This is a subjective question. A few weeks ago my instructor played the bass line from the piece I was learning. He did it so that it sounded, despite being monophonic and bass, very early.
My subjective impression is that "early" music is fragile, strangely exotic but sort of familiar, and plaintive without being fawning. I would like to develop a sense of confidence that my playing sounds "early", but I'm not progressing very fast in this. I've followed Austin's early music ensembles (Univ of Texas, Texas Early Music Ensemble, and La Follia) for years. So, it seems that for me exposure creates taste but not confi- dent ability. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
