[SCA-Dance] Help finding tenor line

gaita@btinternet.com chris at gaita.co.uk
Wed Sep 24 14:38:26 EDT 2008


Hi

The La Spagna tenor is one of the three given by Cornazano 
(called 'Il Re de Spagna' and is 23 doubles in length). This has been 
used by many composers for arrangements but it would appear that 
a 'tenor' is a somewhat flexible idea. No period arrangement I have 
seen uses the tenor exactly - various repeated notes in the Cornazano 
version are often left out, the cadences get ornamented etc. It also 
seems that musicians when improvising around the tenor would adjust 
the arrangement to the length of the dance. In such a way you can 
arrange pretty much all the bassadanzas to some variation of the 
three Cornazano tenors. 

Also worth noting there is a very similar tenor for a basse dance in 
the Brussels ms - 'Castille la nouvelle' - but this moves at half the 
speed of the bassadanza version. This can be seen at the very useful 
website www.pbm.com/~lindahl/almond/basse/basse.html#46

I can send you a Noteworthy file of the tenor as it appears in 
Cornazano(or I could probably sort out a PDF).

Chris Elmes
 
Gaita Medieval Music
www.gaita.co.uk





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