Solos - Tobias Hume

...originally written for Lyra Viol, arranged for guitar

Tobias Hume

English composer and viol player (c1579-1645). A professional soldier who served as an officer in the Swedish and Russian armies and a viol player who published two important volumes of music, principally for the Lyra Viol. [More about...... ]

As with many of my transcriptions I have used several sources for Tobias Hume’s works. For many of the works the basic structure of the pieces has been constructed from the MIDI files at http://pagesperso-orange.fr/tony.c/fretful/ which I have then checked against facsimiles of the original printed sources. (Thanks to Tony Chalkley for all his hard work in transcribing many of Hume’s pieces into MIDI, PDF and Stringwalker* format.) Another major source is the transcription of the whole of Hume’s work published in 1980 by Amadeus Verlag (Jones 1980) [Note; numbered filenames relate to the numbering in Jones.]

*Stringwalker was a tablature editor for Windows; the predecessor of Alain Veylit’s program Django - itself now superseded by Fandango which can be found at:
http://fandango.musickshandmade.com

Captain Hume’s Pavan: [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 07

The Duke of Holstone's Almayne [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06.
The title of this piece (and its companion duet The Duke of Holstone's Delight) is a puzzle as there is nowhere in the UK called Holstone. However, in view of Hume’s international career as a mercenary soldier the name is likely to be a corruption of the title 'Duke of Holstein'. This is supported by the comment made by Rossi (2008) in his chapter about Hume. He suggests (p 165) that the dedication to the Duke of Holstone refers to “one of Queen Anna’s brothers” - Anna of Denmark being the wife of King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England). In fact Anna’s brother was King Christian IV of Denmark who also held the title of Duke of Holstein.

Good Againe:
Version in A [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06.
Version in D [
PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 07.
This piece is one of Hume’s more extended works and is structured as a series of related sections. I have transcribed it virtually note for note in the A version, but by transposing the piece to D and dropping parts of the lower voice by an octave and thinning out some of the chords I think it makes a better arrangement for guitar.

My Hope is Decayed: [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 05

A Humorous Pavin [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06
It is difficult to know why this pavin is ‘humorous’ other than its odd construction with two sections of 21 and 22 bars, followed by two 7 bar sections each doubling the speed of its predecessor.

The Old Humour [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 07
I think the title of this piece might be rendered in modern English as ‘The old Style’ as, to my mind, it sounds somewhat like a short 16th century lute fantasia.

A Pavin [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 07

A Question and An Answer [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06

Touch Me Lightly [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] [MP3] Grade 06
There is a good arrangement of this in the original key of D (Biberian 1980) but I thought it would sound better on the guitar in E, hence this arrangement.

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