Howard wrote: >Eugene C. Braig IV > > > Owain Phyfe of New World Renaissance Band fame was > > playing. For any who have not seen this spectacle, Mr. Phyfe plays on a > > modern steel-string guitar with six single strings...but crafted to ape the > > aesthetics of the old Guadalupe vihuela. Afterwards, I engaged Mr. Phyfe > > in conversation specifically to discuss his instrument, which I thought was > > very amusing for what it was. Rather than discuss the true nature of the > > piece, Mr. Phyfe went into a great long pseudo-historic spiel to try to > > legitimize the thing as authentic by giving it the name "chitarra > > battente!" This spiel is probably very amusing to ren-faire fans, but I > > regarded it as a blatant effort at deception. I really enjoyed the > > performance as folksy and non-HIP. I was a bit soured by the effort to > > convince me it was all somehow authentic. > >Many of us are acquainted with Owain. He attended two or three LSA seminars >and brought that instrument to one of them. There was a chat about it with >Owain and Ray Nurse and a few other people; I'm sure anyone less stupid than >I am about lute construction would have been fascinated, but I remember >nothing of what was said except the expression "X-bracing" from Ray, and the >notion that it was essentially a 20th-century instrument. > >Owain's approach to the music is informed by modern folk/pop sensibilities. >Sometimes it works. It was Owain I was thinking of when I wrote yesterday:
These comments here touch on a what is for me a very crucial part of what I, as a re-enactor wish to bring to the organization I work with, the SCA. Most of you who are familiar with the SCA know that it is often scoffed by most of serious academia. Those members of academia who have been are still are clandestinely members tend to hide that fact lest it harm their careers. Unfortunately it is because of the Owain Phyffes that abound in the SCA because of the crossover between it and the Ren Faires that we have this reputation of not taking history seriously, and it is precisely because of this that I as a lutenist study HIP so hard. For me it's not merely learning the instrument and it's history or the music of the period. It's learning how it was played, the nuances of the period and so on, that for a re-enactor means experiencing the period as fully as we can 400 - 500 years later. And so, apart from reading books like Coelho's collection of essays on period performance and Luis Milan's 16th c. book on the subject (thanks Nick), I come here to read what you, the professional musicians and scholars all have to say about it. And frankly I get a lot out of the comments and debates. You all leave me with something to chew on, and if it means I come away with more questions later, it's only because I've been paying attention. That is not to say that there is no place for the lute in modern music. Only that for me HIP is crucial to what I wish to do with the lute. For me it's all about the history, and I'm desperately trying to get a good friend of mine to get rid of his vogelwind or at least tune it to a Renaissance lute tuning in order to learn tablature. It's why when young people in the SCA come to me to learn the lute I first teach them how to tune their guitars to Ren. G tuning, knowing these young people are poor college students who can't yet afford even the least expensive student lute from Dan Larson. In this way I hope to encourage them to play lute music, even if it's on the wrong instrument, so that maybe one day they'll take it up on the correct one. And I tell them this up front. I do agree that Owain's approach to justify his non-period instrument in a Renaissance Faire setting is dishonest, the Ren Faires are after all tourist attractions, not re-enactment (though to a certain degree the SCA is not 100% re-enactment either, it just comes a lot closer than a Ren Faire). It's when the Owain's of the world insist that what they're doing is legitimately historical while knowing better that it begins to draw focus away from historical study and historical accuracy (if such a thing as the latter can be fully realized in the modern world). > > musicians who approach earlier music from an > > uneducated or semi-educated, folk or pop direction aren't particularly > > irritating, and indeed occasionally offer a useful perspective about music > > composed when the concept of "classical" music didn't really exist. > >I had the experience, a few years after the last time I saw Owain, of trying >to get a singer to be less stentorian and blustery -- more like talking and >less like singing Wagner at the Met over a brass section that won't shut up >--in "Since First I Saw Your Face. I saw a light go in his eyes, and he told >me that I was asking him to sing it like the guy in the New World >Renaissance Band. He played a recording, and while it wasn't exactly what I >was trying to get from the singer, he could have done a lot worse than sing >it that way. Lots of singers do a lot worse. And I can't say that some >Welsh singer in 1604 didn't sound a lot like Owain. Agreed to a point. The modernists give us perspective sometimes. A semi-educated performer is at least marginally aware of what they're doing, and at some point it becomes a choice by them as to what direction they want to take their particular career. To HIP or not to HIP, to paraphrase the Bard. For what I do I tend to try and encourage historical study and discourage filking modern folks songs about a Victorian notion of what the Middle Ages should have been. Even though the latter can be fun late a night around a campfire they don't stand up to scrutiny in the light of day. Thanks to all for a stimulating discussion (yet again). And if anyone can suggest other books and essays for me to look at that discuss HIP I'd be most appreciative. Regards, Craig
