"howard posner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb: > Maybe we're talking nonsense because we haven't defined our terms. > Or maybe you assume a clear dichotomy between blending and not > blending; the world is a more complicated place than that.
I'm too simple a listener, probably. IMHO it's a dichotomy, yes. You're certainy right, though, the world is a more complicated place than that, as the old Chinese saying has it >,) > Indeed, I think the whole notion of a single sound ideal for all of > Europe for a century or more is inherently incredible, but that's > another discussion. It is so, indeed. I have not the faintest idea how people in northern Danmark or other people in southern Italy perceived those notions. What I try to discuss are changes of lute playing techniques in context of modern explanations of different sound aesthetics during the medieval, renaissance, and baroque eras. > > Pictures show single instruments > > (harps, fiddles, lutes, flutes), playing together with singers. > > Surviving ars nova music, when executed with instruments so distinct, > > leaves no chance to merge or blend. > > Saying this does not make it so. We don't even know what the > instruments were playing. That's not my. I wasn't born then, so I don't know as a witness. (And you don't know either. So why do you object?) But there are pictures surviving, depicting medieval musicians who play together with singers. If you agree that things like that aren't impossible to have happened, then maybe you'll concede that those instrumentalists will either have played from the singers' parts or they played something which didn't survive in written form. You may say, all instrumentalists playing from parts, would join in one part to form an instrumental party. All I can say, then, is that it wouldn't make much sense IMHO. What would make sense on the other hand is that different instruments would go along with different parts to form a colourful band. It's just more probably, lacking evidence notwithstanding. > Likely they were doubling the singers, in > which case the dominant sound on each line would be the voice, > colored by the doubling instrument; the question of whether a harp > could "blend" with a lute would be unimportant. Yepp, that's certainly so. But there are pictures of purely instrumental bands, too. > 2) If you had a lute in your hand and wanted to match, as much as > possible, the the tone of a rebec or a bray harp, would you play > with fingers over the rose or with a quill back toward the bridge? I for one would play close-to-rose so as to match. Quill stands out, that much is for sure. > >> Rhythm guitar players play with plectra today, but they > >> rarely want to focus attention on their individual instrument. > > > > No such thing like rhythm lutes in medieval ensemble music, > > How do you know? Have you been listening to those non-existent > recordings? You don't think any 14th-century lutenist in a dance > band ever strummed a bunch of fifths? In the way rock band rhythm guitarists do? No, I don't think so. Matter of restricted imagination, probably. > > or baroque > > for that matter, as far as I can see. > > It's called continuo. That's a bit sweeping, don't you think? At least, it's not the way I'm used to playing continuo when accompanying singers. First thing is to distinctly provide the bass line. Guitarists may approach this differently. > In broken consorts, and some lute songs, its > called "the tab parts that don't have divisions." > > >> A viol player in a > >> polyphonic consort needs to have his instrument and his line heard > >> distinctly. The cittern player in a broken consort wants to blend > >> with the pandora (and lute, if the lute isn't playing divisions). > > > > Again, how can he / she (cittern), playing his / her own part? > > By DOING IT. It's what musicians do. Okay, I'm not a musician. I'm a lute player, occasionally, in a broken consort. And I don't try to blend with other instruments but to be heard as distinctly as possible. I'm sorry I can't continue this, as I'm heading for the players' meeting in Cottbus. -- Mathias To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
