60 is a very good tactus for many of Francesco's pieces for me. But that is just me. Quite a few of the pieces roll along smoothly in the 56-64 range. There is no reason whatsoever to to feel that one tempo is historically accurate.
As for whether we live in a caffeinated, jet set society, it seems pretty clear that since we don't as a general practice employ the "top gear" for ornamentation compared to cornetto and recorder players, that we can't really draw a conclusion from that unless we are fly more or drink more coffee and tea than they do :) dt At 10:44 AM 3/12/2010, you 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. I don't think >having a note die away before the next one in its line is heard >prevents one from hearing it as a continuous voice. Just as in >social dialog, different voices take *turns*, not all talking at >once. Its partly that gracious interaction of the lines that you >need the space and time to appreciate. And at least this modern >listener can follow and appreciate polyphony doing that in lute >music without the sound being utterly continuous. > >Suzanne > > > >To get on or off this list see list information at >http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
