Rob MacKillop
Sun, 05 Oct 2008 23:22:42 -0700
I made the mistake of actually staying up to watch the programme. It was definitely the worst programme I've seen in a long time. We had John Williams, for instance, saying that the 4c guitar never had any polyphonic music, it was only strummed, and that the modern classical guitar was superior. Thanks, John! What an ignoramous. There were quite a few gems along those lines. I forgot the name of the lute/cittern/vihuela player they found. He was dressed in period costume (the presenter called it a 1970's medieval costume, and he was quite accurate) and gave the impression he dressed and lived like that all the time. The message was clear: early music people are nuts. I should say that I have a personal story here. The researcher for the programme phoned me about two months ago to ask if I could give him information about the so-called English Guitar. He knew only one story, apparently, about the harpsichord maker, Kirkman, buying guittars to give to prostitutes in order to put the middle-classes off of buying them, buying his harpsichords instead. He kept giggling uncontrollably about this story and refused to listen to anything I said. He sounded like a 14-year old. I refused to take part in the programme. My fears were justified. Looking forward to Part 2! Rob MacKillop -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html