The Lord Danby Lute Book is at the Sibley Music Library at the Eastman School in Rochester (NY), where Paul O'Dette teaches. The library seems to keep close control over materials, and I am unaware of anything of theirs that circulates in clandestine microfilms or photocopies.
Although my opinion is not shared by everyone, I think the Lord Danby Book is probably one of the most important lute manuscripts of the 18th century. That is because it has a dozen or so solo lute pieces by Handel. All of them are arrangements, and for that reason their importance has been pooh-poohed by some. But (now I begin to editorialize) I think it is a mistake to automatically give second-class status to a lute piece just because it is an arrangement. And in the instance we are speaking of an arrangement dating from Handel's time in Hamburg, so he may have had a direct connection with the pieces. They are not arrangements made by Joe Shortsleeves down the block. Tim Crawford has long been working on it, and I do hope Mrs. Minkoff will get it into print. There are lots of questions about the manuscript that I expect Tim will reveal. One is the chronological place of the pieces in Handel's output. He has two articles, one in _*The Lute*_ 25 (1985): 53 with biographical information, and another, in the Göttinger Händel Beiträge 2 (1986): 19. The latter discusses the music, and as I recall has several of the Handel pieces in complete transcriptions. So it could serve as an introduction until such time as the Minkoff facsimile is made available. There's also information on Tim's web page. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lucas Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 10:31 PM Subject: [LUTE] Lord Danby's lute book > Dear friends, > > > > Does anybody have information on the progress of Tim > Crawford's Minkoff > edition of Lord Danby's lute book? Does anybody on > the list have access to > a facsimile that I might look at in the meantime? > > > > Many thanks! > > > > Lucas Harris > > > > > > New contact information: > > > > Lucas Harris > > 193 Coleman Avenue > > East York, ON M4C 1R5 > > Canada > > Tel: (416) 546-1786 > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > -- > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >
