Until musical instruments can mate & propagate on their own, the
biological systems for classification become a strained analogy that
must, at some point, break down. I'm still waiting for my 8 course tenor
lute and my 13 course Baroque lute to get together some night and bless
our happy household with a baby 10 course lute some fine morning.
(And the lauto? And what about the flat-backed Angelique by Gibson?)
-This could spiral out of control, like Moondog's song about human
rights. "Enough about human rights! What about whale rights? What about
worm rights? What about germ rights?" etc, etc.
On 10/18/2012 7:32 AM, Braig, Eugene wrote:
I actually believe those who think about such stuff are usually operating under
"some form of generally acceptable classification system for 'lutes'," either
as written in some source or another or devised in their own heads based upon discussions
like these. Organology certainly hasn't shied from lute kin.
It's the specific notion of a biological-style key that I think would likely
prove more cumbersome than practical if including substantial detail. I
suspect most who want to differentiate colascione from mandora, e.g., probably
already have a decent sense of how to do so. I think a key could be
constructed--I don't know, maybe already has been--but I suspect a key in this
domain would be most useful if very simplified and designed with the generally
uninitiated in mind. Even among field biologists, once you know how to
identify whatever you happen to be observing, you don't bother using keys any
longer.
Best,
Eugene
-----Original Message-----
From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf Of
Martyn Hodgson
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2012 3:57 AM
To: lute mailing list list; Braig, Eugene
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Chitarrone
Dear Eugene,
I agree that to produce some form of generally acceptable
classification system for 'lutes' would be difficult and even then
prone to error/interpretations - but surely we shouldn't not try? I
presume, for example, Mendel's inheritance findings have been revised
since his day but his contribution shouldn't be ignored. And these
early attempts surely allowed further advances in the field: so the
same for present day organological research.
Martyn
--- On Wed, 17/10/12, Braig, Eugene <brai...@osu.edu> wrote:
From: Braig, Eugene <brai...@osu.edu>
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Chitarrone
To: "lute mailing list list" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Date: Wednesday, 17 October, 2012, 22:15
I don't think a dichotomous key would work. As alluded, one of the
neat features of biological inheritance is that all things come from
similar parental things. Not so when addressing the capricious whims
of human creativity. One of my favorite examples is mandolins, with
many structurally different things being tuned identically and many
functionally different things with similar construction carrying the
name. This case is not unique.
General "taxonomy" of musical instruments has been around for a great
long time (as "organology"), there are even whole scholarly societies
committed to it (e.g., [1]http://www.galpinsociety.org/). However,
such systems require a great many more judgment calls by their
developers than biological systematics.
Best,
Eugenel
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