Stuart Walsh wrote: > Well, the surviving repertoire of music for the lute - almost three > centuries from Dalza to Hagen (Straube, even): Da Milano, Dowland, > Gaultier,Weiss etc etc etc > > And the English guitar? Straube even - and a few more too. (And a good > player need to learn the A tuning and revive Marella.) > > I like the English guitar, and one of these days I'm going to put up > little website on it. But I wouldn't compare it in any way to the lute. > > You say: " > > its a wonderful and unique instrument that never quite reached >> what it could and unfortunately died before its time." > Maybe it did reach what it could - in the amazing repertoire of the > seven-string Russian guitar. That is, if the Russian guitar did evolve > from English guitar-type instruments. I have a little discussion of > this issue here: > > http://www.tuningsinthirds.com/Zacher/ > > Stuart
I understand what you're saying and do acknowledge the fact that the lute is completly on another level in terms of composition, technique, legacy and so on. I'm familiar with Dowland and Weiss - brilliant stuff. With this silly comparison I was referring to the fact that the English guitar has been strangely forgotten by history, perhaps understandably so as it was never even that highly regarded in England to start with nor did it left many traces after it faded into obscurity. When I said it didn't reach what it could I meant to say it died far too early to evolve - in terms of repertoire and so on - perhaps even physically. It seems the English guitar left a much larger footprint in other parts of the world than in its own country of conception, and I'll add another obvious example, now that you mentioned that Russian guitar, - the Portuguese guitarra, which is the root subject of this discussion afterall. It clearly evolved or at least borrowed from the English guitar and it's a very capable and dynamic instrument. For those that don't know the guitarra very well, or its music, I recommend getting Carlos Paredes' "Guitarra Portugesa" from Amazon.com - it's hard to classify his music, it's folkish with touches of classical, very unique sound - he was a very highly regarded player. Here's an old recording of his I found http://www.pedagua.com/despertar.wma I'll check out that link you posted, thanks. Regards, Pedro To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
