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. 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. Me: >> 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. I do. I was responding to your remark about the status of the piano or guitar, which I may have misunderstood. >> 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 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. 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.
