On Mar 12, 2010, at 10:44 AM, Suzanne Angevine wrote: >> tempos chosen to allow the contrapuntal lines to connect -- >> if the music is taken too slowly, it becomes disjointed as >> individual notes die away before the next notes continue the line. > > This betrays a rather low opinion of the modern listener's ability to > actually hear and follow contrapuntal lines.
The only modern listener I'm talking about is me, so if I'm betraying a low opinion of my "ability," I'm entitled to have a low opinion of it. But the problem isn't the listener's ability to hear the lines; it's the player's ability to play them as if they were distinct polyphonic lines instead of intervals and chords with stuff in between. A good many amateur players do the latter when they think they're doing the former, and the music dies on the vine. It may be that I can make sense out of it, but that doesn't make it good playing. After all, I can understand this sentence: "After the death of the Donor, no trustee to or from whom or to or from whose spouse or issue a current or future payment or distribution of property, income or principal may be made or withheld under any provisions of this instrument shall be permitted or required by the provisions hereof to vote upon or participate in any action taken thereon." But it's still an atrocious sentence. > Just as in social dialog, different voices take *turns*, not all talking at > once. But in a lute fantasy, those different voices mostly talk two or three at a time, which is not how we converse unless we're on TV sports talk shows, so the analogy is not useful: we can't understand three people talking to us simultaneously. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
