Tablatures and Other Notations for Instruments

Abstract After questions of definition, the main part of this chapter concerns the earliest layer of the Faenza codex and the demonstration that the belief that it is a keyboard tablature is short-sighted. The extensive evidence of pairs of plucked instruments in many parts of Europe leads back to an old and much discredited theory that a duo of lute and gittern is the most likely medium for most of this music. Other cases are added as evidence that a single solution is misleading. The chapter ends with a discussion of the repertory in the Buxheim manuscript, partly as evidence that compositions remained in the repertory far longer than most people believe and partly as evidence that Binchois continued to be favoured late in the century.