WEISS' FINGERING

The Examples

The examples contained herein are most of the right hand fingerings found in the London manuscript. I did not include the thumb indications, but just the examples where the fingers (index, middle and ring) were indicated. Often, similar fingerings were in the same pieces, so I have only listed one example. I may have missed a few pieces, so please let me know if you find any others.

 

A quick summary of my ideas on right hand technique in the music of Weiss:

As one can see in the examples, the ring finger is only specifically notated twice in the entire London manuscript (This ms has over 300 pages of music). These examples are # 6 and # 14. Both are longer arpeggios where the ring finger is used on the third course.

We can see from these fingerings that Weiss used the ring finger. Whether he used it in the manner that a classical guitarist might learn today, is a completely different question.

One must keep in mind that the entire 17th century French schools of lute playing (d minor tuning) avoided using the ring finger. German lutenists adopted this way of playing and it is probably safe to assume Weiss was brought up with this tradition. Indeed, a great deal of Weiss can be played without ever having to consider using the ring finger. On the other hand, many situations arise, in both the early and late works where the ring finger seems necessary. When we look at the examples here, however, we can see several instances (particularly 9 and 10) where Weiss seems to prefer a combination of middle and index sliding over strings in situations where we might automatically use the ring finger today (coming from a modern classical guitar tradition). So we should be careful about what "looks" like an obvious ring finger situation.

 

ILLUSTRATIONS (JPG file:1 mb)

 

Disclaimer: At this point I'd like to pause for a moment to ask the reader to keep in mind that the questions of how Weiss might have done it and how we should try do it, are different matters. One should consider that right hand spacing on 13-course baroque lutes varied and varies considerably. I have heard of spacings as small as 13 cm or over 15 cm. If you have a fairly wide spacing and attack all of this music with two fingers because "that's the way Weiss did it", you're very likely to hurt your hand. So please be careful.

 

In the next days, weeks or months I'll try to continue this with examples from the 11 and 13 course repertoire as well as right hand fingering recommendations from lesser known sources.

PART II

 

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