[LUTE] Re: Respighi

[Arthur Ness]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Pleijsier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Arthur Ness" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Lute Net" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2008 3:19 AM
Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: Respighi

| As a total outsider in this matter, I just wonder why the Italian
| "living and breathing" "master lutenist" is unnamed as of yet.
| Paul Pleijsier
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Dear Paul,

I was told the name of the lutenist by several persons at the Francesco
conference in 1997, but I did not recognize the name and subsequently
forgot who it is.  And I've never considered it so important that I'd seek
out the name from my colleagues in Italy, or from Thomas Schall. The way
the name was mentioned casually, the lutenist was a "household name" to 
those participating in the discussions. It was ten years ago.

I never expected it would be so controversial.  And the
controversy is due solely to ugly comments by Matanya Ophee and now
Eugene <what's his name?>. They are demanding information to which they 
are
not necessarily entitled. and seem to think they will get the
information by suggesting that we are liars, and by using other unkind 
epithets ("looth
fairies"), and by characterizing the lutenist as a "phantom."  But I don't
have the information they seek, and under the circumstances, wouldn't tell
them even if I knew.

The re-discovery of the manuscript was hot news at the conference.  And
several different persons told me about it. Sort of, breathlessly
uttered, "Did _you_ hear . . ."  And I did have an extended discussion
about the discovery with at least one leading Italian lute scholar,
who thought he was on the track of the person who purchased the manuscript 
shortly after
Chilesotti's death in 1916.  He named a famous Italian 
composer/musicologist (but not
Respighi) who resided in northern Italy, not far from Chilesotti.
Possibly it may be his family who still owns the manuscript.  But that's
just a guess, particularly because the manuscript seems never to have 
appeared on the auction or
antiquarian markets, which are closely monitored by some of us.

In 1997, noone told me the identity of the owner of the manuscript (it is
possible noone knew)--information I surely would have tucked away for
future reference in my 37-column article
on the sources of lute music in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians.  It was well-known that my revisions for the next edition were
then in progress. That is probably the reason why so many people told me 
about the
manuscript.  When a new manuscript is discovered, I usually hear about
it within a very short while.

Two persons on this list have given me additional information privately 
about the Chilesotti manuscripts (plural). The present owner of the Codice 
Lauten-Buch manuscript may have been known to a "mentor" of one reader 
here, but the mentor is now deceased.

The important matter is that Dinko Fabris (a leading Italian lute
scholar, and an expert on the biography and works of Chilesotti) was able
to determine that the manuscript was not destroyed in a fire.
=====AJN (Boston, Mass.)=====




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