Sean's "2 cents" is pure gold. And not just because of the rotten economy. Words of wisdom for all of us- Thanks! -Dan
>From my own experiance I would argue the other way but strongly >believe both approaches are valid. > >For the past 8 years I've played only 6c lutes. The "course cap" was >entirely deliberate to cut down on instrument and genre overload. >Rather than having one 6c to play the pre-1600 rep, I have 3 (and, >alas, soon 4) and rather than have more genres to fill out my >education on what's-out-there-and-how-to-play-it, I have a variety >of timbres, note sustainments, brightnesses, etc to explore. It also >promotes a left hand elasticity w/out my right hand looking for >basses and new thumb positions. > >When I first started this experiment the 'rule of thumb' was "what >was available to one person's lifetime if he had died ~1595" which I >thought would give me a pretty big window. Huge window, in fact. It >turns out that most of the books I have would not have been >available to an amateur player or even a successful professional and >even then, I'm not sure he'd want to be hampered by having to keep >on top of all that diversity. So in any year I let go of Johnson to >hike through Phalese for a while (an endless while, mind you) which >I let go of to play Spinacino which is let go to play Blindhammer >and then experiment w/ Buxheimer and the 15th century and then get >called back to VGalilei. And the cycle continues. (For those of us >worried about HIP performances, we should know that no ren player >ever played w/ as much variety as we. It seems obvious but >distraction is the enemy of focus. We can play ren music on ren >instruments but we'll never be ren musicians. We're curators at best) > >I have a huge stock of English solos and trios (bass viol, cittern, >lute) for which this approach works fine but Cutting (for example, >whom I love) it is touch-and-go. I can translate the basses of Anne >Markham's Pavin well enough but my favorite Sans Per Pavin is out >of reach. It was a difficult decision but I'm at peace w/ it. Most >of the English golden age song rep is doable too but brings me to >the edge of what's possible on a 6c. And plenty of people play >Dowland just fine in my neighborhood; they don't need me to muddy >the water (John Smyth's Almain is good to go, and I'll just have to >be content having heard the fantasies a zillion times ;) > >And yes, I have to tiptoe through Molinaro (another fave) but the >trade-off is that I know the background of almost every chanson in >Spinacino and can play most of them to my satisfaction. I can buy >recordings of Molinaro and occasionally hear him in concert but I >can also arrange a Spinacino-based vocal performance which I would >never hear otherwise --or want to-- and learn a heck of a lot along >theway. > >I have also found that I dug way deeper into the 6c repertory than >if I had been splitting my time between Hely, Kapsberger, Dowland, >Wiess _and_ been on the lookout for basso continuo jobs. I enjoy >what I've learned and realize that it couldn't have happened >otherwise. > >Then again, I could have explored even more if I didn't split my >time w/ work. But probably still would have been content in a solely >6c-world. > >My 2 cents. >Sean -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
