Dear Howard, Thanks for the information about Kuhnau's letter, which must have been what I had had in mind. I suppose the letter gives some weight to the use of mandoras/ gallichons at Leipzig: presumably the instruments were to be used, whether bought or borrowed. Of course, whether or not they were used for particular pieces like Betrachte Meine Seele is impossible to tell for sure. However, if we are to accept that the word lute (or whatever it was in the source) means a plucked instrument, the mandora/ gallichon does seem a likely candidate, because other plucked instruments like the theorbo or archlute would have had difficulty coping with all the bass notes. That the music was notated in staff notation rather than tablature seems to point towards a keyboard instrument rather than a plucked one. Did Bach use his Lautenwerk, I wonder?
Best wishes, Stewart. ----- Original Message ----- From: "howard posner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Lute Net" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 1:42 PM Subject: [LUTE] Re: St. John Passion > On Sep 5, 2007, at 3:14 AM, Stewart McCoy wrote: > >> One of the arguments in favour >> of using the mandora is that they bought a couple for the church at >> Leipzig >> when Bach was there. > > Is this documented? I'm aware of the letter from Kuhnau, Bach's > predecessor as cantor in Leipzig, writing to the town council (or > mayor) asking for money to buy two of them in 1704, so he wouldn't > have to keep borrowing them. Is there a record that such a purchase > was actually made? To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
