I don't know about the scholarship, but from personal experience, I can say that in a small room a lute can produce enough sound for a few people to dance. Especially if you aren't competing with post-industrial white noise from traffic, refrigerators, central heating and cooling, etc.
Best to all, and keep playing. Chris. On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 12:11 PM, Anthony Hind <[1][email protected]> wrote: According to David v. O there is a "Tablature for baroque lute: dance tunes. Written by Kaempfer." [2]http://home.planet.nl/~ooije006/david/writings/kaempfer_f.html but I will leave David to comment on that. [3]http://home.planet.nl/~ooije006/david/writings/kaempfer_f.html "Of course that is puritan England in 1670 - Who knows what things were like in other places and at other times?" William Samson I believe during the commonwealth, courtly dances were forbidden, but not country dancing (see Playford's English Dancing Master); and at his daughter's wedding, Cromwell is said to have danced all night. Perhaps the gamba (or other bowed intrument) tended to take over from the lute among the Cromwellians, at least for dance music? Although, as others have said, where there was only a lute in a household, surely that could have been used? ----- Mail original ----- De : Ed Durbrow <[4][email protected]> A : LuteNet list <[5][email protected]> Cc : Envoye le : Jeudi 2 fevrier 2012 6h08 Objet : [LUTE] Re: Some history questions A recent Lute News had an article about this very issue. They looked into some statistics about how many instruments households had and made the proposition that if there was only a lute available and people wanted to dance, they would have danced to the lute. I think trends change over time. It is hard to imagine dancing dying out immediately with the advent of Dm tuning when dance manuals had been written in lute tab around 1600, but it is also doesn't seem to fit the image of the kind of music that was being played in the time of Baron and Weiss on the Baroque lute. On the other hand, if you expand the definition of what a Baroque lute is, clearly some kinds of lutes (theorbo, archlute, theorboized dm lute) were used in orchestras that played dance music. Interesting question. I wish some musicologists would chime in. Ed Durbrow Saitama, Japan [1][6]http://www.youtube.com/user/edurbrow?feature=watch [2][7]http://www.musicianspage.com/musicians/9688/ [3][8]http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ -- References 1. [9]http://www.youtube.com/user/edurbrow?feature=watch 2. [10]http://www.musicianspage.com/musicians/9688/ 3. [11]http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ To get on or off this list see list information at [12]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. mailto:[email protected] 2. http://home.planet.nl/~ooije006/david/writings/kaempfer_f.html 3. http://home.planet.nl/~ooije006/david/writings/kaempfer_f.html 4. mailto:[email protected] 5. mailto:[email protected] 6. http://www.youtube.com/user/edurbrow?feature=watch 7. http://www.musicianspage.com/musicians/9688/ 8. http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ 9. http://www.youtube.com/user/edurbrow?feature=watch 10. http://www.musicianspage.com/musicians/9688/ 11. http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ 12. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
