Continued. Dear McCoy,
As for the lute manuscript itslef, during the chaos of World War_II a team of Lithuanian nationalists broke into the Prussian State Archives in Koenigsberg. They wanted to "repatriate" a national treasure, an old manuscript containing an ancient Lithuanian epic poem. In the same drawer with the epic was the K'berg manuscript. Thinking it might also have Lithuanian connections (it doesn't) the patriots snatched that too. That is how the manuscript found its way to Vilnius. Very simple. It was "along for the ride," so to speak. That is also why there was so much secrecy when Diana rec'd those Xeroxes from some anonymous sender. (I doubt it was Sagitas for several reasons.) Probably they were sent by a friendly music librarian in Vilnius. It was stolen property. The sender may have feared the penalties might be severe, if discovered by the Soviet authoriies who ruled Lithuania at the time. When Sigitas came to visit his sister who lives in Cambridge, not far from John Ward, I met his sister and spent the whole day showing him around Boston and Cambridge. He doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would even know who Poulton was. That evening we attended the famous Four and Twenty Lute recital and I introduced him to Paul. He was visibly bored during the recital, but the encore, a Scott Joplin rag, perked him up. Really a very pleasant man. I so much enjoyed meeting him, and learning a bit about his ardent Lithuanian nationalism. His pals really saved the manuscript, because I am certain had it remained in Koenigsberg it would have been destroyed in the intense bombardment that port city suffered. (Sagitas would have been in his teens during WW_II, so I doubt he was among those who "liberated" the epic poem.) Next I'll have to detail how Paul O'Dette discovered the K'berg manuscript, information that Matanya used in order to get a complete Xerox, and then the microfilm. Without Paul's information noone would have known where the manusctipt was located, or even if it existed any more. You can't "discover" something if you cannot tell WHERE it is. AJN. <>
