Lyre Tunebook

The lyre tunebook is chugging along.  I've scored seven 19th-20th century pieces, like "Twinkle, Twinkle" and "Ode to Joy," that people will already be very familiar with.  That (in theory) helps them know if they're playing the instrument "right."  And I've also scored eight 12th - 16th century tunes (or parts of tunes) to be all medievally.  Maybe "scored" is the wrong word.  It's just melodies at the moment.  I'll be adding some accompaniment separately.

Of course, none of that repertoire is really historically appropriate for the lyre (although the 13th cen. Danish "Dromte mig et drom" is close).  But we don't have any 8th century music, period, is my understanding.  We start getting chant in the 9th cen.

I may include a section on improvising tunes, and what (I think) is historically plausible, and maybe give a couple of scored examples of my own compositions.  I hate doing that, if only because I'm so bad at transcribing what I'm playing into note values.  It takes me forever to get it right.

Comments

[Tom Handwerker]

Hi, did you ever get a lyre tune book assembled?

Lord Volkard Rovan
House Hedgehog

[TeleriB]

Hello!

No, I never did, although now that my kids are a bit older, I'm coming back to this hobby. The lyre book is definitely on my list.

In the meanwhile, I can recommend Lani Thompson's "My Kantele is My Teacher" ebook:
http://www.kantelemusic.com/product_bookteach.html

It has music for 5- and 10-string kanteles (Finnish traditional zither). The 10-string music won't fit on a lyre, but the 5-string does admirably (if you're tuned do-re-mi-fa-so-la), and 19 out of the 36 given tunes have 5-string arrangements. It runs $20, which is a buck a tune - not too bad for sheet music!

Better, the tunes are mostly of a very period 'home and away' form, repeating simple patterns a step apart, or repeating with variations. They're a great basis for learning how to compose your own simple but plausibly period melodies, and for learning how to ornament a simple melody.