Medieval tunes

[zoukboy]

In the interest of jump starting a discussion on Medieval tunes on the mandolin, I humbly draw your attention to two transcriptions that I contributed to Mel Bay's Mandolin Sessions website in the April and June issues in 2006.

Lamento di Tristano:
http://www.mandolinsessions.com/apr06/Lamento.html

English Dance:
http://www.mandolinsessions.com/jun06/english.html

I play these in kind of a radical scordatura tuning: the E course is lowered one whole tone to D, and one of the G strings is lowered a 4th to D while the other is raised a whole tone to A. This gives a very "open" I-V-I-V-I tuning: D3A3 D4D4 A4A4 D5D5. The 5th on the bottom course makes the mandolin sound really huge.

I'd be interested in what Medieval tunes you all are playing on the mandolin.

Cheers!

[John Goodin]

Decades ago I played the tunes from Christopher Ball's A Medieval Recorder Book quite a bit. It has the Lament and quite a few of the usual suspects. The tunes that often appeared on early, early music recordings in the sixties and seventies. More recently I have enjoyed the Allan Alexander Medieval Music for Mandolin books. At least I think I have them both. Lots of these tunes sound good on big mandolins too, especially with drones and such. Beautiful music, maybe I'll get out the mando right now....

John G.

[JeffD]

Decades ago I played the tunes from Christopher Ball's A Medieval Recorder Book quite a bit. It has the Lament and quite a few of the usual suspects. The tunes that often appeared on early, early music recordings in the sixties and seventies. More recently I have enjoyed the Allan Alexander Medieval Music for Mandolin books. At least I think I have them both. Lots of these tunes sound good on big mandolins too, especially with drones and such. Beautiful music, maybe I'll get out the mando right now....

John G.

I like the Alexander books too. I have the two Medieval and the one Rennaissance book. Lots of fun for sight reading too.

[John Craton]

I edited a collection of (I think) 16 medieval and Renaissance tunes for Wolfhead Music a few years ago. They are arranged for violin (in 1st position) and piano but are quite playable on mandolin. The collection is entitled Divertissement médiévaux and includes the following selections:

Robins m’aime, Robins m’a (Adam de la Halle)
Edi Beo thu Hevene Quene (Anonymous English)
Song from “The Play of Daniel” (Anonymous French)
Ja nuns hons pris (Richard Cœur-de-Lion)
Quant voi esté et le tens revenir (Gui II)
La chanson du Roi de Navarre (Anonymous French)
D’où vient cela? (Clément Marot)
Ce fu en mai (Maniot d’Arras)
En mai quant li rossignolet (Colin Muset)
Kalenda maya (Raimboult de Vaquieras)
Biaus m’est estez (Gace Brule)
Stella spendens (Anonymous Spanish)
Nas mentes senpre teer (Anonymous Spanish)
Miri it is while sumer ilast (Anonymous English)
Gabriel fram heven-king (Anonymous English)
Sumer is icumen in (Anonymous English)

It might be something you'd want to look over (or perhaps overlook).

[Caleb]

I've got Allen Alexander's Renaissance book and I like it a lot. #It's got some great tunes. #Some of them sound familiar to one another, but there are some great melodies that do stand out. I also think he goes above and beyond by placing so much material in his books. #For example, his Celtic book has almost 50 tunes in it. #His Celtic book has helped me more than anything else since I've been leaning the instrument.

[billkilpatrick]

In the interest of jump starting a discussion on Medieval tunes on the mandolin, I humbly draw your attention to two transcriptions that I contributed to Mel Bay's Mandolin Sessions website in the April and June issues in 2006.

Lamento di Tristano:
http://www.mandolinsessions.com/apr06/Lamento.html

English Dance:
http://www.mandolinsessions.com/jun06/english.html

I play these in kind of a radical scordatura tuning: the E course is lowered one whole tone to D, and one of the G strings is lowered a 4th to D while the other is raised a whole tone to A. This gives a very "open" I-V-I-V-I tuning: D3A3 D4D4 A4A4 D5D5. The 5th on the bottom course makes the mandolin sound really huge.

I'd be interested in what Medieval tunes you all are playing on the mandolin.

Cheers!

thanks for that tuning roger - my first foray into the wonderful world of alternate mandolin tunings.

i'm working on a little dittie at the moment but my computer is causing me problems, so i can't post it to youtube ...

regarding the over-all "medieval" sound - at least my take on it - i find that playing with a risha helps - as if it were a treble lute - and playing with flat-wound steel strings tends to mellow out the brightness of the traditional mandolin.

[mandogerry]

I also like Allan's mandolin books, and confess to having bought all of them. My favorites, at the moment, are the Early Dance Tunes and Renaissance books, although his new Songs for Medieval Faires is pretty swell, too. They're all fun to play, and also lead me to look for more of the same vein of music -- finding treasures, for instance, such as the complete Playford Dancing Master scanned online (and free). It has the dance instructions, too. Not sure if this has been mentioned here before, but the link is: http://sca.uwaterloo.ca/~praetzel/music/playfd.pdf

[MLT]

I am very interested in this type of music as well. I too have seen AA's books (and heard his postings). I haven' purchased them yet, because of my due to my lack of abibility to read notation...something that I am working on remedying.

[John Uhrig]

All of Allen's books have tablature also, so don't let that stop you from getting these books. They are a great resource for those of us who don't read notation well.

[JEStanek]

Thanks, Roger!

Allan's books also come with CDs which helps me immeasurably when learning unfamiliar tunes. I have several of his books/cds.

Jamie

[John Zimm]

In the interest of jump starting a discussion on Medieval tunes on the mandolin, I humbly draw your attention to two transcriptions that I contributed to Mel Bay's Mandolin Sessions website in the April and June issues in 2006.

Lamento di Tristano:
http://www.mandolinsessions.com/apr06/Lamento.html

English Dance:
http://www.mandolinsessions.com/jun06/english.html

I play these in kind of a radical scordatura tuning: the E course is lowered one whole tone to D, and one of the G strings is lowered a 4th to D while the other is raised a whole tone to A. This gives a very "open" I-V-I-V-I tuning: D3A3 D4D4 A4A4 D5D5. The 5th on the bottom course makes the mandolin sound really huge.

I'd be interested in what Medieval tunes you all are playing on the mandolin.

Cheers!

Thanks for the links. I like Lamento di Tristano rather a lot and I look forward to hearing this on a re-tuned mandolin. Thanks again.

-John.

[zoukboy]

Thanks for the links. I like Lamento di Tristano rather a lot and I look forward to hearing this on a re-tuned mandolin. Thanks again.

-John.

You bet!

[Snakebeard Jackson]

very cool

[zoukboy]

just curious - any of you own a Medieval lute (as opposed to using an oud for Medieval European repertoire)?

[mandolinrick]

Zoukboy,

I built a flat-back lute (plans from Music Maker Kits) as I was interested in playing lute music. I use Allan's books as well, including the Lute Books. I also like his Renaissance and Medieval mandolin books.


Here's a picture of my flat back lute:

[Caleb]

Here's a picture of my flat back lute:

Wow, that's amazing. NICE WORK!

[zoukboy]

Zoukboy,

I built a flat-back lute (plans from Music Maker Kits) as I was interested in playing lute music. I use Allan's books as well, including the Lute Books. I also like his Renaissance and Medieval mandolin books.


Here's a picture of my flat back lute:

So it's a 7 course lute with a single chanterelle? Do you have it in Renaissance tuning?

[ShinyMacguffin]

Hey all, just wanted to say thanks for the info here. I just funished refurbing my first bowlback, and am excited to start learning! I am part of the Society for creative Anacronism- (rennissance and before), and am looking forward to trying alternate tunings!