On Tuesday, October 7, 2003, at 11:58 AM, Matanya Ophee wrote: > That is a rather harsh indictment of an entire cultural movement that > existed in Germany for several decades before and after the turn of the > past century, the Vogelwand movement.
You'll hear the same harsh indictment of bluegrass mandolins and Irish bouzoukis. To the bluegrass players, a mandolin is that flat-backed thing that Gibson makes. To a Celtic musician, a bouzouki is that long-necked octave mandolin-type thing that makes chords behind the fiddle tunes. To them, those instruments are the real thing, but to others they're not the real thing, but local aberrations which have become popular among a particular group of people. To those who are interested in the Italian mandolin, the Gibson mando type is useless. To those interested in the bouzouki of the Balkans, Greece, or wherever bouzoukis originate from, the Irish version is not taken seriously. So when is a lute not a lute? When it's a guitar-lute, lutar, galute, or whatever else you want to call it. To my mind it's just a guitar with a lute-like body and pegboard. So it was in vogue for a while in 19th-century Germany, it probably doesn't hold much interest for those who are interested in the renaissance or Baroque lute. Why should it? David Rastall
