Lute Music

"The Queen Of Scots Galliard" from the Marsh Lute Book

I should like to say some words about the Marsh Lute Book. Item 31 on page 61 is a piece called "The Queen Of Scots Galliard". This piece has an interesting few chords that appear to not have the root note in the bass. After discussing this with Stuart McCoy, it may be that in these cases the bass course was meant to be plucked so as to sound an octave higher. This would mean that the lowest note would be on the next course would in fact be the root of the chord. This assumes that the bass strings of the lute are tuned in octaves and that the player sounds only the octave string of the bass course.

The chords appear in bar 8 of the 2nd section and in the final bar. In the examples that follow the first 4 bars have been repeated, although this is not shown in the manuscript. This makes this bar 8 of the second equal to bar 16 of the whole piece.

Here is bar 8 of the 2nd section, as written Scots8.mid and with the change Scots8Alt.mid. Spot the difference!

Here is the complete tune with the thirds in the bass as a midi file. Scots.mid

Here is the complete tune with the root in the bass. ScotsAlt.mid

Which do you think is better ?

My lute is always strung in unisons and so I tend to play it with thirds in the bass, I kind of like it that way.