My question is, who is "overrating" the lute?? Are we still not at about 0.00001% of the population who knows or cares what it is?
Perhaps the small grain of truth that he is getting at: when a modern continuo player on theorbo has to make themselves heard, there is by necessity a greater emphasis on banging out volume (which is destructive to tone) rather than the sensitivity of playing that makes the solo literature so special. At the Baroque Performance Institute in Oberlin last summer, the lute group accompanied 2 violinists in their violin class. The violinists were very excited to be playing with our mixed continuo group, but the violin teacher simply said "Please, don't encourage them". That became our motto for the rest of the week (yes, I know it is derivative of a famous Beecham quote). DS On Friday, June 02, 2006, at 06:34AM, Roman Turovsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >I agree with him on guitar use in Bach cantatas, but the >rest............................. >RT > > >Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger: "If you take a look at the Early Music Scene today. >What bothers you?" >Reinhard Goebel: "The tinkling and banging on the lute!* That's the most >dreadful. These instruments are grotesquely overrated. There is a poem by >Brocke about the virgins from Hamburg loving to go to the opera because >there they could see giraffes. The giraffes are of course the theorboes >towering like erect members over the orchestra pit. This is what interests >people the most today, just as it did then. The most unimportant >instruments! At the latest in 1720 the position of a lute player in Venice >was not refilled but instead offered to a violin player. And today we have >Bach-Cantatas with guitar. Ridiculous!" > >* "Das Lautengeklimper und -gebimmel" > > > > >To get on or off this list see list information at >http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > >
