Keyboard tablature

File:BuxWV83 organ tablature.jpg

An example: Dieterich Buxtehude's O dulcis Jesu (BuxWV 83) in full score using tablature

Keyboard tablature is a form of musical notation for keyboard instruments. Widely used in some parts of Europe from the 15th century, it co-existed with, and was eventually replaced by modern staff notation in the 18th century. The defining characteristic of the best known type, German organ tablature, is the use of lettersTemplate:Efn to indicate pitch (with added stems or loops to indicate accidentals) as well as beams for rhythm. Spain and Portugal used a slightly different cipher tablature, called cifra.

Historical details

The earliest extant music manuscripts written in German tablature date from the first half of the 15th century, with the oldest example, a German manuscript dating from 1432, containing the earliest known setting of a partial organ mass as well as a piece based on a cantus firmus.Template:Sfn These manuscripts used letters (the same as today) to identify pitch, with the upper voice typically written on a staff in mensural notation.Template:Sfn This style was also present in other German-speaking areas, such as Austria.Template:Sfn These manuscripts contain valuable information as to the evolution of the music from the period,Template:Sfn with extensive evidence of the influence of vocal, and later dance music, on early instrumental music.Template:Sfn This practice which could still be seen in collections from the 16th centuryTemplate:Sfn eventually led to the full-fledged Baroque dance suites of later centuries.Template:Sfn This hybrid tablature was also featured in some early printed music books, such as Arnolt Schlick’s Tabulaturen etlicher Lobgesang und Lidlein of 1512.Template:Sfn

Later notation that included the upper voice in letters as wellTemplate:Sfn became prevalent in the latter part of the 16th century.Template:Sfn Even works published in open score, such as Samuel Scheidt's Tablatura Nova (1624), may have been influenced by the strict vertical alignment of so-called "new German organ tablature".Template:Sfn Remaining in use in Germany (and neighboring areas, such as modern-day HungaryTemplate:Sfn or PolandTemplate:Sfn) through the time of Bach,Template:Sfn the music of some composers of the period remains available only in manuscript tablature format.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The last use of this style of notation is in Johann Samuel Petri’s Anleitung zur praktischen Musik (1782).

In France, England and Italy, staff notation was the norm,Template:Sfn and while there are isolated examples of tablature from England (the 14c Robertsbridge codex), there is no evidence that such use was as widespread as in Germany.

Notation

North German tablature

The use of tablature was not limited to solely keyboard music: many vocal works of the period, notably in the Düben collection, survive in this format.

Iberian cipher notation

Juan Bermudo's Declaración de instrumentos musicales (1555) introduced two tablatures, one assigning numerals from 1 to 42 to each key of the organ, and the second counting white keys only from 1 to 23. Only a third method of cifra was widely adopted however: introduced in Venegas de Henestrosa's Libro de cifra nueva (1557), and later used in Cabezón’s Obras de música (1578), it used 1-7 with together accidentals; slashes lower the octave and superscript dots raise it.Template:Sfn

See also

• Tablature
• Klavarskribo
• Piano roll

External links

• Obras de musica para tecla, arpa y vihuela (click "View options" JPG icon) - Biblioteca Nacional de España info