Re: Size of the lute world
At 06:28 AM 12/11/2003 -0800, C Etter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think you are wrong when you say that For the most part, not only they [classical guitarists] cannot read tablature. My experience as a classical guitarist is that nearly all of the other classical guitarist whom I have ever met, and from whom I learned something of their past musical lives, came to classical guitar from various pop styles, mostly rock. I would guess that the *vast majority* of classical guitarist today are totally comfortable reading standard guitar tab (in spite of its inferiority, i.e., lack of rhythmic notations) because for so many guitar players, that's what they learned first. I cannot possibly argue with your own personal experience. My experience, over the last 48 years and all over the world, is different. Matanya Ophee Editions Orphe'e, Inc., 1240 Clubview Blvd. N. Columbus, OH 43235-1226 Phone: 614-846-9517 Fax: 614-846-9794 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.orphee.com
Re: Size of the lute world
Roman, A few thoughts... - Original Message - From: Roman Turovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2003 4:06 PM Subject: Re: Size of the lute world Well, well, well.. This means that the life on the lute list will finally attain the liveliness it deserves, it will be a true microcosm. I think it is already. Boulez bashing is one of my favorite things to do. Naughty, naughty. Not gentle. We also have a Morton Feldman acolyte on the list, but he hasn't been heard from in months. That could simply be a rest. RT (who is diligently working to fill 13-lute with Shostakovich's spirit) The Preludes and Fugues for 2 lutes? That might be very interesting! The 5th fugue in particular, would be very attractive with 2 lutes trading those lovely scale passages back and forth... __ Roman M. Turovsky Robert
Re: Size of the lute world
At 22:19 09-12-2003 -0800, Howard Posner wrote: Matanya Ophee at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: the fact remains that within 19 years after the appearance of the Perrine book, Campion stated that the lute was done for. That is a fairly powerful statement The translated excerpt in your article says the lute has declined (or is in decline, or is declining) which is not the same thing; also it seems to say that the theorbo and guitar are doing well. It is not a model of clarity. and we really have only one way to verify it. How many lute books in tablature were printed for general consumption between 1697 and 1716? I'd think you'd want to know about after 1716. I am uncertain as to the significance of this year. Is it Robert de Visée's publication of theorbo and lute pieces, arranged in two parts for whatever? If so, R.d.V. clearly states that he has kept tablature out of the edition for reasons of thrift/ecology - you name it: Save paper! On the other hand, he promises to give - yes, give - the pertinent tablatures to anyone interested. This suggests to me, that the original compositions were, if not conceived, then at least preserved, in tabulature form. How else would R.d.V. hope to satisfy those of his fans turning up on his doorstep to cash in on his promise? Chordially, Arne.
Re: Size of the lute world
Matanya Ophee at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We have no way of knowing what would have happened if 18th century lutenists had paid heed to Perinne and Campion. But we do know that today, this same failed system of the 18th century The press of deadlines compels me to retire from this discussion. Besides, I have a sneaking hunch that nobody besides the two of us is reading. So I'll just make a few general remarks. Tablature was the way solo lute music was notated for three centuries. It seems that for two of those centuries, no one even complained about it. In the one instance where a tablature system (German) became a problem, it was replaced not by staff notation, but by another tablature system. So it's hard to see it as a failed system. The lute dwindled during the 18th century and was pretty much extinct as a serious instrument by 1800. There were plenty of reasons for this: at the professional level, inability to adapt the instrument to the demands for sheer loudness imposed by the advent of concert halls and public music-making and the decline, and in some cases annihilation, of the aristocracy and its private musical settings; at the amateur level, the unsuitability of the complicated 18th-century lutes as instruments for dilettantes, especially in competition with the guitar, and association with things old in what was a revolutionary era. It seems to me that blaming tablature is confusing cause and effect. Tab disappeared when the lute did. The recorder and the harpsichord disappeared as art instruments at about the same time for some of the same reasons. And, as you point out, a score of new plucked instruments came and went. Staff notation did not save them. The original point you were making, if I remember correctly, was that more transcriptions of tablature sources need to be made if the lute world is going to expand. Good arguments can be made for that proposition, but the historical unsuitability of tablature does not strike me as one of them. It's certainly not a necessary premise: you don't have to show that tablature was a barrier in 1550 to show that it's a barrier now. HP
Re: Size of the lute world
Arne Keller at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am uncertain as to the significance of this year. It was the year of the Campion remark that Matanya cited.
RE: Size of the lute world
Howard Posner The press of deadlines compels me to retire from this discussion. Besides, I have a sneaking hunch that nobody besides the two of us is reading. So I'll just make a few general remarks. I am reading it and I am sure others are interested too.
Re: Size of the lute world
Howar Posner scripsit: I couldn't sleep at night if I took your money on a sucker bet like that. Were I a gambling man (I'm not), I might take bets on whether there are more professional lutenists in London now than there were in the entire world forty years ago. Probably true, if your definition of a professional lutenist in London today depends on counting on anyone who owns a lute and produced a vanity CD. I would suggest that the way to measure this, is to walk into Border's or Tower Records, and see how many lute CDs are available in the bins. Since we cannot walk into similar stores in 1956 or so, we have to go by existing discographies. In 1990, I published a discography of guitar records. It includes a section of lute recordings, mostly LPs that were produced before 1990. The picture it gives is illuminating. Check Lutenists-on-Record at http://www.osuna.com/instruments/lute.html Useful for statistics RT __ Roman M. Turovsky http://turovsky.org http://polyhymnion.org
Re: Size of the lute world
You'll note that you and I are focusing on two different things: you on the players of solo music, and I on their place in the larger musical world. And we must note that in chamber music we greatly outdone guitarists, who are often accused of being unable to play with other musicians (notably by MO on CG list) RT __ Roman M. Turovsky http://turovsky.org http://polyhymnion.org
Re: Size of the lute world
Well said Tim, But you don't need police statistics to note the full moon phenomenon, just ask any bartender or lycanthrope. Best, Jon
Re: Size of the lute world
At 22:02 08-12-2003 -0500, Matanya Ophee wrote: At 01:35 PM 12/8/2003 -0800, Howard Posner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We have to remember that lute players, then as now, could read staff notation, and played continuo from the first days of continuo, and often played obbligato parts, like those by Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, from staff notation. They did not have to write solo music in tablature, but chose to do so because the system was useful. I have no argument with this historical account, except to say that it does not deal with the question at hand. Roman has argued that the free availability of facsimiles of lute tablatures will be useful in proselytizing the lute. The problem, taken from the point of view of the idea of increasing the size of the lute world, the subject line of this thread, is not what lute players do or can do, but what is the situation among those who are not yet lute players. Guitar transcriptions of lute music can be very useful to recruit lute-players. Myrna Sislen did a great job in an edition from the early 70s, mostly from Robert Dowland's book. It introduced me to lute music, via guitar. But I would probably have to be marooned somewhere, without a choice, to pick up the Sislen book again, now that I have tried the real thing. Early (i.e. 6-course) lute music would seem to be better suited to entice guitarists, since no modifications are necessary (except possibly a capo). Chordially, Arne.
Re: Size of the lute world
You'll note that you and I are focusing on two different things: you on the players of solo music, and I on their place in the larger musical world. Perhaps the difference is in seeing the lute world as essentially a subset of the guitar world or as a subset of the early music world. The problem is that guitar players usually don't accept the fact that the lute is an instrument on it's own. The guitar is something comepletly different - not like traverso and Boehm flute or oboe or the baroque violin and the modern violin which show some evolution - better term maybe would be Adaption on the actual taste - but the lute is a very different instrument with a very different role in music history, usage etc. It's simply completly wrong to look at the guitar as evolution/development of the lute. Both instruments are related like vihuela and lute are or rebec and violin ... The longer I play the lute the more I am convinced that the idea of Segovia and the likes who searched for some worth of playing music and thought to have found it in the renaissance lute/vihuela music were not helpfull for the lute in the sense of helping the lute (which actually wasn't their goal - so no fault - they wanted to help the guitar. Today the situation is completely different) Thomas -- Thomas Schall Niederhofheimer Weg 3 D-65843 Sulzbach 06196/74519 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.lautenist.de / www.tslaute.de/weiss --
Re: Size of the lute world
At 12:32 PM 12/9/2003 -0800, Howard Posner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matanya Ophee at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: May be you are right. May be I should have been more specific and say that these comments were an indication of a general feelings [sic] of malaise regarding tablature in France at the specific time frame of 1697 to 1716. And thank you for the [sic]. Fixed it. Even so, I think you'd be making too much of them. It normally takes at least six comments to establish an official general feeling of malaise, but of course it requires a bit more among the French, who are looser with their opinions. I think you got something there, but I am not sure you want to pursue this argument to its inevitable conclusion. The main problem we all have in historical research, is that there are not too many extant sources for any particular issue, and more often than not, conclusions are arrived at by extrapolation of the available data. What was the term for that concept? Postmodern Phenomenological Deconstructivism or something like that. Give you an example. There are a few documentary sources which established that in a double octave course on the baroque guitar, the high octave string was on the side of the thumb. There are no sources which indicate that this course was ever played by itself, without the associated bourdon. That has not stopped an entire movement of baroque guitarists to assume that it was in fact meant to be so played. Are they making too much of it? and then, too much of what? And then take the issue of iconographic evidence in which no one is able to state if the picture was made by the artist in reference to a real live musician, or in reference to a staged model who had no idea about lute technique, or in reference to another picture in which the matter of placing the hands, fingers, course, frets etc, was determined by the artist in what can be best described as artistic licence. There has been a tremendous amount of traffic in this list about such issues, often based on one or two pictures. Are we making too much of it? here is one picture you may not have seen before: http://www.orphee.com/lute/lute-player.jpg I cna just imagine the sort of conclusions that can be made of it. So, with the addition of the Milleran quote furnished by Fred, we now have three commentaries by French musicians about the dangers of tablature to the general musicianship of the player. It could be said, and I would not be able to argue against it, that each of these musicians, Milleran, Perrine and Campion were not talking as witnesses of their time, but only expressing their own personal bias. If we accept this point of view, we then must accept that every single musician of the time was acting as an individual with an axe to grind and not as an impartial observer of society. Accepting such a view would require us to discard about 90% of what we have come to regard as the basic tenets of HIP performance. One analogy would be the periodic copyright/upload/download flareups we have around here. An observer might extrapolate from the heat and number of the posts that it's a huge hot-button issue, but in fact perhaps 95% of the lute listers expressed no opinion at all, and may have no strong opinion on the subject. Excellent analogy. Which, if carried to its logical conclusion, would tell us that we have no way of knowing what was the opinion, performance practice, musical output of all those musicians who never posted anything on the bandwidth of the Renaissance and baroque period. Bach and Weiss are the greatest? of course they are, because they have been some of the more prolific posters of their time. But what do we know about the lute works of lesser figures such as Graupner, Buxtehude, Froberger, etc? and by etc. I mean all those composers whose existence in the time frame is not even known. Some of them manage to sneak through and come up to the surface once in a while, many, and we have no idea how many exactly, never do. They never wrote anything for the lute? perhaps. But we shall never know for sure, What we do know for sure is that no such works by them is known to exist. IOW, they could have been lurkers. I have no statistical data worth knowing. But I can hardly miss things like the increase in lute players making a living performing, mostly as continuo players; the way that theorbos, archlutes and guitars are taken for granted in baroque ensembles and recordings, the publicity push Harmonia Mundi USA has thrown behind Paul O'Dette, or the presence of O'Dette and Stubbs as directors of the Boston Early Music Festival. The increase you notice is not in the number of players, but in the number of early music ensemble. Back in the old days there was the Noah Greenberg group, and not much else. As for the performing and recording lutenists, I would wager that between Michel Podolsky, Eugen Dombois, Suzanne Bloch, Stanley Buetens, Konrad
Re: Size of the lute world
Matanya Ophee at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, with the addition of the Milleran quote furnished by Fred, we now have three commentaries by French musicians about the dangers of tablature to the general musicianship of the player. It could be said, and I would not be able to argue against it, that each of these musicians, Milleran, Perrine and Campion were not talking as witnesses of their time, but only expressing their own personal bias. Actually, I think both Milleran and Campion were speaking of the dangers of relying *solely* on tablature. I agree with them. I've given similar warnings here myself. This is a far cry from advocating the abandonment of tablature, which both Milleran and Campion used. If we accept this point of view, we then must accept that every single musician of the time was acting as an individual with an axe to grind and not as an impartial observer of society. Since I have never met an impartial observer of society, and have met many individuals with personal biases and axes to grind, I have no trouble accepting it. Accepting such a view would require us to discard about 90% of what we have come to regard as the basic tenets of HIP performance. No, because a consensus, or a majority, or an institution, or a societal norm, or accepted performance practice, is the sum total of a lot of individual biases and axes to grind. Sometimes evidence is conclusive, and sometimes it's irrelevant, but most of the time you have to weigh its probative value against whatever other evidence is out there. One piece of evidence can be consistent with more than one conclusion. You need to look at as much evidence as you can find, and not draw conclusions from isolated bits of evidence if you can avoid it. Mr. X's comment that he doesn't like playing with nails or using octave stringing tells you that Mr. X didn't like playing with nails or using octave stringing. It also tells you that someone else was out there playing with nails or using octave stringing. So if you're trying to establish whether nails or octaves was a general practice, his remark doesn't prove much by itself. So take Perrine. If you have one late 17th-century French commentator who dislikes tablature, you have one piece of evidence about how tablature was viewed in late 17th-century France. What other evidence is there? If there are volumes of late 17th-century or early 18th-century French solo lute music written in staff notation instead of tablature, they would be evidence that Perrine was observing a trend, or starting one. But the absence of volumes of late 17th-century or early 18th-century French solo lute music written in staff notation instead of tablature is evidence that he was just a guy who didn't like tablature. The increase you notice is not in the number of players, but in the number of early music ensemble. Unless one lute player is playing all the gigs with all of the ensembles, there has to be an increase in lute players to go with the increase in the number of ensembles. As for the performing and recording lutenists, I would wager that between Michel Podolsky, Eugen Dombois, Suzanne Bloch, Stanley Buetens, Konrad Raggosnig, Walter Gerwig, Julian Bream and Narciso Yepes, to mention the better known lutenists of the previous generations, there were just as many professional lute performers then as there are today. I couldn't sleep at night if I took your money on a sucker bet like that. Were I a gambling man (I'm not), I might take bets on whether there are more professional lutenists in London now than there were in the entire world forty years ago. The fact that Stubbs and O'Dette are directing the BEMF, is wonderful news, Not exactly news... but how many other such festivals world wide are directed by lutenists? Neither of the other two such festivals that I can think of. Howard
Re: Size of the lute world
At 04:25 PM 12/9/2003 -0800, Howard Posner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Accepting such a view would require us to discard about 90% of what we have come to regard as the basic tenets of HIP performance. No, because a consensus, or a majority, or an institution, or a societal norm, or accepted performance practice, is the sum total of a lot of individual biases and axes to grind. Of course. But we must understand that we draw this consensus today, based on the sources that are available to us today. Since we have no way of knowing anything about the Renaissance and Baroque lurkers, we can never be sure that the consensus we think exists in the available sources, also existed in the exchanges the living lutenists made among themselves. Some of these exchanges survived, most did not. So take Perrine. If you have one late 17th-century French commentator who dislikes tablature, you have one piece of evidence about how tablature was viewed in late 17th-century France. What other evidence is there? If there are volumes of late 17th-century or early 18th-century French solo lute music written in staff notation instead of tablature, they would be evidence that Perrine was observing a trend, or starting one. But the absence of volumes of late 17th-century or early 18th-century French solo lute music written in staff notation instead of tablature is evidence that he was just a guy who didn't like tablature. I agree. But the fact remains that within 19 years after the appearance of the Perrine book, Campion stated that the lute was done for. That is a fairly powerful statement and we really have only one way to verify it. How many lute books in tablature were printed for general consumption between 1697 and 1716? And I would suggest that manuscripts that can be dated to that time period are not a reliable measure of the popularity of the instrument. A manuscript would indicate a single owner, or a succession of a single owners over time. A printed book indicates an existing market. The increase you notice is not in the number of players, but in the number of early music ensemble. Unless one lute player is playing all the gigs with all of the ensembles, there has to be an increase in lute players to go with the increase in the number of ensembles. yea, but do they make a living doing this? As for the performing and recording lutenists, I would wager that between Michel Podolsky, Eugen Dombois, Suzanne Bloch, Stanley Buetens, Konrad Raggosnig, Walter Gerwig, Julian Bream and Narciso Yepes, to mention the better known lutenists of the previous generations, there were just as many professional lute performers then as there are today. I couldn't sleep at night if I took your money on a sucker bet like that. Were I a gambling man (I'm not), I might take bets on whether there are more professional lutenists in London now than there were in the entire world forty years ago. Probably true, if your definition of a professional lutenist in London today depends on counting on anyone who owns a lute and produced a vanity CD. I would suggest that the way to measure this, is to walk into Border's or Tower Records, and see how many lute CDs are available in the bins. Since we cannot walk into similar stores in 1956 or so, we have to go by existing discographies. In 1990, I published a discography of guitar records. It includes a section of lute recordings, mostly LPs that were produced before 1990. The picture it gives is illuminating. Matanya Ophee Editions Orphe'e, Inc., 1240 Clubview Blvd. N. Columbus, OH 43235-1226 Phone: 614-846-9517 Fax: 614-846-9794 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.orphee.com
Re: Size of the lute world
here is one picture you may not have seen before: http://www.orphee.com/lute/lute-player.jpg I cna just imagine the sort of conclusions that can be made of it. I love it! Left handed no less. The picture is not reversed because the music is the right way. I can just imagine the artist telling the model how to place his fingers. It may take me a while to incorporate this new hand position. :-) -- Ed Durbrow Saitama, Japan http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/
Re: Size of the lute world
In a message dated 12/9/03 11:26:06 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I love it! Left handed no less. The picture is not reversed because the music is the right way. I can just imagine the artist telling the model how to place his fingers. It may take me a while to incorporate this new hand position. :-) Dear Ed: It is common that print artists will render their models from life, only to have the images reversed when printed from a plate. The music on the other hand WOULD have to read correctly to the viewer, so the artist would be careful to engrave that in mirror image on the original plate. Kenneth --
Re: Size of the lute world
At 01:24 PM 12/10/2003 +0900, Ed Durbrow [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: here is one picture you may not have seen before: http://www.orphee.com/lute/lute-player.jpg I cna just imagine the sort of conclusions that can be made of it. I love it! Left handed no less. The picture is not reversed because the music is the right way. Also the script of the names of the engraver. This is supposed to ve after some painting. Any one knows the original? I can just imagine the artist telling the model how to place his fingers. I would think the model is a she. The real value of this painting is of course the music, if anyone can identify it. Now let's assume, for the sake of argument, that this is the only drawing in existence showing a lute player playing. It would be a smashing proof that lute player never played from tablature, but from pitch notation :-) It may take me a while to incorporate this new hand position. :-) Only advisable if you have good health insurance. BTW, the fact that it is left handed would suggest that the model is the artist herself, looking in a mirror. Matanya Ophee Editions Orphe'e, Inc., 1240 Clubview Blvd. N. Columbus, OH 43235-1226 Phone: 614-846-9517 Fax: 614-846-9794 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.orphee.com
Re: Size of the lute world
Matanya Ophee at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The real value of this painting is of course the music, if anyone can identify it. Now let's assume, for the sake of argument, that this is the only drawing in existence showing a lute player playing. It would be a smashing proof that lute player never played from tablature, but from pitch notation :-) And, of course, make liars of Perrine and Campion.
Re: Size of the lute world
Matanya Ophee at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: the fact remains that within 19 years after the appearance of the Perrine book, Campion stated that the lute was done for. That is a fairly powerful statement The translated excerpt in your article says the lute has declined (or is in decline, or is declining) which is not the same thing; also it seems to say that the theorbo and guitar are doing well. It is not a model of clarity. and we really have only one way to verify it. How many lute books in tablature were printed for general consumption between 1697 and 1716? I'd think you'd want to know about after 1716. And I would suggest that manuscripts that can be dated to that time period are not a reliable measure of the popularity of the instrument. A manuscript would indicate a single owner, or a succession of a single owners over time. A printed book indicates an existing market. Maybe. This opens up a whole new subject, and a fascinating one. It's clear enough that publication indicates a perceived market (or, less likely, that the musician or patron had money to burn), but it is not always true that lack of publication shows the absence of a market. I'm sure that a musician as famous as Weiss could have sold published editions, since less famous lutenists did, but outside of one piece in Telemann's Getreue Music-Meister, he never did. Why not? Maybe the answer can be found in Vivaldi, the most famous musician of the late baroque, who stopped publishing his music about 1730 (he had a dozen or so opus numbers out by 1730) because he could make more money selling manuscripts. This is much like a famous graphic artist selling one-of-a-kind or limited-edition works instead of publishing or mass-producing them. Rarity drives up the price. And of course, some famous players (as late as Paganini) wanted to keep their music to themselves, regarding it as a trade secret. This is all by way of question rather than answer. Anyway, we can be making a mistake if evaluate the economics of music dissemination in other times with the assumptions of our own time. I don't know, BTW, what the numbers of lute manuscripts and publications in 18th-century France or elsewhere were. I do know that if Campion was prophesying the end of the lute, he'd be proven right by about 1800. HP
Re: Size of the lute world
Matanya Ophee at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The lute has never been like any of the other instrument. It was always on the outside looking in, and as the Sieur Perrine noted in 1697, it will always continue to be there, as long as lutenists insist on a notational system that is not shared by other musicians. There is no reason to believe that the lute in our time will be more successful in reaching the status of the piano, or even that of the guitar, different than it was at any other time in history. For centuries the lute was so much on the inside that it didn't even have to bother looking out. It was so widespread that the idea of playing its music on some other instrument hardly needed to be discussed. Some of the very first published music was in Italian tablature, showing that it was one of the first recognizable markets. Similar evidence can be found in the bursts of lute song publications in England and France after 1600--nobody seemed to think it necessary to publish keyboard versions. Even Morley, who did not play the lute, evidently wrote in staff notation but published transcribed tablature versions: this is evidence that it was staff notation, not tablature, that was considered a barrier to wide dissemination. We have to remember that lute players, then as now, could read staff notation, and played continuo from the first days of continuo, and often played obbligato parts, like those by Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, from staff notation. They did not have to write solo music in tablature, but chose to do so because the system was useful. Matanya's article on tablature transcription (http://www.orphee.com/trans/trans.html#FN3REF) says the comments of Perrine in 1697 and François Campion 1716 were an indication of a general feelings [sic] of malaise regarding tablature. This strikes me as too sweeping a statement based on too little evidence. Tab was alive and well in the 18th century, appearing even in Telemann's Getreue Music-Meister, a publication not directed at lutenists, by a savvy marketer. I'm not sure whether Matanya means to say that the lute will never reach the status of the piano or guitar if its music is not made available in modern notation (which I suspect is his meaning), or whether it will never reach that status in any case (which is what he wrote); but in either case he's correct. There's no reason to think that every other house on the block will ever have a lute in it, regardless of how much music is transcribed. If modern notation were the key to mass appeal, there would be a billion harpists in the world. The phenomenal and continuing growth of the lute (measured by number of players, concert ticket and CD sales, prominence of the better players, sales of instruments) in the last few decades, and the way it has been achieved, contradicts the notion that tablature has hindered that growth. I'm sure nearly all of us came to the lute after hearing lute music played from tablature (I'm guessing two thirds were Bream converts) and found that learning French tab was vastly easier than learning to drive a car or use a computer. Certainly it's easier than learning an instrument or earning the money to buy it and string it. Howard Posner
re: Size of the lute world
In a message dated 12/6/2003 5:55:37 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: As someone who has listened to and enjoyed lute music for over 20 years (and been playing for 4 months) it continues to surprise me how many people have never heard of the instrument or know its sound (though they have seen them in pictures). Have any of the lute societies made a coordinated effort to try to increase public awareness (realizing that about 2% of the general public would consider to buy any classical music CD)? It continues to amaze me that when the Renaissance Fair comes to South Florida it is PACKED for 2 weeks solid and yet there is not a single lute teacher less than a 5 hour drive away from me. I actually got excited when I glanced at the headline Odette May Head to South Florida before I realized they were talking about the hurricane. I've tried to do my part in a small way. I will be bringing my lutes into the Classical Guitar class at the high school my kids attend. I've tried to support those who make their living in the field by ordering 2 lutes newly made rather than second hand, ordering a number of music editions from Tree, Lyre and Orphee even though I have enough downloaded to keep me busy and buying most of the newly released CD's (which range from fantastic virtuoso performances to, ahem, less than steller efforts). No doubt my efforts are a drop in the bucket. (how many copies of a lute CD are usually sold anyway??). What have others done on an individual and/or organizational wide level? I haven't had too much time to wade through all the subsequent postings on this list (I've been too busy actually playing my lutes, not reading my lutemail!!) but wanted to address Daniel Shoskes very thoughtful, true, and poignant note about his own genuine interest in the lute and promoting it in his world, such as his kid's high school classes. I think this is great. More of us should be doing this sort of outreach. We can all try harder to make the lute heard more to new ears, to be seen and demonstrated to new audiences, to more children, to new venues. I don't think I've encountered anyone yet who doesn't like the lute, only that maybe they've never seen one before. The other day, as I returned from Germany through Toronto, I was delayed there for five hours. Having my lute with me, while other passengers showed displeasure at the flight delay, I took my lute out and played in public for an hour. I could tell that the mood in the waiting lounge became noticeably brighter. Eventually, though, the temperature in the lounge fell to the point where I couldn't keep my lute in tune or my fingers moveable! As for other things which I have tried to do to keep active as far as lute: I have organized a series of free concerts around works of art to keep a museum audience in touch with another historical context (music and societal) for the art collection. I have taken on the responsibilities as director the LSA's next summer seminar (see www.lutesocietyofamerica.org I have found this to be a fantastic opportunity to connect with many members and also the many professionals who will be involved as faculty. I have tried to meet many of you during my travels abroad and to other parts of the U.S. I have recently taken on a side job as a solo concert manager for a well-known lute player. Our agreement is that our #1 main goal is to promote the lute and its repertoire. We want the lute to become a commonplace, main stream instrument that everyone will once again know and appreciate! Not only is this great fun, but I feel like I'm accomplishing an important sense of mission. [I sense that maybe we'll soon be moving into a better lunar phase and a more positive discussion here. I hope so!] - Kenneth Be
Re: Size of the lute world
Hi Howard: I agree with you. I do not think having all Lute tablature converted to staff notation will do much to aid the growth of the Lute, making its music more available. Tablature is, after all, as near perfect a system for notating music written for a stringed and fretted instrument that can be imagined. All ambiguities about position on the neck and appropriate strings are eliminated. Only voicing remains hidden within. Another point to consider is the actual visible content the music will display in staff notation. I am sure most of us have seen Milano's works published in staff notation. If I were new to the guitar and looked through some of that stuff I seriously doubt that I would be in a giant hurry to try much of it. It is very playable when it is pointed out to you the relative timing and the actual playing positions. This is the advantage of Tablature, staff notation demands that you figure it out for you on your own. Remember, we are not talking about arrangements with editorial notes and fingering notes, just the difference in notation. Vance Wood. - Original Message - From: Howard Posner [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 1:35 PM Subject: Re: Size of the lute world Matanya Ophee at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The lute has never been like any of the other instrument. It was always on the outside looking in, and as the Sieur Perrine noted in 1697, it will always continue to be there, as long as lutenists insist on a notational system that is not shared by other musicians. There is no reason to believe that the lute in our time will be more successful in reaching the status of the piano, or even that of the guitar, different than it was at any other time in history. For centuries the lute was so much on the inside that it didn't even have to bother looking out. It was so widespread that the idea of playing its music on some other instrument hardly needed to be discussed. Some of the very first published music was in Italian tablature, showing that it was one of the first recognizable markets. Similar evidence can be found in the bursts of lute song publications in England and France after 1600--nobody seemed to think it necessary to publish keyboard versions. Even Morley, who did not play the lute, evidently wrote in staff notation but published transcribed tablature versions: this is evidence that it was staff notation, not tablature, that was considered a barrier to wide dissemination. We have to remember that lute players, then as now, could read staff notation, and played continuo from the first days of continuo, and often played obbligato parts, like those by Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, from staff notation. They did not have to write solo music in tablature, but chose to do so because the system was useful. Matanya's article on tablature transcription (http://www.orphee.com/trans/trans.html#FN3REF) says the comments of Perrine in 1697 and François Campion 1716 were an indication of a general feelings [sic] of malaise regarding tablature. This strikes me as too sweeping a statement based on too little evidence. Tab was alive and well in the 18th century, appearing even in Telemann's Getreue Music-Meister, a publication not directed at lutenists, by a savvy marketer. I'm not sure whether Matanya means to say that the lute will never reach the status of the piano or guitar if its music is not made available in modern notation (which I suspect is his meaning), or whether it will never reach that status in any case (which is what he wrote); but in either case he's correct. There's no reason to think that every other house on the block will ever have a lute in it, regardless of how much music is transcribed. If modern notation were the key to mass appeal, there would be a billion harpists in the world. The phenomenal and continuing growth of the lute (measured by number of players, concert ticket and CD sales, prominence of the better players, sales of instruments) in the last few decades, and the way it has been achieved, contradicts the notion that tablature has hindered that growth. I'm sure nearly all of us came to the lute after hearing lute music played from tablature (I'm guessing two thirds were Bream converts) and found that learning French tab was vastly easier than learning to drive a car or use a computer. Certainly it's easier than learning an instrument or earning the money to buy it and string it. Howard Posner
Re: Size of the lute world
At 01:35 PM 12/8/2003 -0800, Howard Posner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We have to remember that lute players, then as now, could read staff notation, and played continuo from the first days of continuo, and often played obbligato parts, like those by Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, from staff notation. They did not have to write solo music in tablature, but chose to do so because the system was useful. I have no argument with this historical account, except to say that it does not deal with the question at hand. Roman has argued that the free availability of facsimiles of lute tablatures will be useful in proselytizing the lute. The problem, taken from the point of view of the idea of increasing the size of the lute world, the subject line of this thread, is not what lute players do or can do, but what is the situation among those who are not yet lute players. The fact of the matter is that the greatest pool of potential lutenists are classical guitar players. For the most part, not only they cannot read tablature, they regard it, rightly or wrongly, as an inferior notational system and equate it with the TAB system used by acoustic guitarists. Even worse, most of their _teachers_, with very exceptions, are deathly against tablature. The other side of the coin is that of the almost 150,000 pieces available for the classical guitar from all periods, there are only 40-50 pieces that get to be played in concert and in recordings. Guitarists on the whole are driven by an herd instinct and if a given piece is not played or recorded by their favorite matinee idol, they do no touch it. So how do you make lutenists out of people whose only possible repertoire is what Angelo Gilardino once described as Aranbabazzolla (Aranjuez, Koyunbaba, Piazzolla)? You have to acquaint them with the music first. If they catch the bug, they would eventually graduate to the lute itself and learn to read tablature. Happened to most people here already this way, and it will happen again. It is not going to happen by posting facsimiles of lute tablature for free download. This is something that can be used only by people who are already in, and the claim that it will help in proselytizing is a disingenuous apologia. Matanya's article on tablature transcription (http://www.orphee.com/trans/trans.html#FN3REF) says the comments of Perrine in 1697 and François Campion 1716 were an indication of a general feelings [sic] of malaise regarding tablature. This strikes me as too sweeping a statement based on too little evidence. Tab was alive and well in the 18th century, appearing even in Telemann's Getreue Music-Meister, a publication not directed at lutenists, by a savvy marketer. May be you are right. May be I should have been more specific and say that these comments were an indication of a general feelings [sic] of malaise regarding tablature in France at the specific time frame of 1697 to 1716. And thank you for the [sic]. Fixed it. There's no reason to think that every other house on the block will ever have a lute in it, regardless of how much music is transcribed. If modern notation were the key to mass appeal, there would be a billion harpists in the world. That's an extreme view which does not address the immediate dilemma. I am sure you will agree that the question is not of a lute in every house, but a lute in every city. As Mr. Shoskes told us, some parts of the country, are completely devoid of any lute activity, and some parts of the world it has never been even heard of. As for the harp, it is in an entirely different ball game, since it is part of the orchestra. There will always be a call for harpists as long there are orchestras around. Besides, as Jon Murphy will tell you, it is a much more difficult instrument to play that any plucked fretted string instrument can possibly be. I know. I used to play the harp, and I even have one at home. The phenomenal and continuing growth of the lute (measured by number of players, concert ticket and CD sales, prominence of the better players, sales of instruments) in the last few decades, and the way it has been achieved, contradicts the notion that tablature has hindered that growth. Well, this is exactly the core of this thread: do we have any specific statistical data on this growth? or your perception of it is based on a personal impression? since you are a member of the board of the LSA, can you tell us how this growth is reflected in the society's membership? That is not to say that society membership is necessarily a reliable indicator of a general trend. I know some lutenists who will not be caught dead belonging to a society. But it will be a useful measure. I'm sure nearly all of us came to the lute after hearing lute music played from tablature Exactly my point. You came to the lute after hearing the music. You did not come to the lute because it was played from tablature, but because the sound got you by the you know
RE: Size of the lute world
MO wrote: You have to acquaint them with the music first. If they catch the bug, they would eventually graduate to the lute itself and learn to read tablature. Happened to most people here already this way, and it will happen again. It is not going to happen by posting facsimiles of lute tablature for free download. I started to read tablature from the files at Wayne's site. But I still don't own a lute, so maybe you're right. But it may happen this way: 1. first you play the music on guitar, you fall in love with it, 2. then you realize it's for lute, 3. you find out it's originally written in tablature, 4. you find a few tablatures on the internet and you realize it's actually easier and more accurate to read this music in tablature than in staff notation. 5. you buy a lute. 6. you buy facsimiles or a modern editions in tablature. At least from places where there's no other way to access lute music, I think this is a possible scenario. Hernan Mouro. Conservatorio de Bahía Blanca, Argentina.
Re: Size of the lute world
Vance Wood at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Trouble is-a lot of them drop out or go underground because the group that should be supporting them and encouraging them is by far and away as friendly as a pack of junk yard dogs. As a whole I have never been exposed to a group, boasting interest passionately in a particular endeavor, that is more driven by ego, pride, condescension, duplicity and judgementalism. Before you get mad at me read through the posts that have flooded email servers world wide over the last week or so and ask yourself: If you were new to the Lute would you feel safe and confident in posting a question to this bunch of brigands? I'm not mad at you, but I'm not impressed by your generalized characterizations. I've never heard of anyone quitting the lute because of a flame war on the lute net, and I'm sure the number of persons who have done so is insignificant: a few hundred thousand at most. I'm sure I could think of a few who've quit the lute net in disgust--usually disgust with the same person's posts on the same subject-- but on the whole, the tone around here is remarkably civilized, helpful and informative, compared to a lot of cyberspace. Read the posts in rec.music.classical for today, 12/6/03, and you'll get a feel for what the cyber-slums are like: personal invective, gratuitous anti-Semitism and homophobia, and dozens of posts simply tallying other posts posted by antagonists. You learn to be selective in a neighborhood like that or you drown in the sewage. On the lute net, even a newbie can figure out that flame wars typically involve a few posters, and you can sidestep it if you want to. It doesn't take long to figure out who baits whom, who has a deep-seated need to always get the last word, and who substitutes personal attacks for substance. And the community is a bit more supporting than it appears. Some of us make it a point to privately reassure a newbie who runs into an attack dog early on that it's not something to take personally.
Re: Size of the lute world
Vance David R.- Points well taken. We each come from a different orientation but, for me, I'm more inclined to be more open to one's perspective if their position is presented with logic and courtesy rather than with insult and arrogance. Maybe it's just my perspective, but bad delivery taints the quality and the value of the information given. Mike Wilson - Original Message - From: Vance Wood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: lute list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 11:27 PM Subject: Re: Size of the lute world Trouble is-a lot of them drop out or go underground because the group that should be supporting them and encouraging them is by far and away as friendly as a pack of junk yard dogs. As a whole I have never been exposed to a group, boasting interest passionately in a particular endeavor, that is more driven by ego, pride, condescension, duplicity and judgementalism. Before you get mad at me read through the posts that have flooded email servers world wide over the last week or so and ask yourself: If you were new to the Lute would you feel safe and confident in posting a question to this bunch of brigands? There are some fine people in this group that posses a wealth of knowledge but in asking a question you have to first consider what side of the fence you might fall on to and who is going to consider you one of theirs and one of his and one of yours. This is absurd and self destructive. I just wish every one would temper their opinions with a little good sense realizing that you or I don't like everyone and everyone does not like you or I. That's the truth of it BUT!!! we all love the Lute. Vance Wood.
Re: Size of the lute world
At 8:27 PM -0800 12/6/03, Vance Wood wrote: As a whole I have never been exposed to a group, boasting interest passionately in a particular endeavor, that is more driven by ego, pride, condescension, duplicity and judgementalism. Period attitudes for a period instrument? It sounds like 16th and 17th century Europe to me. However, today there probably there aren't enough lutenists for the flame wars to escalate into real wars. Ed Margerum
Re: Size of the lute world
Dear Ed: That's my point, the Lute community is too small as it is, why should we, by our behavior, keep it small or make it smaller? It seems to me that if there were more people interested in playing the Lute that there would be more business (bad word to some and I apologize) for Luthiers, publishers, and string makers a like. Look,--- if some things like this do not get commercialized to some degree no one would be able to get strings because no one would make them for free, and music would only be available to those near enough to a library that had manuscripts available for us to look at and copy out of. Of course that does not even mention the instrument itself. Most people would be forced to make do with a retuned Guitar or in my case make their own instrument, if there were not people out there that make their living producing these magical items. So if someone makes an income in the Lute world it is not likely that this is their only reason for getting involved with the Lute. But an interesting thing in this whole mess is that no one seems to find a way to criticize those individuals who have enough musical talent to make a living playing the bloody thing. Vance Wood. - Original Message - From: Ed Margerum [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: lute list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2003 7:31 AM Subject: Re: Size of the lute world At 8:27 PM -0800 12/6/03, Vance Wood wrote: As a whole I have never been exposed to a group, boasting interest passionately in a particular endeavor, that is more driven by ego, pride, condescension, duplicity and judgementalism. Period attitudes for a period instrument? It sounds like 16th and 17th century Europe to me. However, today there probably there aren't enough lutenists for the flame wars to escalate into real wars. Ed Margerum
Re: Size of the lute world
Vance, I've been on the lute list serve for only a few months, and have been surprised by the vituperative nature of some of the messages that have been posted. I've been on the verge of taking myself off the list several times, because I find much of the heated discussion pointless and a waste of bandwidth. I have noticed that there is an ebb and flow to the flame wars that coincides with the full moon. We are just reaching a full moon right now and are also cresting on another flame war. If you watch the postings over the next month, I think you will find that in 21-28 days we are in the middle of another spate of heated emails. About a year ago the local newspaper did a study of crime statistics and interviewed police, and came to the conclusion that although the actual number of crimes rose only slightly during the full moon, the nature of the crimes changed, with the crimes being of a much more aggravated nature. The worst period was in the week before the actual full moon. During that week people tend to react more strongly to perceived offenses than they might otherwise. Perhaps some of those writing heated emails should check the moon phase, think twice, take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and delete their message. There are some truly awful things going on in the world today that merit heated discussions. The lute is not one of them. Tim Motz On Saturday, December 6, 2003, at 11:27 PM, Vance Wood wrote: Trouble is-a lot of them drop out or go underground because the group that should be supporting them and encouraging them is by far and away as friendly as a pack of junk yard dogs. As a whole I have never been exposed to a group, boasting interest passionately in a particular endeavor, that is more driven by ego, pride, condescension, duplicity and judgementalism. Before you get mad at me read through the posts that have flooded email servers world wide over the last week or so and ask yourself: If you were new to the Lute would you feel safe and confident in posting a question to this bunch of brigands? There are some fine people in this group that posses a wealth of knowledge but in asking a question you have to first consider what side of the fence you might fall on to and who is going to consider you one of theirs and one of his and one of yours. This is absurd and self destructive. I just wish every one would temper their opinions with a little good sense realizing that you or I don't like everyone and everyone does not like you or I. That's the truth of it BUT!!! we all love the Lute. Vance Wood. - Original Message - From: Roman Turovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Daniel Shoskes [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 5:02 PM Subject: Re: Size of the lute world As I was deleting another repetitive pain in the ass flame post in the ongoing battle between the greedy billionaire lute publishers and the brave Trotskyist proletariat struggling to free the world's tablature I think I noticed an estimate of about 4000 lute players worldwide. Is this a reasonable estimate? No. I estimated a maximum of 3000. Would these range from serious players to people with a lute in the attic they haven't touched in 15 years? Include guitarists who tune their g string down a half step? Include the pipa and oud? Those people with a Lute Olsen signed basketball? No. It is based on membership lists of lute societies and Google sightings of unaffiliated players, with an added roach assumption that there is 1 more invisible lutenist to 2 already visibles. Also numbers of lute teachers and luthiers are taken into account. The number is expected to grow because several schools put out lutenists at a steady rate. RT __ Roman M. Turovsky http://turovsky.org http://polyhymnion.org
Re: Size of the lute world
Dear Timothy, now that I come to think of it, I had quite a difficult week... But usually I don't bother too much about those things, makes life more complicated than it is :-) Stephan Am 7 Dec 2003 um 12:27 hat Timothy Motz geschrieben: Vance, I've been on the lute list serve for only a few months, and have been surprised by the vituperative nature of some of the messages that have been posted. I've been on the verge of taking myself off the list several times, because I find much of the heated discussion pointless and a waste of bandwidth. I have noticed that there is an ebb and flow to the flame wars that coincides with the full moon. We are just reaching a full moon right now and are also cresting on another flame war. If you watch the postings over the next month, I think you will find that in 21-28 days we are in the middle of another spate of heated emails. About a year ago the local newspaper did a study of crime statistics and interviewed police, and came to the conclusion that although the actual number of crimes rose only slightly during the full moon, the nature of the crimes changed, with the crimes being of a much more aggravated nature. The worst period was in the week before the actual full moon. During that week people tend to react more strongly to perceived offenses than they might otherwise. Perhaps some of those writing heated emails should check the moon phase, think twice, take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and delete their message. There are some truly awful things going on in the world today that merit heated discussions. The lute is not one of them. Tim Motz On Saturday, December 6, 2003, at 11:27 PM, Vance Wood wrote: Trouble is-a lot of them drop out or go underground because the group that should be supporting them and encouraging them is by far and away as friendly as a pack of junk yard dogs. As a whole I have never been exposed to a group, boasting interest passionately in a particular endeavor, that is more driven by ego, pride, condescension, duplicity and judgementalism. Before you get mad at me read through the posts that have flooded email servers world wide over the last week or so and ask yourself: If you were new to the Lute would you feel safe and confident in posting a question to this bunch of brigands? There are some fine people in this group that posses a wealth of knowledge but in asking a question you have to first consider what side of the fence you might fall on to and who is going to consider you one of theirs and one of his and one of yours. This is absurd and self destructive. I just wish every one would temper their opinions with a little good sense realizing that you or I don't like everyone and everyone does not like you or I. That's the truth of it BUT!!! we all love the Lute. Vance Wood. - Original Message - From: Roman Turovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Daniel Shoskes [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 5:02 PM Subject: Re: Size of the lute world As I was deleting another repetitive pain in the ass flame post in the ongoing battle between the greedy billionaire lute publishers and the brave Trotskyist proletariat struggling to free the world's tablature I think I noticed an estimate of about 4000 lute players worldwide. Is this a reasonable estimate? No. I estimated a maximum of 3000. Would these range from serious players to people with a lute in the attic they haven't touched in 15 years? Include guitarists who tune their g string down a half step? Include the pipa and oud? Those people with a Lute Olsen signed basketball? No. It is based on membership lists of lute societies and Google sightings of unaffiliated players, with an added roach assumption that there is 1 more invisible lutenist to 2 already visibles. Also numbers of lute teachers and luthiers are taken into account. The number is expected to grow because several schools put out lutenists at a steady rate. RT __ Roman M. Turovsky http://turovsky.org http://polyhymnion.org
Re: Size of the lute world
That's my point, the Lute community is too small as it is, why should we, by our behavior, keep it small or make it smaller? It seems to me that if there were more people interested in playing the Lute that there would be more business (bad word to some and I apologize) for Luthiers, publishers, and string makers a like. Look,--- if some things like this do not get commercialized to some degree no one would be able to get strings because no one would make them for free, and music would only be available to those near enough to a library that had manuscripts available for us to look at and copy out of. That is not untrue, but Lute is not yet like Piano that takes care of itself economically. It is a quasi-religious thing and it relies on proselytism to perpetuate itself. The equipment producers must be paid to keep them in existence, but at least some socialist distribution is essential to foment interest and awareness. RT __ Roman M. Turovsky http://turovsky.org http://polyhymnion.org
Re: Size of the lute world, deja vu all over again
After posting my response last night to Vance Wood's junk yard dogs/band of brigands message, I checked the archive this morning and realized that he and I had pretty much the same exchange exactly one year ago (does something about Pearl Harbor Day trigger it, I wonder?) He told me then that my disagreeing with him proved his point (a useful rhetorical device which allows the user to declare victory in any situation), and I'll note the same response now and save him the trouble. Anyway, if you had a deja vu feeling about this, it was well founded, and I promise that when Vance complains about the hostility of the lute world next year at this time, I'll let it pass. Howard, I second that emotion, it seems that well after the flame wars have died down, Vance and a few others are trying to blow on the embers to keep it going. Vance, I've noticed you seem to throw out some contiversial topic to the list, then sit back and criticize everyone's response, like playing devils advocate. Personally, I don't mind hearing someone's passionate view on anything, I quite enjoy it, to me that's the spice of life. I said it once, and I'll say it again, nothing is worst than being a M-Y that hears, see's, and speaks no evil. One more thing, If Roman Trovosky was not on this list to entertain us, with his wit, and knowledge, I would be another one of those precious few that Vance is so terrified of loosing, disappearing forever into that horrible abyss, were nothing controversial, offensive, is ever heard, nor spoken, the land of the politically correct. Now that would be a crime. Michael Thames Luthier www.ThamesClassicalGuitars.com Site design by Natalina Calia-Thames - Original Message - From: Howard Posner [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: lute list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2003 1:40 PM Subject: Size of the lute world, deja vu all over again After posting my response last night to Vance Wood's junk yard dogs/band of brigands message, I checked the archive this morning and realized that he and I had pretty much the same exchange exactly one year ago (does something about Pearl Harbor Day trigger it, I wonder?) He told me then that my disagreeing with him proved his point (a useful rhetorical device which allows the user to declare victory in any situation), and I'll note the same response now and save him the trouble. Anyway, if you had a deja vu feeling about this, it was well founded, and I promise that when Vance complains about the hostility of the lute world next year at this time, I'll let it pass. Howard
Re: Size of the lute world
At 02:45 PM 12/7/2003 -0500, Roman Turovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Look,--- if some things like this do not get commercialized to some degree no one would be able to get strings because no one would make them for free, and music would only be available to those near enough to a library that had manuscripts available for us to look at and copy out of. That is not untrue, but Lute is not yet like Piano that takes care of itself economically. The lute has never been like any of the other instrument. It was always on the outside looking in, and as the Sieur Perrine noted in 1697, it will always continue to be there, as long as lutenists insist on a notational system that is not shared by other musicians. There is no reason to believe that the lute in our time will be more successful in reaching the status of the piano, or even that of the guitar, different than it was at any other time in history. It is a quasi-religious thing and it relies on proselytism to perpetuate itself. This is a statement I can easily agree with. The problem is that this proselytizing can never achieve any results when the emphasis is not on the music but on the instrument and its notational peculiarities. Most of the people in this group and in other lute groups have come on to the instrument through the music, not the other way around. Hence the best possible avenue for proselytizing is making the _music_ available to people who can read it and play. Eventually, people become curious and seek out the instrument itself. It happened before. No one becomes a lutenist by having free access to on line facsimiles of lute tablature. The equipment producers must be paid to keep them in existence, but at least some socialist distribution is essential to foment interest and awareness. That is a political point of view which is simply unrealistic. It lies in the basic contradiction between hardware and software. The only reason socialist distribution is applied here to the music, is because it can be done with impunity. Only a few days ago we were told by one enthusiast that the only reason he does not copy Michel Cardin's CDs is because he does not know how to do it. IOW, he has no compunction about producing illegal copies of 9 CDs thus depriving the performer of royalty income to which he is entitled. No one talks about a socialist distribution of instruments and hardware accessories. RT's Add-a-Lutenist pitch is not socialist distribution. It is charity. And as for socialism in general: do tell me how many lutenists there are in Cuba, Vietnam or North Korea? Keeping the equipment producers in existence, and at the same time preaching for socialist distribution, is thus a self cancelling paradigm. You can't have it both ways. Matanya Ophee Editions Orphe'e, Inc., 1240 Clubview Blvd. N. Columbus, OH 43235-1226 Phone: 614-846-9517 Fax: 614-846-9794 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.orphee.com
Re: Size of the lute world
Well, well, well.. This means that the life on the lute list will finally attain the liveliness it deserves, it will be a true microcosm. Boulez bashing is one of my favorite things to do. We also have a Morton Feldman acolyte on the list, but he hasn't been heard from in months. RT (who is diligently working to fill 13-lute with Shostakovich's spirit) Vodka? :-) Stewart McCoy. Unlike Boulez and Feldman he was a man of sobiety. I, on the other hand, am about to pour myself a shot of 16 year old Lagavullin. RT
Re: Size of the lute world
Za mir y druzhbu. :-) Stewart McCoy. RT (who is diligently working to fill 13-lute with Shostakovich's spirit) Vodka? :-) Stewart McCoy. Unlike Boulez and Feldman he was a man of sobiety. I, on the other hand, am about to pour myself a shot of 16 year old Lagavullin. RT
Re: Size of the lute world
Tim, Your observations about the lunar cyclical nature of our lunatic side, when it comes to the flame wars, are truly inspired. Another successful method of handling differences is to grant righteousness to a protagonist on the basis of the day of the month i.e. whether it is odd or even. For couples, for example, one is classified as an even person and the other odd. So, if there is a spat on Dec. 7th, the odd person is right whatever the arguments. But if the fight is on the next day (Dec. 8th) the other person is right no matter what. Remarkable how it effectively defuses things. Maybe something like this could be applied to this list. These periodic flame episodes, as we all observe, have nothing to do with the lute. They have to do with our tiresome attribute of self importance. In this respect our behaviour is more like that of leeches than simians, rhinos, junk yard dogs etc. Those of us who are pathologically needy of self importance will jump on to any exposed vein of somebody else's self importance and suck it out mercilessly in an attempt to boost our own. Moral: When your self importance is affronted, just let it go. Otherwise you may get sucked in (and sucked out too)! When a flame war starts, laughter is the best medicine. A bit of speed reading, and a quick finger on the delete button deals with it quite rapidly. Eventually the war subsides (for a time at least, hopefully!) Miles Dempster Vance, I've been on the lute list serve for only a few months, and have been surprised by the vituperative nature of some of the messages that have been posted. I've been on the verge of taking myself off the list several times, because I find much of the heated discussion pointless and a waste of bandwidth. I have noticed that there is an ebb and flow to the flame wars that coincides with the full moon. We are just reaching a full moon right now and are also cresting on another flame war. If you watch the postings over the next month, I think you will find that in 21-28 days we are in the middle of another spate of heated emails. About a year ago the local newspaper did a study of crime statistics and interviewed police, and came to the conclusion that although the actual number of crimes rose only slightly during the full moon, the nature of the crimes changed, with the crimes being of a much more aggravated nature. The worst period was in the week before the actual full moon. During that week people tend to react more strongly to perceived offenses than they might otherwise. Perhaps some of those writing heated emails should check the moon phase, think twice, take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and delete their message. There are some truly awful things going on in the world today that merit heated discussions. The lute is not one of them. Tim Motz On Saturday, December 6, 2003, at 11:27 PM, Vance Wood wrote: Trouble is-a lot of them drop out or go underground because the group that should be supporting them and encouraging them is by far and away as friendly as a pack of junk yard dogs. As a whole I have never been exposed to a group, boasting interest passionately in a particular endeavor, that is more driven by ego, pride, condescension, duplicity and judgementalism. Before you get mad at me read through the posts that have flooded email servers world wide over the last week or so and ask yourself: If you were new to the Lute would you feel safe and confident in posting a question to this bunch of brigands? There are some fine people in this group that posses a wealth of knowledge but in asking a question you have to first consider what side of the fence you might fall on to and who is going to consider you one of theirs and one of his and one of yours. This is absurd and self destructive. I just wish every one would temper their opinions with a little good sense realizing that you or I don't like everyone and everyone does not like you or I. That's the truth of it BUT!!! we all love the Lute. Vance Wood. - Original Message - From: Roman Turovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Daniel Shoskes [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 5:02 PM Subject: Re: Size of the lute world As I was deleting another repetitive pain in the ass flame post in the ongoing battle between the greedy billionaire lute publishers and the brave Trotskyist proletariat struggling to free the world's tablature I think I noticed an estimate of about 4000 lute players worldwide. Is this a reasonable estimate? No. I estimated a maximum of 3000. Would these range from serious players to people with a lute in the attic they haven't touched in 15 years? Include guitarists who tune their g string down a half step? Include the pipa and oud? Those people with a Lute Olsen signed basketball? No. It is based on membership lists of lute societies and Google sightings
Re: Size of the lute world
Matanya wrote, . Only a few days ago we were told by one enthusiast that the only reason he does not copy Michel Cardin's CDs is because he does not know how to do it. IOW, he has no compunction about producing illegal copies of 9 CDs thus depriving the performer of royalty income to which he is entitled. Oh Mantanya Of course I know how to do it, the point is I didn't. Michael Thames Luthier www.ThamesClassicalGuitars.com Site design by Natalina Calia-Thames - Original Message - From: Matanya Ophee [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2003 3:21 PM Subject: Re: Size of the lute world At 02:45 PM 12/7/2003 -0500, Roman Turovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Look,--- if some things like this do not get commercialized to some degree no one would be able to get strings because no one would make them for free, and music would only be available to those near enough to a library that had manuscripts available for us to look at and copy out of. That is not untrue, but Lute is not yet like Piano that takes care of itself economically. The lute has never been like any of the other instrument. It was always on the outside looking in, and as the Sieur Perrine noted in 1697, it will always continue to be there, as long as lutenists insist on a notational system that is not shared by other musicians. There is no reason to believe that the lute in our time will be more successful in reaching the status of the piano, or even that of the guitar, different than it was at any other time in history. It is a quasi-religious thing and it relies on proselytism to perpetuate itself. This is a statement I can easily agree with. The problem is that this proselytizing can never achieve any results when the emphasis is not on the music but on the instrument and its notational peculiarities. Most of the people in this group and in other lute groups have come on to the instrument through the music, not the other way around. Hence the best possible avenue for proselytizing is making the _music_ available to people who can read it and play. Eventually, people become curious and seek out the instrument itself. It happened before. No one becomes a lutenist by having free access to on line facsimiles of lute tablature. The equipment producers must be paid to keep them in existence, but at least some socialist distribution is essential to foment interest and awareness. That is a political point of view which is simply unrealistic. It lies in the basic contradiction between hardware and software. The only reason socialist distribution is applied here to the music, is because it can be done with impunity. Only a few days ago we were told by one enthusiast that the only reason he does not copy Michel Cardin's CDs is because he does not know how to do it. IOW, he has no compunction about producing illegal copies of 9 CDs thus depriving the performer of royalty income to which he is entitled. No one talks about a socialist distribution of instruments and hardware accessories. RT's Add-a-Lutenist pitch is not socialist distribution. It is charity. And as for socialism in general: do tell me how many lutenists there are in Cuba, Vietnam or North Korea? Keeping the equipment producers in existence, and at the same time preaching for socialist distribution, is thus a self cancelling paradigm. You can't have it both ways. Matanya Ophee Editions Orphe'e, Inc., 1240 Clubview Blvd. N. Columbus, OH 43235-1226 Phone: 614-846-9517 Fax: 614-846-9794 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.orphee.com
Re: Size of the lute world
Try bike racing (not that I was ever any great shakes as a racer, but I did stick it out for three years). Beginners are generally expected to prove themselves worthy before anyone will give you the time of day. I've found the lute world far more accepting and supportive. I showed up at my first LSA in '95 with very modest ability and an old tank of a German heavy lute. By the end of the week I been gently told how the design of the instrument was limiting what I could do, but otherwise was treated as one of the gang and learned a great deal. I won't claim to have acquired any great skill since, but it certainly wasn't because of a lack of encouragement from fellow lutenists on this list or elsewhere. Guy - Original Message - From: Vance Wood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: lute list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 8:27 PM Subject: Re: Size of the lute world Trouble is-a lot of them drop out or go underground because the group that should be supporting them and encouraging them is by far and away as friendly as a pack of junk yard dogs. As a whole I have never been exposed to a group, boasting interest passionately in a particular endeavor, that is more driven by ego, pride, condescension, duplicity and judgementalism. Before you get mad at me read through the posts that have flooded email servers world wide over the last week or so and ask yourself: If you were new to the Lute would you feel safe and confident in posting a question to this bunch of brigands? There are some fine people in this group that posses a wealth of knowledge but in asking a question you have to first consider what side of the fence you might fall on to and who is going to consider you one of theirs and one of his and one of yours. This is absurd and self destructive. I just wish every one would temper their opinions with a little good sense realizing that you or I don't like everyone and everyone does not like you or I. That's the truth of it BUT!!! we all love the Lute. Vance Wood. - Original Message - From: Roman Turovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Daniel Shoskes [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 5:02 PM Subject: Re: Size of the lute world As I was deleting another repetitive pain in the ass flame post in the ongoing battle between the greedy billionaire lute publishers and the brave Trotskyist proletariat struggling to free the world's tablature I think I noticed an estimate of about 4000 lute players worldwide. Is this a reasonable estimate? No. I estimated a maximum of 3000. Would these range from serious players to people with a lute in the attic they haven't touched in 15 years? Include guitarists who tune their g string down a half step? Include the pipa and oud? Those people with a Lute Olsen signed basketball? No. It is based on membership lists of lute societies and Google sightings of unaffiliated players, with an added roach assumption that there is 1 more invisible lutenist to 2 already visibles. Also numbers of lute teachers and luthiers are taken into account. The number is expected to grow because several schools put out lutenists at a steady rate. RT __ Roman M. Turovsky http://turovsky.org http://polyhymnion.org
Re: Size of the lute world
Hi! I don't know about the amount of lute players or enthusiasts. Nice to hear that you are willing to support the lute scene by buying editions and CDs - please visit as much concerts as possible, too! Actually that's what I would like people to do: attending concerts and supporting artist keeps the thing alive - no matter if it's the lute or classical guitar or painting or ... (although I personally am enjoying the lute the most ; - )) I don't know about the CD sales in the US but over here in europe it's a catastophe. You need to buy one of mine because me cellar is full of unsold CDs :- ) But: seriously the amount of CDs produced depends on the company the CD is Producing/marketing. Naxos or Sony will sell much more than small companies. Our CDs (small company) are made in a number of 500 to 2000 and it will takes several years to sell them. Best wishes Thomas Am Sam, 2003-12-06 um 23.55 schrieb Daniel Shoskes: As I was deleting another repetitive pain in the ass flame post in the ongoing battle between the greedy billionaire lute publishers and the brave Trotskyist proletariat struggling to free the world's tablature I think I noticed an estimate of about 4000 lute players worldwide. Is this a reasonable estimate? Would these range from serious players to people with a lute in the attic they haven't touched in 15 years? Include guitarists who tune their g string down a half step? Include the pipa and oud? Those people with a Lute Olsen signed basketball? As someone who has listened to and enjoyed lute music for over 20 years (and been playing for 4 months) it continues to surprise me how many people have never heard of the instrument or know its sound (though they have seen them in pictures). Have any of the lute societies made a coordinated effort to try to increase public awareness (realizing that about 2% of the general public would consider to buy any classical music CD)? It continues to amaze me that when the Renaissance Fair comes to South Florida it is PACKED for 2 weeks solid and yet there is not a single lute teacher less than a 5 hour drive away from me. I actually got excited when I glanced at the headline Odette May Head to South Florida before I realized they were talking about the hurricane. I've tried to do my part in a small way. I will be bringing my lutes into the Classical Guitar class at the high school my kids attend. I've tried to support those who make their living in the field by ordering 2 lutes newly made rather than second hand, ordering a number of music editions from Tree, Lyre and Orphee even though I have enough downloaded to keep me busy and buying most of the newly released CD's (which range from fantastic virtuoso performances to, ahem, less than steller efforts). No doubt my efforts are a drop in the bucket. (how many copies of a lute CD are usually sold anyway??). What have others done on an individual and/or organizational wide level? -- Thomas Schall Niederhofheimer Weg 3 D-65843 Sulzbach 06196/74519 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.lautenist.de / www.tslaute.de/weiss --
Re: Size of the lute world
As I was deleting another repetitive pain in the ass flame post in the ongoing battle between the greedy billionaire lute publishers and the brave Trotskyist proletariat struggling to free the world's tablature I think I noticed an estimate of about 4000 lute players worldwide. Is this a reasonable estimate? No. I estimated a maximum of 3000. Would these range from serious players to people with a lute in the attic they haven't touched in 15 years? Include guitarists who tune their g string down a half step? Include the pipa and oud? Those people with a Lute Olsen signed basketball? No. It is based on membership lists of lute societies and Google sightings of unaffiliated players, with an added roach assumption that there is 1 more invisible lutenist to 2 already visibles. Also numbers of lute teachers and luthiers are taken into account. The number is expected to grow because several schools put out lutenists at a steady rate. RT __ Roman M. Turovsky http://turovsky.org http://polyhymnion.org
Re: Size of the lute world
Trouble is-a lot of them drop out or go underground because the group that should be supporting them and encouraging them is by far and away as friendly as a pack of junk yard dogs. As a whole I have never been exposed to a group, boasting interest passionately in a particular endeavor, that is more driven by ego, pride, condescension, duplicity and judgementalism. You hain't seen nuthin' yet. Ca.1986 2 chaps almost came to blows over some points in DeVisee at one of the LSA seminars. RT __ Roman M. Turovsky http://turovsky.org http://polyhymnion.org
