These six duets were originally composed for two lutes, and have here been transcribed for two guitars by Brian Jeffery from the original tablature. They will make a fine collection for anyone wishing to play guitar duets. The first two pieces are charming and very easy.
They are presented here in score.
The collection was previously published by Oxford University Press and has now been assigned to Tecla Editions.
(Note: this is simple A4 sheet music, without cover).
Contents:
Anon: Lesson
Anon: Le Rossignol ("The Nightingale")
John Johnson: The Flat Pavane
John Johnson: The Galliard to the Flat Pavane
John Dowland: My Lord Chamberlain's Galliard ("for two to play on one lute")
Thomas Robinson: Fantasia. Elaborate.
Lute duets are among the most attractive of Elizabethan consort pieces. Here are six of them transcribed for two guitars. Le rossignol imitates a nightingale, The Flat Pavane and The Galliard to the Flat Pavane are more serious, while My Lord Chamberlain’s Galliard may even be played as a duet for ‘one guitar four hands’. The ornaments in the Lesson are probably to be interpreted as mordents or short trills.
John Dowland’s My Lord Chamberlain’s Galliard was printed in his First Book of Airs of 1597. The Lord Chamberlain of the time was George Carey, Baron Hunsdon (to whom the First Book is dedicated, and for whose wife Dowland’s alman My Lady Hunsdon’s Puff is named). It is marked ‘for two to play on one lute’, and it can indeed be played on one lute (or one guitar), but personally I find it musically more satisfactory on two instruments. The ‘Cantus’ part is in fact found by itself in one Elizabethan source, suggesting that the piece was even then sometimes considered to be for two instruments.
This collection is one of a series of seven titles originally published by Oxford University Press, all of them lute music arranged for guitar by Brian Jeffery.
The seven titles in the series, now all available from Tecla, are:
Renaissance Popular Music (TECLA 0791)
Francis Cutting- Five Pieces (TECLA 0792)
John Dowland- Four Pieces (TECLA 0793)
John Dowland- Four More Pieces (TECLA 0794)
Anthony Holborne- Five Pieces (TECLA 0795)
Francis Pilkington- Five Pieces (TECLA 0796)
Six Elizabethan duets arranged for two guitars (TECLA 0797)
First published by Tecla in 1995.
This is music from the era of Shakespeare.
