I'll bet some large fraction (at least in the U.S.) of lute players, professional or avocational, got turned on by the 1960's Julian Bream album "An Evening of Elizabethan Music." Even though he was playing a heavily-constructed, inauthentic "LSO" (Lute-Shaped Object) the artistry and the musical content were there. We should take some sort of poll. I got the LP in 1966, and my first student lute in 1980, so I only waited 14 years....
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Geoff Gaherty Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 7:32 AM To: lute Subject: [LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness - astronomy analogy? On 12/08/13 2:46 AM, William Samson wrote: > Sadly, I suspect that 'sidewalk lutenists' wouldn't attract the same > queues as sidewalk astronomers. Even I, as a lutenist, have a much > clearer recollection of my first view of Saturn's rings through a > telescope than I have of first hearing a lute. As a matter of fact, I once saw this "sidewalk lutenist" in a piazza in Venice: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53488562/lutenist%20in%20Venice.jpg He was drawing quite a crowd, in fact. This was on a tour of Italy following the March 31 2006 solar eclipse in Jalu, Libya. A friend saw him a couple of months ago there, and he's now selling CDs, just as someone here suggested. I can't remember when I first _heard_ a lute, probably when I bought a Julian Bream LP of lute music, but I have a vivid memory of first _seeing_ a lute (actually a lute guitar), in a Montreal music store window at the age of 17 or 18. It was love at first sight, and I knew I had to own and play one, though it was 20 years later that I achieved that. Geoff -- Geoff Gaherty Foxmead Observatory Coldwater, Ontario, Canada http://www.gaherty.ca http://starrynightskyevents.blogspot.com/ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
