On Thursday 06 October 2005 Charlie wrote: .. > For various reasons baroque lute and theorbo are generally > easier to play in technical terms. .. > Anybody who has played guitar (any style) for > any amount of time will immediately recognize many of the chord > shapes and names on the theorbo and can generally learn to play > continuo in a few months' time, provided he can read music. ..
Oh no! :-) I have been playing theorbo/chitarrone for years, especially continuo, and yet I have not completely "learnt to play continuo" with it. Dear Charlie, do you play theorbo continuo yourself? Your comment looks like it were based only on theoretical speculation of chord shapes... ;-) I think theorbo with its re-entrant tuning is really quite a beast in continuo! And in two senses: it is quite hard to tame, and it really can be very effctive when tamed. And another aspect is the size: you really have to be careful with your posture and technic to be able to play so big and un-ergonomic instrument more than two months... I would NOT recommend theorbo as the first lute. Perhaps some 7 course renaissance lute or 11 course baroque lute is a good starter? And the latter only if you are mainly interested in the solo repertoire of French middle baroque and German and French late baroque. Arto To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
