Bill, You are talking to someone who has made extensive efforts to make lute music more accessible to more people. As long as "popularize" means spreading the word and sharing the goodies with a larger number of fellow primates, it's all for the better. If "popularize" means debase for the sake of helping some high level executives save a few bucks on the back of hard-working recording artists, then I am not so sure. Obviously, there must be a zone somewhere where music and commerce meet, because we do want to have a few professional lutenists who can actually scrape a living from their art, but I am not sure that zone should be the aisles of a supermarket, particularly if that were to represent people's main exposure to that music. We are elitists no doubt, but not more so than other people on other discussion groups, some of whom know a whole lot about programming LINUX or Britney Spears than you or I, and talk about those topics at length. Thirty years ago, that was a different question: lutes and lute music were truly rare. But now, a lot of work has been spent on making those more accessible, and the results are now sinking into collective consciousness. I just hope that "sinking" does not mean anything like drowning in the fruit juice department ... Alain
At 03:41 AM 5/14/2004, bill wrote: >On Venerd́, mag 14, 2004, at 04:30 Europe/Rome, Alain Veylit wrote: > > > There is a potential > > annoyance if lute music were to be tagged or associated with > > supermarket or > > elevator music for base commercial reasons. I have mixed feelings when > > I > > hear Cutting while picking my yoghurt and broken consort music when I > > get > > the steak du jour... Maybe it's silly, but I like to keep my culture > > separate from my confiture. > > >i hope you all won't view this as too contentious but if i've taken >your collective measure - as it were - correctly i would say that a >popularization of the lute repertoire would probably cause most of you >to drop it immediately and go off in search of something even more >esoteric and above concern of the hoi palloi. the impression i've >gathered over many happy months of bright and breezy discourse is that >for the most of you the music's main appeal lies in its remoteness and >inaccessibility. > >pray do correct me if i'm wrong. > >- bill
