS the Time Machine in some sense.
The reason most of the modern lute players center the ‘lute in G’ is because it’s the sports car that they use to work on the instrumental music written for it. Italian renaissance lute music solo genre has a vast literature written for the 60 cm sized lute. The contemporary people who work with singers with any seriousness invest in lower range instruments. Usually ‘lute in F’ or E and weirdos also get bass lutes in D if they play in consorts. And the medieval lute with 5 or 6 courses is again a thing that came earlier. It’s the type of instrument you might see in iconography like the Cantigas de Santa Maria ( IIRC)
The vihuela/ compatable lute literature holds about 700 vocal songs and it’s really dependent on who is singing them for the accompanying musician to select a lute. A great many of those songs work in a soprano range that’s quite high, so the vihuela in G is the compatable choice for accompaniment. Most flamenco work you’re used to isn’t in that range. So what’s normal to you may not be normal for all Renaissance vocal repertoire.
This is normal range for mid - late Renaissance instrumental music:
Francesco da Milano, almost contemporary with the guy in the court at Valencia Luis de Milan- Milano is a bigger better professional than Milan, but the music they wrote can be played on early Renaissance lutes. So the idea later that Fuenllana is using a baroque guitar with five courses may or may not be the case.
Today we have 6 string electric basses, but after a decade of tickling it, many players just go back to P bass, because it slaps hard. Maybe a big 5 course lute ( vihuela ) slapped harder for Fuenllana? We really don’t know. There are also people how don’t think the vihuela even existed. That’s a difficult argument to mount today because the iconographic evidence and new clues point to a vihuela. Plus the existence of the vihuela de arco.
Some Milano
Just for example here’s a maker who offers a range of the same more or less vihuela in sizes A thru E with different string lengths. All this vihuela reconstruction makes you wonder if more vihuelas are being made today or in 1550?
Also note the Viola da Mano is a body shape like a viol, but with a flat top strung like a lute. In other words a vihuela with a viol shaped body and a carved peg box instead of a peg head. The Viola da Mano was supposedly more popular in Italy and the guitar shaped vihuela was more popular in Iberia proper.
The Portuguese or some one with th a Portuguese trading company even brought a Viola da Mano to Japan. Sold or given to Japanese court people.
This is the interesting Japanese Vihuela- Momoyama era ( peach mountain 😂) momo means peach, Yama is mountain.
This was part of a folding screen clearly depicting a Japanese person playing the lute, but curiously in a hybrid Japanese / renaissance painting style probably a Japanese artist. Circa 1570’s to 1620’s
As you can imagine this model of vihuela with a peg head and a viol body is a big hit in Japanese lute circles. Also showing hybridization of east -west painting styles which we see very little of later due to the moratorium on western cultural practices in Japan after 1600- that’s when they started monitoring Christian culture in Japan and wisely curtailed it due to their spies and diplomats reports of how the west sends priests then navies, then colonists. They shut that down hard and it’s a reason Japanese culture is relatively insular to this day.
This part of Japanese history is mostly overlooked because the feudal wars and samurai mysticism for westerns is like crack cocaine, but I live in the space that was historically the separation border between the northern government and the naughty misbehaving southwest that often didn’t follow the northern governments rules. There were secret trading bases and hidden Christian cults here and a very tough samurai border held not far from my house. They speak a different dialect to this day and in the feudal times the dialect was used as a code to weed out spies! I can speak some of the dialect myself, much to the amusement of older people.
Which is to say this area was naughty and maybe harbored some Viola da Mano players
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His criticism of Paco de Lucía was overly harsh, and reeks of jealousy or envy.
I Googled "Narciso Yepes Paco de Lucia" and came across Yepes's cirticism of Paco's Concierto de Aranjuez recording. I agree with your evaluation.
I hadn't seen Yepes's remarks before, but they provide a context for a quote from Paco I read some time ago. He said classical guitarists pay a lot of attention to tone quality, but don't pay much attention to rhythm. Paco said perhaps they should exchange their emphases.
I play about as much classical guitar as I do flamenco. My first musical education was from the Principal Trumpet of the National Symphony. Nowadays if I am annoyed by a classical performance, it is most often due to excessive distortions of rhythm.
My favorite conductor is still Arturo Toscanini, who was always the master of carefully judged and disciplined rhythm. Paco's is one of my favorite performances of the Aranjuez.
Even the very best recordings don't accurately reproduce the complex sound of the guitar.
On the subject of pitch: Surviving wind instruments show that European orchestra pitch as recently as the mid-18th century was as low as A=415Hz, while church organs from that period show pitches as high as A=550Hz. This is just about the range from A-flat to C-sharp, according to the modern standard of A=440Hz.
Instruments no older than the guitars of Antonio de Torres may have been built for pitches as low as A=428Hz.
His criticism of Paco de Lucía was overly harsh, and reeks of jealousy or envy.
I Googled "Narciso Yepes Paco de Lucia" and came across Yepes's cirticism of Paco's Concierto de Aranjuez recording. I agree with your evaluation.
I hadn't seen Yepes's remarks before, but they provide a context for a quote from Paco I read some time ago. He said classical guitarists pay a lot of attention to tone quality, but don't pay much attention to rhythm. Paco said perhaps they should exchange their emphases.
I play about as much classical guitar as I do flamenco. My first musical education was from the Principal Trumpet of the National Symphony. Nowadays if I am annoyed by a classical performance, it is most often due to excessive distortions of rhythm.
My favorite conductor is still Arturo Toscanini, who was always the master of carefully judged and disciplined rhythm. Paco's is one of my favorite performances of the Aranjuez.
Even the very best recordings don't accurately reproduce the complex sound of the guitar.
On the subject of pitch: Surviving wind instruments show that European orchestra pitch as recently as the mid-18th century was as low as A=415Hz, while church organs from that period show pitches as high as A=550Hz. This is just about the range from A-flat to C-sharp, according to the modern standard of A=440Hz.
Instruments no older than the guitars of Antonio de Torres may have been built for pitches as low as A=428Hz.
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But yeah, I mean that means to me you can't have a pitch standard, and you will want to tune it as LOW TENSION as possible or the game is over till Christmas. 
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