With respect, Monica, it is clear that you are not a performer. It's fairly easy to sit back and say 'you shouldn't do that because it wasn't done' and quite another to be a professional musician earning your crust, supporting a family, etc, and being booked to play a date. Considering David's work as a whole, he has given an enormous amount to his studies and to our appreciation of the music of different periods. If he finds himself stretching the historical facts a little here and there, tis a small sin...
David is right about fashions, though...the CD recordings of each decade of the Early Music movement tell us more about that decade than they do about the music they purport (I think that's the word - I may have made it up!) to be expressing. Period performance is ultimately doomed, of course - our ears have heard Schoenberg, Hendrix, Madonna. We can never hear how the original audience heard. Which is not an excuse to do anything you want, of course... Rob -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
