Why Marimbists should add Lute Transcriptions to their Repertoire
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I can already foresee all of the ‘Bach Stans’ yelling at me, so let me start by saying “I LOVE Bach!” Like most percussionists, I fell in love with the popular Bach Cello Suites. While they are wonderful, I couldn’t help but feel redundancy hearing the same few suites and movements played over and over again. I then began to search for lesser-played Bach music that still works on marimba, which is when I found the Lute Suites.
There were a few people playing and researching these already; Rebecca Kite, Brad Mayer, Nanae Mimura, Gunnar Folsom, and Mark Boseman being a few examples, but these numbers were drastically less than Cello. As I studied the Bach Lute Suites, I noticed that lute translates wonderfully to the marimba, but they provide more technical challenges than his Cello suites.
I’m currently writing my dissertation on the subject of finding Baroque lute music that translates well to marimba and is also accessible to students perfecting their technique. In this post, I’ll introduce my argument of lute being an ideal source material and a brief guide to finding and transcribing your own lute music!
Sound Production: Marimba and Cello Vs. Marimba and Lute
My argument is that the lute repertoire works much better than cello or violin as transcription source material, being that lute and marimba have a much more complementary sound production than cello and marimba do. Let’s analyze each of these instruments using the three factors of sound production: attack, sustain, and decay.
Attack
Every instrument has an attack, which is the moment a sound is initially made. That could be a bow creating friction, a string being plucked, or a mallet striking a bar.
Check out this spectrogram of a plucked string. You can see the attack illustrated by the single high peak at the very beginning.
Decay
Every instrument also has a decay. In regards to marimba, think about striking a low C bar. After the initial attack the pitch can still be heard getting softer over time, which is the decay. For a visual representation look at the decay created by striking a marimba bar.
Sustain
Sustain is a prolonged sound that is devoid of attack and decay. Bowed instruments accomplish this by continuously bowing, but the marimba and lute cannot truly sustain! Yes, we’ve seen recent pieces that use a bow on marimba, but those are relatively slow-moving passages and are not meant to replace mallets. For reference, take a look at this spectrogram of a cello bowed note.
Are Rolls Sustain?
“But what about rolling on marimba? Doesn’t that sustain sound?” I’m glad you asked! The answer is yes… and no. Rolling on marimba has been a technique used for years now as a way to sustain and connect pitches, but it is not a true sustain. Technically, rolling is just stringing together a group of attacks before pitches get the chance to fully decay. While we can sometimes make this sound convincing, it’s never going to be a perfect replacement. If you look at the spectrogram below you can see clear pillars of attack that are much more pronounced compared to the cello sustain.
How Does This Affect Picking Repertoire?
While I would never tell anyone to stop playing our current cello repertoire, I think the information above is worth exploring further. One of the most important aspects of transcribing is keeping as much original authenticity as possible. As seen above in just a few examples of sound production, the marimba will never be able to truly replicate bowed sustain.
Luckily, the lute’s sound production (and notation) are remarkably similar to that of the marimba, which makes it an ideal instrument to borrow repertoire from!
Breaking Past Bach
I want to reiterate that I adore Bach, but percussionists have an opportunity to further our craft and increase the popularity of Baroque music by expanding our repertoire past him!
Using my newfound interest in lute transcriptions (and needing to find more accessible lute music for students) I began to search for lute music by other Baroque composers. Guess what… there’s a lot to pull from! Surprisingly, Wikipedia offers a good starting point by listing a number of lute composers by era and country. Searching these composers on YouTube and IMSLP gives a great starting point for your own transcriptions!
So yeah, Bach is great… but he’s not the only Baroque composer for us. I challenge my percussion colleagues to experiment, learn, and grow by thinking outside of our current repertoire!
Keep an eye out for future posts covering the specific pedagogy I’ve been creating from my lute research, as well as a few new lute transcriptions! In the meantime, feel free to check out some of my previous lute transcriptions including the Lute Suite in C Minor which I linked below!
