Some time ago the message copied below was sent on another list. Apparently it was from an article printed in the Times (London) at the end of January.
PART of a lost work by a 17th-century Italian composer has been resurrected after fragments of the score were found inside an old lute. The score had been torn into strips and used to glue together cracks in the body of the 400-year-old instrument. There it lay unrecognised until Chris Challen, a musical instrument restorer from Chalford, near Stroud, Gloucestershire, started repairing the lute 25 years after it was given to him in Switzerland. The score has been identified as part of an oratorio, probably by Alessandro Scarlatti, the court composer of Naples in the late 1600s. It has taken Mr Challen, 60, three years to reconstruct the work using a computer program devised by Kenneth Mobbs, a retired lecturer from Bristol University. Let us hope that old lutes will not prove to be to be new sources of lost manuscripts! Best wishes Anthony ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Birthdays? Anniversaries? Send a gift online from http://shop.di-ve.com . FREE DELIVERY TO MALTA ADDRESSES
