27Aug25

27Aug25: I completed the last third of I-CFVd:Bibliothek Castelfranco Veneto, Duomo Castelfranco Lute MS (1565).

This part consisted pretty much entirely of lute trios, some or all of which appear to have been arranged by Giovanni Pacalono. They are written with the “contralto” lute a fourth below the “soprano” lute and the “tenor” lute a fifth below the soprano, so they could be for lutes tuned in A E and D, G D and low C. or a high descant lute in D, and lutes in A and G, etc.

The last two trios are also vocal intabulations of napolitanas by Ghinolfu Dattari. Sean Smith found the original vocal parts, so I have included them as well. Thanks, Sean!

The different parts of the trios sound fine when played alone. Bar for bar, they mostly fit together pretty well, mostly being comprised of 8-bar segments. But when you actually put them together, there are a lot of dissonances and a lot of sections where some of the parts are doubled, except for the last two trios, which seem to be OK in this respect. I am wondering if Pacalono actually heard these parts being played together. Trying to modify the parts to eliminate the dissonances is a task that would probably be better done with three lutenists addressing the issues. At any rate, I believe it’s above my pay grade.

The soprano part, and often the contralto part, can in general work well as lute solos. Adding the tenor part to any of these would probably create an easy lute duet.

One peculiarity is that Pacalono seems to regard galliards and saltarellos as more or less the same thing because in a couple of his trios, he identifies one part (like soprano) as a saltarello, and another part of the same piece (like tenor) as a galliard.

–Sarge