Dear Doc, I think you're being a little unfair to musicologists. You are certainly right that people in the past were practical folk, and would play music on whatever instruments were available to them, and there's no reason why we shouldn't do likewise. However, that's not really the point. I can think of two reasons why we should want to know exactly which instrument Vivaldi had in mind when he wrote his lute concerto:
a) historical reasons - to know and understand what happened in the past, purely for its own sake; b) practical reasons - through ignorance we might be making things unnecessarily difficult for ourselves, e.g. trying to play music on an unsuitable instrument, where the notes don't fall well under the hand. More often than not, they knew what they were doing, and it is generally a good idea to find out what they did and why, before trying to go our own way. Some years ago, when I was in Anost, France, for their annual hurdy-gurdy festival, I had the pleasure of hearing "Spring" from Vivaldi's Four Seasons played on a solo hurdy-gurdy. The player was very adept, and the music was clearly recognisable. However, even though hurdy-gurdies were commonly played at the time of Vivaldi, I don't think it's quite what he had in mind when he composed his Four Seasons. To use Roman's word, the performance lacked gravitas. There's nothing anachronistic about wanting to play music as the composer intended. Surely it's the other way round, i.e. not caring which instrument to play. For the ultimate anachronistic performance, I might consider using the instrument which happens to be within easy reach as I sit at my computer. Here's some Vivaldi intabulated for it. _____a______a__h_____________a______a__h________ _h______h______________|_h______h______________| ___k______k____________|___k______k____________| _________________h_h_h_|_________________h_h_h_| _______________________|_______________________| _h______h____________h______h______a______a______ _____h______h__f___|_____h______h______a______a_| ___________________|_________________g______g___| ___________________|____________________________| ___a______a________|___a______a_________________| &c. No prizes for identifying the instrument. For the rest of the ensemble I would have the Violin 1 part played on a violin, the Violin 2 part played on a mandoline, the viola part on a dobro, and the continuo on guitar and double bass. It would be wonderfully anachronistic, and would sound great. Best wishes, Stewart. ----- Original Message ----- From: "doc rossi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Lute Net" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, December 22, 2003 8:37 AM Subject: Re: Vivaldi Lute Concerto > I think questions concerning which octave, which instrument, are > anachronistic - in those days you played the music you wanted to play > on the instrument you had, and adapted the music to suit. This is > quite harshly put, but the gist is there. I've performed Vivaldi on > 18th-century cittern in C tuning and it works very well, without > changing keys for pieces in Gm, D and so on.
