On Tuesday, May 1, 2007, at 03:19 America/Los_Angeles, John Scott wrote: > do any of the sources give a reason for this kind > of thumb technique, or is it just some odd quirk in the evolution of > playing?
I don't know if the sources say why, but it would have been obvious to a renaissance-era player: a downstroke with the thumb is going to be noticeably stronger than an upstroke with the finger. This strong-weak alternation is essential to the music, just as strong and weak syllables are necessary for language to be intellgible (have your computer read something aloud to you for ten minutes and you'll see what I mean). HP To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
