On Oct 7, 2012, at 11:22 AM, JarosÅaw Lipski <[email protected]> wrote:
> So you see Mace as an oddball, inaccurate observer, someone quick to jump to > odd conclusions, old deaf man who had lost touch with reality, an idiot who > constructed an instrument impossible to play etc What I said was: "I'm not inclined to regard Mace as a scientific observer; more like the eccentric uncle who makes dubious sweeping pronouncements at family dinners." > Obviously it's up to you. So why do you read him, it's not compulsory. I had to read him before I came to whatever conclusions I drew > I have read his book many times and found a lot of interesting details that > do not sound like an utterance of a mentally ill person. Many musicologists > quote Mace and as far as I know Musick's Monument is one of the most > important sourcebooks for studying 17c performance practice. > It doesn't mean that every word Mace wrote is true, Sure doesn't, and lots of important sources are full of misinformation. > but we are talking about very basic matters like colors - he wasn't blind as > far as I know and the fact that he had to put his teeth on a lute doesn't > matter here as we are not talking about what he used to hear. In fact many > paintings confirm what he wrote. Many types of strings in 17c were commonly > dyed. Red was in fact most popular color. Red is still pretty popular, but the original question was whether it necessarily meant both "loaded" and "rotten." -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
