Encyclopaedia of Tablature

Alternative notations, unwritten practices 1450-1750

Backwaters of history, frontiers of research

Tablature is the generic name for many of the alternate notation systems used in Western music that are not based on the conventional representation of pitch and rhythm. Most tablatures are for instruments and aim to tell you where to put your fingers. They are called tablature, however, because they put the music into some kind of table. To musicians of earlier times, a table was what today we would call a “score”. The earliest known tablatures date from around 1450. They were of fundamental importance in the renaissance and early baroque until composers started writing scores using conventional mensural notation.

In 1906, Wilhelm Tappert published a book entitled Sang und Klang aus Alter Zeit that was the first anthology of music in tablature. Tappert published modern transcriptions of a selection of one hundred pieces for lute, guitar, vihuela, keyboards and strings although due to the technical limitations of his period, with very few facsimiles of original tablatures.

The ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF TABLATURE, is being written under the editorship of John Griffiths, David Dolata and Philippe Vendrix as part of Project Ricercar at the Centre d'Etudes Superieures de la Renaissance in Tours. It will comprise 400 examples of tablature for some forty instruments, with facsimiles, transcriptions and commentaries on all the pieces. It will be published by Brepols The examples will cover the approximate period 1450-1750. Collaborators on the project include Cristina Alís Raurich, Gregorio Bevilacqua, Hyacinthe Belliot, Vincent Besson, Aurelio Bianco, Andrés Cea Galán, Stuart Cheney, Annie Coeurdevey†, Tim Crawford, Dinko Fabris, Monica Hall, Andrew Hartig, Erin Headley, Thilo Hirsch, Jeffery Kite-Powell, Nuria LLopis, Joachim Luedtke, Andreas Michel, Pietro Prosser, Jocelyn Nelson, Davide Rebuffa, Mark Rimple, John Robinson, Daniel Russo-Batterham, Andreas Schlegel, Anne Smith, Mauro Squillante, Catalina Vicens.