Dear Bill, There's nothing wrong with Hip (Historically Informed Performance). If we want to play music from the past, it makes sense to find out as much as we can about how that music was once played. I can think of two reasons:
1) Academic, i.e. studying history for its own sake out of curiosity. There's nothing wrong with wanting to increase our knowledge. Ignorance is not necessarily bliss. 2) Practical. The chances are that people in the past understood their music, and there is often a good practical reason for us to copy what they did. Take frets, for example. People in the 16th and 17th centuries were quite able to use metal frets fixed in place on the fingerboard. They did so with citterns, bandoras and orpharions. Yet they chose to use gut frets for lutes and viols. It makes sense to use metal frets with metal strings, because gut frets would soon wear away with metal strings. The advantage of having gut frets tied round the neck of a lute or viol (instead of metal frets fixed in place) is that you can move the frets to where you would like them to be; you are thus able to fine-tune your tuning. Being historically informed should enhance one's performance, not get in the way. The problem is where history becomes an end in itself, and the player is so wrapped up in it, that he forgets that his primary aim is to entertain other people. There is no reason why a Hip performance has to be dull. Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. ----- Original Message ----- From: "bill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Stewart McCoy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Lute Net" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 6:21 AM Subject: *** SPAM *** Re: Lute on Open Air Festival On Marted�, ago 24, 2004, at 00:59 Europe/Rome, Stewart McCoy wrote: > The message you remember with such > nostalgia got that right. i've reached an age where if i were hired to play an orgy i think i could guarantee them more or less continuous music throughout. interesting point about the context in which the music is presented. i blame this mania for hip. if lute players were a little less strident in their concerns for how the music should be played, we'd probably hear a lot more of it. this could involve unimaginable things such as electrified lutes with geared metal tunings pegs, metal frets and resin fiber bodies in lurid colors with metal flakes... roll over dowland... ..roll up to the venue. - bill
