Director of Early Music Missouri Jeff Noonan, was asked recently to make some short “show & tell” videos about the lute and related instruments for a music appreciation class. Perhaps some of our fans will enjoy them.
Guárdame las vacas by Luys de Narváez
Luys de Narváez (fl. 1526 - 1549), a native of Granada, worked at the Spanish royal court for much of his career. Although he wrote and published some vocal music, he remains best known for his collection of music for the vihuela published in 1538. The collection, titled Los seys libros del delphín includes dances, arrangements of vocal pieces, fantasies and sets of divisions or variations.
Two versions of the vihuela were popular in the late 15th- and early 16th-centuries in Spain. Both were shaped like a guitar and both had frets, but one was designed to be played with a bow, the other designed to be plucked. Narváez composed for the plucked version. Though it is neither, the vihuela looks like a guitar but is strung and tuned like a lute. Although the vihuela was known in Italy in the early 16th century, the bulk of the music specifically identified as for the vihuela appeared in Spain in the first half of the century.
Narváez based this set of variations on a well-known Spanish song, Guárdame las vacas. The song itself is built on a widely-known chord pattern called the romanesca. (An even better-known version of the romanesca is Greensleeves, the old English song.) Guárdame las vacas offers four repetitions of the romanesca chord pattern, each with a slightly more complex variation over it. Narváez’s version ends quietly with a graceful little coda of descending thirds.
Jeff is playing a vihuela built in Santa Fe, New Mexico by his old friend Alan Suits in 2019.