Here the altus secundus provides the distraction for the fact that the superius is not sustained. That is a good lesson in playing polyphony: it is all right to kill a voice as long as we distract our audience by providing entertainment elsewhere. Francesco gets away with murder here and so can we. This draws attention away from the fact that we do not sustain the other upper voice. In measure 2 one of the two upper voices has a florid run. Every course can have its own character, especially when using gut strings, and we should exploit these colours to make the different voices stand out. The entrance of the piece, unisono by superius and altus primus played on two courses, makes that clear. The second lesson is that if two voices share the same pitch, we must play these notes on different positions on our lutes whenever possible. Here the bassus gets quite some attention by the off-beat jump from the g to the d. Another good example of added rhythmic interest is in the second half of measure 6.
![the sound of one hand clapping koan the sound of one hand clapping koan](http://ll-media.tmz.com/2010/11/24/1124-amber-video-credit.jpg)
#The sound of one hand clapping koan free
So, don’t be afraid to be rhythmic in what is a free flowing vocal piece in the original. The motet suddenly sounds like a French chanson with its characteristic long-short-short opening! This is more than plucking the strings again to prevent the notes from fading away it is giving a new, rhythmic character to the theme. Every subsequent entry of the Pater Noster theme receives the same treatment. Already in measure 1 he replaced the double whole by a whole note and two halves. The first lesson is that long notes don’t work on a lute, according to Francesco. In measure 5 I have silently corrected the printing error in the 1536 edition. You could argue about the exact length of some of the notes in the intabulation, but for its current purpose this transcription will serve. To learn from Francesco’s method of intabulating, and by extension distil an approach at playing this piece, I have printed (pdf-file) the first nine measures of Josquin’s motet above Francesco’s intabulation, the latter notated in tablature as well as on three staves to make the polyphony clear. In my search for enlightenment I turned to Francesco da Milano’s intabulation of the six-part motet Pater Noster/Ave Maria composed by Josquin des Prez. How can one play six-part polyphony on a Renaissance lute? To me, this question is like the Zen koan about the sound of one hand clapping. Symbolism of lutes in 17th century paintings.Instruments in their natural environment.Genjōkōan – Realising Music Through Lute Playing.Cultivating the Flower – Zeami on lute playing.Lute Music from the Zeghere van Male MS.
![the sound of one hand clapping koan the sound of one hand clapping koan](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/zen-121228092420-phpapp02/95/zen-20-638.jpg)
Lute music from a 17th century traveller to Japan.Ligatures and coloration in late renaissance music.Continuo Playing on Baroque Lute – Lesson five: three songs by Telemann.Continuo Playing on Baroque Lute – Lesson three: basic rules.Continuo Playing on Baroque Lute – Lesson two: exercises.
![the sound of one hand clapping koan the sound of one hand clapping koan](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QUI1uUAI1Gg/T5GF9J7zJ0I/AAAAAAAAAEc/vne2SC7Vwes/s1600/hands-clapping.jpg)