Dear Daniel, The point about keeping one's lute in bed is all about damp causing damage to the lute. A bed which is constantly used will be as dry a place as you can find for the lute, as long as you avoid the sweat etc between the sheets. Mace presents this gem of advice in an amusing way. Unfortunately the passage is often quoted out of context, laughed at, and misunderstood. People end up thinking that's all he had to say, that he was eccentric, cranky, unreliable, to be treated with caution, etc. Nothing could be more ridiculous. Mace was a player of the lute, viol and theorbo, a composer, an enthusiast, and he certainly knew what he was writing about. He could see that the music he had loved all his life - English music - was going out of fashion, and wanted to preserve as much useful, practical information as he could, for future generations, i.e. for us. We should read the book, and be grateful.
Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. -----Original Message----- From: Daniel Winheld [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 27 February 2009 16:41 To: [email protected] Subject: [LUTE] Re: Laurent de La Hyre [loaded?] > What precise parts of Mace's work do you find not 'reliable'. > >(Descartes last words here) >dt "Don't walk away, René..." Storing lutes in beds. Smashed more theorbi than the airlines. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
