> I still can't quite believe this is genuinely lute music as opposed to > music that is multiply realisable. There are many sustained notes, > sometimes over two bars. > It doesn't look like lute music.
I don't know Banks' work and his arguments (yet), but unless there is a firm evidence that these specific pieces were performed on lutes, claims that this is genuine music for a lute ensemble are overstatements. Indeed, this music *could* have been performed by such an ensemble but also by any other family of instruments (not to mention mixed groups) provided that ranges of parts fit ranges available on the instruments. As far as I know there is a consensus among scholars about 'portability' of much of this textless repertoire of the late fifteenth century. I fail to see why Segovia pieces would be specifically lute ensemble music but, again, I haven't read Banks and maybe the answer and concrete evidence is there. Otherwise, one is inevitably lead to suspect that it *needs* to be lute music because the publication is addressed to a largely amateur lutenist market. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
