Dear List: Baron writes about it in his book, while criticizing the French for all their fanciful titles for pieces. He states:
³Gallot gave his pieces such strange names that one must ponder hard how they connect with the music, particularly when he tried to express thunder and lightening on the lute. It is too bad that he did not indicate when it lit and struck. A certain author, of whom we may more readily approve, composed the siege of Vienna on the lute and indicated above the passages: 'Here the cannons thunder, here the wounded Turks howl, here they are driven to flight.'" Ernst Gottlieb Baron, Untersuchung des Instruments der Lauten (Nurenberg: Rudiger) 1727, reprinted as Study of the Lute, translated by Douglas Alton Smith (Redondo Beach, Ca: Instrumenta Antigua, 1976) 75-76. Apparently, not only was Turkish-themed composition around during Weiss's period, but writers are still talking about the siege of Vienna (1683) in 1727. Nevertheless, I concur with others who have noted that this particular title refers to an unfaithful one (feminine), although there is no reason to insist that it must refer to a woman. In the CNRS Gallot edition, Rollin et al. research the identities of Les Gallots's dedicatees: a notable, but challenging musicological endeavor. Has anyone attempted the same for Weiss's dedicatees? One last note about Baron. It has always amused me that while he sharply criticizes the French in his book, in doing so he unwittingly points the finger at his own cohort, which he seems to feel is superior to the French. Nevertheless, he played a French lute (the d-minor tuning), wrote his pieces in French notation, he and his contemporaries wrote suites, doubles and tombeaux, AND they used fanciful French dedications (e.g., L'infidele)...all genres and practices that were cultivated first by the French. Baron and Weiss contra Baron? They do so in defense of the French. Jorge Torres To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
