Gary Digman commented:=====================
Dear Ed;
And so was Galileo himself a lutenist. Or so I've heard.
Gary
========================================================
He was indeed. There is a one-time reader of this list, Cantor Thompson in
Orange County, California, who does a one-man show about Galileo Galilei.
He plays lute pieces from Galileo's time and also sings. I provided him
with that fantastically beautiful villanella with text from Orlando Furioso
in the Chilesotti Codice-Lautenbuch (also orchestrated by Respighi and
played on 'cello).
But in music his father Vincenzo and brother Michelangelo were surely more
famous. The brother published a book of lute music when he was in the
service of the Dukes of Bavaria. There are two facsimiles. The Minkoff one
has a very nice and informative preface by Claude Chuavel. I've never seen
the other one, although I think Doug Smith was involved.
I enjoy the story, probably apocyphal, of how Galileo Galilei and his
father were testing the tensile strength of gut lute strings by lowering
them with various weights over the side of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He
noticed how the weighted strings swayed, and thus discovered the physical
properties of a pendulum.
And you all know about the Florentine Camerata to which Vincenzo belonged,
and how while studying the nature of Greek drama they "discovered" opera.
Galilei was the principal researcher, and in a sense the inventor of opera.
Of course, Francesco Triboli, an astronomer(?) himself, would name his
tablature program after Vincenzo Galilei's treatise on the lute, Fronimo
Dialogo (1568; 2nd. rev. ed. 1581/1586.
Arthur.
