School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications

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    Teaching and Studying the Lute: International Conference Bremen 2019
    Boquet, P ; Díaz-Latorre,, X ; Held, J ; Lindberg, J ; Lowe, M ; North, N ; Pavan, F ; O'Dette, P ; Zuljan, B ; Griffiths, J ; Griffiths, J ; Wirth, S (Deutsche Lautengesellschaft and Lute Society of America, 2021-11-11)
    "The curiosity to hear music of ages past played on original instruments or historical copies has become one of the most significant recreative movements in recent cultural history. Thanks to the initial experimental work of pioneers over a century ago, contemporary music culture now values listening to music of past ages with the ears of those who first heard it. We understand it as similar to the sensory vitality that is restored into old paintings when centuries of varnish and tarnish are removed. Early experimentation was transformed into expertise, and historical performance practice has grown to become a multi-million dollar industry. The lute is a principal player on this revivalist stage and is now taught in many conservatories and music academies throughout the world. This book, based on a conference held in Bremen in September 2019, explores themes that pertain to teaching an ancient instrument in a modern institutional setting and the pedagogical challenges for both teaching and learning. It encompasses a discussion of aspects of modern teaching practice (Pascale Boquet, Jakob Lindberg, John Griffiths), the inner workings of historical technique (Paul O’Dette, Nigel North), improvisation and continuo playing (Joachim Held, Xavier Díaz-Latorre, Bor Zuljan), using the right instrument (Michael Lowe), and the continuing exploration of newly rediscovered repertoire (Franco Pavan)."
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    A Millenium of Guitars
    Griffiths, J (Contrastes Records, 2022)
    This works argues for continuity in the guitar music of Spain over a period of more than a thousand years. Spain and the guitar are inseparable. They are inseparable for reasons that are inexplicable, no matter how hard we try to invent theories. The guitar and its ancestors have always been there, not just in the time of living memory, but far beyond. Music specifically composed for the guitar and notated for it goes back some five hundred years, but evidence is preserved to show their presence in Spanish culture for at least another five centuries.
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    La música para dos guitarras de Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
    Griffiths, J (Contrastes Records, 2022)
    Reflection upon and analysis of music for two guitars by Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
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    Las variaciones y remembranzas
    Griffiths, J (Contrastes Records, 2022)
    This essay aims to show the fluid coexistence of the past with the present is one of the marvels of our musical culture. It argues that not only does music of bygone ages continue to move the passions of contemporary listeners, but ideas forged centuries ago still inspire composers to make new creations that join the ends of time into an endless circle.
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    The Lutenist's Garden
    Griffiths, J (Solaire Records, 2022)
    This work provides insight into Lute and guitar music produced in sixteenth-century France. The lute, the most serene of renaissance musical instruments, is always a welcome visitor in the garden of polyphony. As an instrument of measured tranquillity, the lute blends smoothly into the verdant surrounds, so much at home in its protected microcosm that the garden of polyphony becomes indistinguishable from the garden of the lute. Moreover, gardens and lutes have much in common. Above all, they are both places of repose, of peace, and of tranquillity. Secondly, their history has much that is shared, and that relates very closely to the deeper meanings hidden in this recording.
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    Historical Pedagogy and the Lute: Education to Match Aspirations
    Griffiths, J ; Griffiths, J ; Wirth, S (Deutsche Lautengesellschaft and Lute Society of America, 2021-11-11)
    Explores the history of institutional lute learning in Europe since 1900; explores the nineteenth-century pedagogy used in conservatorium and university practical tuition and its limitations for teaching early music, and presents an alternate pedagogical methodology based on sixteenth-century Spanish theorist Juan Bermudo.
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    Josquin and eternal life - Josquin y la vida eterna
    Griffiths, J (Note 1 Music GMBH, 2021)
    Booklet to accompany the CD "The Josquin Songbook" by María Cristina Kiehr, Jonatán Alvarado and Ariel Abramovitch
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    Vihuela en la "Coronoción de la Virgen María": Los Instrumentos
    Griffiths, J (Sociedad de la Vihuela Guitarra y Laud, 2021)
    A previously unknown painting of the coronation of the Virgin that was previously in the monastery of Santa Catalina de Siena in Valladolid and now in the church of San Pablo has the Virgin surrounded by a choir of angels and one angel playing the vihuela. The painting is anonymous and from the early sixteenth century. The vihuela in many details agrees with what is known of other similar instruments in Spain at the time
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    «il piu bel secreto et arte» Vincenzo and Vidal — a five-hundred-year legacy
    Griffiths, J (Stradivarius Edizioni Musicali, 2021)
    In Venice, around 1517, a lutenist named Vidal embarked on producing a beautiful manuscript of lute tablature, emulating a style he already knew from other lute books published in the same city a few years earlier. His book comprises one hundred and forty pages of music written in numeric tablature consisting of forty-two compositions, preceded by a table of contents and six detailed introductory pages. Vincenzo Capirola is only slightly less of a mystery figure. It has been revealed that he was from Brescia, born into a wealthy mercantile family in 1474 and that he lived a long a life until he was in his mid-seventies. He is last recorded alive in 1548 when he was seventy-four. Documentary evidence confirms his presence in Brescia in 1489, 1498, and 1548. He was in Venice in 1517. His book is one of the most important sources of lute music of the early sixteenth century. Paul Beier performs close to one third of them on this CD.
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    La tiorba encantada
    Griffiths, J (Aula Records, 2021)
    The sumptuous and sensuous sounds of the theorbo are one of the special delicacies of the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The theorbo was one of a series of innovations that saw the renaissance lute transformed beyond the wildest dreams of its earlier masters and makers. From the 1580s we learn of experiments taking in place in both France and Italy, musicians endeavouring to bring novelty to the renaissance lute, changes that would allow it to adapt to new sonorities and new ways of thinking about music. The theorbo was one of the products of these experiments, a lute that could compete with the harpsichord and that was to cast its own spell on the music of 17th-century Italy and France.