Another thing we do now is to narrow our field mostly to other plucked
string instruments and interpretations. The lute players who created
the music we are talking about heard lots of bowed strings, wind
instruments, keyboards etc. and it must have influenced their
repertoire and how they played. How many articles have been written
comparing versions of lute pieces with each other and ignoring the
versions for other instruments?
One more point - the interpretations of Dowland by Hoppy and Paul
O'Dette are very, very different, but you can enjoy listening to both
of them. Listening is a different thing than picking aspects of the
performances that you can borrow for your own performances of those
pieces.
Nancy
At 12:37 AM 2/10/2010, David Tayler wrote:
There's no question, empirically, that going to concerts is good for
your playing and listening to CDs is bad for your playing.
Everyone has to make that choice--whether they are a listener or a
player.
Another way to look at it is that no one in the renaissance or
baroque ever listened to CDs, it was never part of their training.
CDs are a product of modern aesthetic values. To train yourself in
renaissance and baroque style, I think it is important to study what
they studied, up to a point. I draw the line at candles.
A CD will never reveal how you play--at best it realizes the
imagination of the artist, at worst it is frozen food--but even at
its best it cannot approach the enchanted realm of live music
As for an interpretation that is not to one's taste, some
interpretations are polarizing; that means that the artist has taken
a significant stand. That's a sign of artistic independence. BRAVO!
To the performer who can both charm and annoy.
The point about married to one performance is interesting--although
one can only be married to a recording, since the performance itself
is just a passing fancy.
Perhaps the listener of yore would have been horrified and bored by
hearing the exact same piece the same way over and over again, like
having a TIVO that could only record the same episode of Grey's
Anatomy, or the Lost Pilot for Groundhog Day, where the hero is
stuck
making ice sculptures and taking beginning piano, but never escapes.
dt
At 03:19 PM 2/9/2010, you wrote:
>30 years of listening! Hah! I certainly would like to. But
>implicitely my point was that too many lute recordings are on the
>brink of being too bland for my humble taste. Now even Robert Barto
>falls prey to this. This I did not expect.
>g
>
>
>On 10.02.2010, at 00:12, howard posner wrote:
>
> > On Feb 9, 2010, at 2:47 PM, Gernot Hilger wrote:
> >
> >> My reference interpretation, a beloved compagnion for more than
> >> thirty years is Hoppy's 1978 rendition on the 1755 Widhalm
lute,
> >> Reflexe edition, not the later recording on his van Lennep
lute. I
> >> find this particular piece overflowing with emotion, ardently
> >> played, very moving. It just hits and touches me. The music is
so
> >> deep and calm and nevertheless arousing. What a masterpiece.
And an
> >> example of what can be done on the lute.
> >>
> >> Upon further reflection, I find that Robert does in fact
express
> >> himself, but only on a smaller scale. More civilised, perhaps.
> >> Which I find a pity.
> >>
> >> Why is it that the emotional range of many lute recordings is
so
> >> small? Or compressed? It can be done otherwise. Or is it just a
> >> matter of my ears being clogged?
> >
> > They may very well be clogged. If you've been married to one
> > performance for 30 years, it's only natural to think of it as
THE
> > performance, and think of every other performance as if it were
an
> > attempt to duplicate it; therefore any other performance can
hardly
> > differ from it without being inferior. We all tend to judge
music-
> > making by some model we've internalized, and recordings are very
> > powerful internalizers.
> >
> > You may be right about emotional scale, but I think you should
be
> > scientific about this: put away the Smith Reflexe recording,
spend 30
> > years listening to Barto's, and then get back to us.
> > --
> >
> > To get on or off this list see list information at
> > [1]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Nancy Carlin Associates
P.O. Box 6499
Concord, CA 94524 USA
phone 925/686-5800 fax 925/680-2582
web site - [2]www.nancycarlinassociates.com
Representing:
FROM WALES - Crasdant & Carreg Lafar, FROM ENGLAND - Jez Lowe & Jez
Lowe & The Bad Pennies, FROM SPAIN - La Musgana and now representing
EARLY MUSIC - The Venere Lute Quartet, Paul Beier, The Good Pennyworths
& Morrongiello & Young
Administrator THE LUTE SOCIETY OF AMERICA
web site - [3]http://LuteSocietyofAmerica.org
--
References
1. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
2. http://www.nancycarlinassociates.com/
3. http://lutesocietyofamerica.org/
