[LUTE] Re: the point of synthetics - Rather the movement of the whole lute
On Oct 7, 2012, at 4:23 AM, Jaros³aw Lipski wrote: > There is also quite a lot of speculation in your answer, So I said at the beginning. > however I doubt very much if Mace could be so poetic and enigmatic in the > book which was to simplify things. He was defending lute's position amongst > instruments so he tried to make explanations as easy as possible. For us it's > not easy because we didn't live at that time. IMO he talks about most common > things (obviously except his dyphone, but in this case he wanted to show > people his invention). I really doubt very much that he would be inclined to > make generalization after examining just a one string and immediately wanting > to share his discovery with the whole world. In this case the whole book > would be of little value for anyone. But I don't thing this is the case. He > clearly explained that many kinds of strings were commonly dyed. Then he > proceeded to give his opinion on which ones were good, and which he found > commonly faulty. This would be quite a normal thing to write in a handbook. Obviously, I'm less inclined to take Mace seriously than you are. You're writing here about what you would mean if you wrote what Mace wrote. I'm writing about what an oddball who may have been an inaccurate observer or someone quick to jump to odd conclusions may have meant. And remember, when he wrote the book he was so deaf he had to put his teeth on a lute to hear any sound from it, so the details of strings' actual sounds may have been a different memory. If you're inclined to take everything Mace says as practical and workable, try building his dyphone, and then try playing it. > As far as your objections concerning unusual colors are concerned please have > a look at the 12c lute's bridge detail of Bilcius painting (2nd half of the > 17th c). It shows string colors from bright yellow, orange, till various > shades of blue. Where? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: the point of synthetics - Rather the movement of the whole lute
On Oct 7, 2012, at 11:22 AM, JarosÅaw Lipski 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
[LUTE] Re: the point of synthetics - Rather the movement of the whole lute
On Oct 7, 2012, at 12:14 PM, Jaros³aw Lipski 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." >> > Well, I've quoted your own words, but maybe you had something else on mind, > sorry . No, *I* quoted my own words, which did not include "idiot," "old," "lost touch with reality," or "etc." I didn't opine about how quickly he reached his conclusions (he doesn't strike me as a man who did anything quickly). I also didn't say "mentally ill." I certainly didn't say he actually had a dyphone built, notwithstanding what he wrote. I spend a lot of time professionally evaluating whether things witnesses tell me are credible; many are not, for all sorts of reasons, the most common being triumph of vantage point over all other considerations (just this morning I read through 18 "character" letters written to convince me that a person was honorable and honest; none of them mentioned his felony fraud conviction, leaving me to wonder if the writers even knew why they were writing). We all know the world is full of ostensibly normal and sane persons who reach positions of prominence and responsibility saying things that are not credible; in my country they tend to get nominated for public office a lot. Although we seem to have "pivoted," as Mitt Romney might say, into a discussion of how reliable a witness Mace was, this thread began when Benjamin Narvey -- a person normally given to reasonable observations and conclusions -- said he'd had an experience from which he concluded (or re-concluded) that synthetic strings are harder to keep in tune than gut, and carbon fiber are particularly difficult. I think he's extrapolating too much from too small a sample, and his experience is atypical of most experiences with synthetics and gut; certainly it's different from mine. I think a musicologist of the 23rd century reading Musick's EMail Monument, a collection of Narvey messages on a hard drive that survived the Great Warming Catastrophe of 2089, would likely be misled on that particular point, even though Benjamin is not an "old deaf man who had lost touch with reality," although he may be one if he's still around in 2089. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: the point of synthetics - Rather the movement of the whole lute
On Oct 7, 2012, at 3:52 PM, JarosÅaw Lipski wrote: > No offence I hope? I really wouldn't like to take part in an exchange of > arguments that go far from the subjects most of the lute-listers are > interested in. The listers should be interested in the problems of interpreting historical sources. They aren't all created equal. It's another question whether either of us are saying anything worth saying on the point. > However I am forced to answer some of your arguments. Well, I hope the person holding a gun to your head leaves soon... > Firstly, most of the expressions I used were exact quotations of your post. Obviously not, as my list showed. > I only added some that were logical consequences of what you wrote, You're entitled to think so if you like, but don't try to convince me. I'm pretty precise with words, when I'm not spreading typos all over the page. > Secondly, Mace had built the dyphone. Please read carefully on page 203: I read it just before I sent the message in which I said I didn't think he'd built it, which is why I used the expression "notwithstanding what he wrote." I don't believe everything I read. > Thirdly, having an assumption that so many people lack credibility and > therefore one can not seriously take into consideration books from the past > written by a man who showed some signs of eccentricity is rather not > practical IMO I didn't say his book couldn't be taken seriously. I just don't think everything in it should be taken seriously. > And finally, yes the whole discussion began from Benjamin and his > observations on behavior of gut strings versus synthetics, but I think he > explained recently that he was misunderstood, because he meant that > synthetics are in fact more stable, however gut reaches certain, lets call it > a state of equilibrium faster. I can confirm this opinion. I play both gut > and synthetics. It takes more time for synthetics before they start to behave > normally, but then, they do not react to changes of humidity, only > temperature. His first message did not say that; indeed, there would have been no point, since most of us already know this from experience. This is what he said: > I am playing on a modern-strung theorbo belonging to a student of mine for > rehearsals of a "Fairy Queen" while I impatiently await the arrival of my new > "double luth" in some weeks (more on this giraffe anon). I am simply aghast > at how badly carbon strings go out of tune, even though they are "not > supposed to". (Nylon/nylgut fares better.) Indeed, the (ugh) overwound > Savarez "guitar" bass strings are the worst offenders of all, going madly out > of tune sometimes: not surprising they are so sensitive given how metal is > such a superb conducting material. The tuning got so sticky I actually took > the instrument to a lutemaker since I thought it had to be peg slippage, but > no. And of course, with all these different modern materials, the different > string types are going out if tune differently. Superb. > > I just can't believe I forgot about how difficult tuning synthetics can be. > But more importantly, it leads me to question what the point of playing on > synthetics is: after all, the reason why players use them is since they are > supposed to bally well stay in tune... and I am really not so sure given my > current experience that they do this better than gut. Someone who reads this message to say that synthetics go out of tune more than gut would be understanding exactly what Benjamin wrote. If he meant to say exactly that, it just shows that you have to read written sources critically. If he didn't mean to say exactly that, it just shows that you have to read written sources critically. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] eccentric Mace
Before I depart this subject, I should remind everyone what it is. It isn't about whether you should discredit everything Mace writes, which is not what I've suggested. The question was how to interpret Mace's statement that red strings were "commonly rotten." Here are three possibilities: 1. The first thing to do is figure out what he meant by "rotten." The OED attests a sense of the word as "weak" or "unsound" in Mace's time, and that's probably what he meant, rather than the modern sense of "spoiled" or "decaying." He may have simply meant he didn't like the way they sounded, and was expressing himself strongly, as he was inclined to do. 2. Assuming he meant red strings were usually false or otherwise unusable, do we simply accept his statement that the strings were "commonly" --typically or usually -- so? This seems unlikely, because if it were true, no one would buy them, they wouldn't be available, and he wouldn't need to write about it. Maybe he got a bad red string once or twice, and extrapolated to generality. This seems more likely, because you'd think Mace would stop buying them if he got some bad ones. This sort of hyperbolic generalization is very common --Jaroslaw has done it repeatedly with my comments about Mace, turning them into a statement that I don't believe anything Mace said because he was eccentric. I do the same thing all the time (though I try to avoid doing it in writing) and so did Mace. Here's an excerpt from Musick's Monument that I had pasted on one of my lute cases years ago (someone else's typing): > And that you may know how to shelter your Lute, in the worst of Ill weathers, > (which is moist) you shall do well, ever when you Lay it by in the day-time, > to put It into a Bed, that is constantly used, between the Rug and Blanket; > but between the Sheets, because they may be moist with Sweat, &c. > > This is the most absolute and best place to keep It in always, by which > doing, you will find many Great Conveniences, which I shall here set down. > > As First, for the Saving of your strings from Breaking; for you shall not > spend half so many Strings as another, who lays their Lute open in a Damp > Room, or near a Window &c. > > 2dly. It will keep your Lute constantly in Good Order, so that you shall > have but Small Trouble in the Tuning of It. > > [goes on to say the bed prevents decay and loose bars, facilitates higher > pitch and makes the instrument sound "more Lively an Briskly"] > Therefore, a Bed will secure from all These Inconveniences, and keep your > Glew so Hard as Glas, and All safe and sure; only to be excepted, That no > Person be so inconsiderate, as to Tumble down upon the Bed whilst the Lute is > There; for I have known several Good Lutes spoiled with such a Trick. > What jumps out is that he does not compare the advantages of a bed with those of keeping the lute in its case. But the word "case" does appear in Musick's Monument; nor have I seen in it the concept of a container built for and dedicated to holding the instrument. On page 57, he says that if it needs to be shipped to London for repair, "a convenient box, and Easie-going Horse, or a Coach, will be very needful." You could interpret this passage, in context, to mean that lute cases were rare and lutes were kept in beds, where they were often crushed; or you can conclude that Mace kept his lutes in a bed and crushed one once, or knew someone who crushed one once. I'm inclined to believe it happened once and Mace expanded for effect, but who knows? Maybe London was full of beds with splinters from lutes. But when you read a sweeping generalization from Mace, you need to be aware that he was inclined toward sweeping generalizations, and may have exaggerated for effect. If you want to read Mace as if he's peer-reviewed science (oops--exaggeration for effect there), be my guest. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: eccentric Mace
Try again: I meant to say the word "case" does NOT appear in MM. On Oct 8, 2012, at 11:16 AM, howard posner wrote: > What jumps out is that he does not compare the advantages of a bed with those > of keeping the lute in its case. But the word "case" does appear in Musick's > Monument; nor have I seen in it the concept of a container built for and > dedicated to holding the instrument. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: eccentric Mace
My very dear Jaroslaw; how good to hear from you. On Oct 8, 2012, at 12:41 PM, JarosÅaw Lipski wrote: > Then, lets examine your own words without any additions. But with lots of subtractions; i.e. if you're going to parse, you should parse completely, starting with the word "may." But enough; we're not in such disagreement. > I never said that I believe in every word Mace wrote. And I never said I disbelieve every word he ever wrote. Of course, I'm not putting a lute under a bedspread with two boys in the house. > I never said I understand precisely what kind of red strings Mace meant and > why he mentioned rotten strings. Possibilities are numerous. Absolutely. This all started when I suggested a few. You're free to discount them. But I think this exchange already has many listers going instinctively for the delete button, and I'll leave off. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: OT: unusual combination
Sounds like a toy stylophone. On Oct 12, 2012, at 2:58 PM, WALSH STUART wrote: > The cittern list seems to be defunct. So: > [1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNdO5va4CQI > Stuart -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Chitarrone
On Oct 17, 2012, at 4:17 AM, Monica Hall wrote: > There is also the article by John Hill in Early Music, Vol. 11, no. 2, April > 1983, p. 194-208 which does mention the possible influence of the guitar on > the lute - > > "Realized continuo accompaniments from Florence c.1600". > > I am not sure if it is available on line unless you have a subscription. or a pdf. Here's the passage Monica is probably thinking of, from page 202-203. It refers to illustrations I'm not trying to include: The keyboard harmonizations are really no more elaborate than those for archlute, except that the vocal melody included in them contains some ornamentation, as in 0 miei giorni fugaci. It is primarily only the inclusion of the bass part and some variety of chord voicing that distinguishes the archlute accompaniments from the strummed, rasgueado guitar accompaniments to monodies, which have recently been studied by Robert Strizich.24 As with the guitar accompaniments, these archlute realizations show very little concern about giving the upper line a distinct melodic shape. Indeed many of them are as disjunct as the two versions of Udite, udite amanti given here. In general, ease of fingering and fullness of sonority seem to have weighed more than smoothness of line in the judgement of these Florentine musicians. A simple, chordal texture, free of the counterpoint that Vincenzo Galilei maligned for obscuring the text and free of rhythmic complication that might inhibit the singer'ssprezzatura (rhythmic freedom), was their ideal. Parallelisms No modern editor would dare to write the parallel 5ths and octaves that confront us in the first two bars of Tamo mia vita or in 0 rnieigiomi fugaci, bar 6. Yet these parallelisms are found frequently in nearly every one of these Florentine realizations, whether for archlute or keyboard. It is often overlooked that even Viadana. the church musician. wrote, in 1602. 'The organ part is never under any obligation to avoid two Sths or two octave^'.'^ Guidotti. in his preface to Cavalieri's Rappresentazione di anima et di cop0 (Rome. 1 600), says 'two Sths are taken as occasion demands'. Caccini in his preface to Euridice (Florence, I6OO), writes 'I have not avoided the succession of two octaves or two 5th~'. Vincenzo Galilei, in his Dialogo of 158 1 ,26 had advised them all that two or more perfect consonances consecutively are to be allowed when three or more parts are sounding, advice upon which he elaborates in a treatise of c1590 in this way: 'The law of modern contrapuntists that prohibits the use of two octaves or two 5ths is a law truly contrary to every natural law of singing [solo song^].'^' -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Are Pistoys prone to rot according to Mace?
On Nov 27, 2012, at 10:35 AM, jaroslawlip...@wp.pl wrote: > The word "decay" reappears several times in the technical part of Music's > Monument, always in conjunction with the word "rottenness". This can't be > coincidental. You may be right about Mace using "rottenness" in the modern sense of "decomposition of organic material," but in the 1600's "decay" was not that specific in meaning. It could mean any deterioration or decline. A flood would decay when its waters ebbed. Pepys wrote in 15 May 1663 that "the Dutch decay [in the East Indies] exceedingly." The King James Bible (1611) uses decay to indicate a person's financial or civic decline: "If thy brother be waxen poor and fallen in decay with thee " (Leviticus 25:35). In Ben Jonson's play Catline (I'm not kidding) Act II scene 2, a character says "She has beene a fine Ladie, And, yet, she dresses herselfe, (except you Madame) One of the best in Rome: and paints, and hides Her decayes very well." It appears that "decay" in Mace's time was less likely to convey the sense of decomposing than "rot" itself was. The obvious question is: if Mace had wanted to convey the sense of decomposing, moldering, festering gut strings unequivocally, was there a better word than "rotten"? The obvious answer is: I don't know. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bach Violin Partitas
IMSLP has the manuscript in both color (72 MB) and black & white (14 MB): http://imslp.org/wiki/6_Violin_Sonatas_and_Partitas,_BWV_1001-1006_(Bach,_Johann_Sebastian) On Dec 18, 2012, at 12:14 AM, Dan Winheld wrote: > Dear Collective Ocean of lute wisdom- Can anyone direct me to the most > historically authoritative edition of the Bach Violin Partitas? Having > mislaid my old version somewhere, I think it would be a good time to go for > the best source now available- if there is one with original bowing, legato, > and phrasing indications it would help my interpretations immeasurably. I > also want to double check some of the actual notes against the Gusta > Goldschmidt intabulation. > > Thanks, all > > Dan > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: John Cage centennial: A Room (played on a lute)
On Dec 20, 2012, at 4:22 PM, WALSH STUART wrote: > I think this could work as a lute piece... as a sort of prelude. And if you want a sort of Cage suite, I've found that 2'33" works as well on the lute as it does on piano/ -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: John Cage centennial: A Room (played on a lute)
On Dec 20, 2012, at 5:45 PM, adS wrote: > 4'33" - You're absolutely right, but when I do it, it's two minutes shorter because I skip the first movement--I've never liked it, unlike the other two. BTW, there's video of "the full orchestral version" at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJagb7hL0E Particularly effective when conductor Lawrence Foster takes out his handkerchief and mops his brow after the first movement. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: mayan apocalypse
Bravo. On Dec 20, 2012, at 8:49 PM, David Tayler wrote: > A discussion of the issues surrounding the Mayan Apocalypse > specifically for music performers involved in the Historical > Performance movement (HIP). > http://youtu.be/NYLlQxFP_HM > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: English in the time of cholera
On Dec 30, 2012, at 9:27 AM, Herbert Ward wrote: > Suppose one were interested in learning to speak English > with an accent approximating that that Dowland might > have had, with the idea that this might help him understand > Dowland's music better. How would one proceed? Would > any modern British accents be close? One could start by taking a wild guess. British pronunciation varied widely from place to place, even more than it does now. And we don't really know where the Big D came from--there's so little evidence about it that Grattan Flood's century-old assertion that he was Irish can't be disproved. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Fuenllana
On Jan 2, 2013, at 8:49 AM, "Monica Hall" wrote: > Thank you. 1525 seems more likely for his date of birth but 1605 would > still make him 80 when he died! It's been known to happen. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Fuenllana
On Jan 3, 2013, at 3:48 PM, Dan Winheld wrote: > But always with the ever present danger of death by hardware or incorrect > opinions. Unlike today... -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: 4 course guitar in Italy
On Jan 25, 2013, at 9:41 AM, Monica Hall wrote: > Meucci gives a whole series of references which support his contention that > in Italian sources the terms chitarra or chitarrino refer to a small lute > whatever they may refer to in any other language. Amongst the latest of > these are - > > Cerreto (1601) - Strumento della chitarra à sette corde, detto Bordelletto > alla Taliana (i.e. all'Italiana) > > Vocabolario della Crusca which in the first edition of 1612 defines Chitarra > as - A kind of lute, which lacks the bass and soprano. > > Pietro Millioni (Rome 1627) certain pieces are dedicated to the "chitarrino > overo ghitarra italiana". Maybe, I'm missing something: how do the first and third references support the contention that chitarra and chitarrino refer to lute and not guitar/proto-guitar? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: 4 course guitar in Italy
On 29/01/2013 14:39, Monica Hall wrote: > How do you know that this instrument is a 4-course guitar. There is no way > of telling as far as I can see that is intended to be plucked rather than > played with a bow. We know for three reasons: 1. The instrument has a flat fingerboard and a (barely discernible) flat bridge. A bowed instrument requires an arched fingerboard and bridge, otherwise the bow has to touch all the strings at once. 2. The waist does of the instrument does not cut into the body nearly enough to allow the bow to play only the highest or lowest strings. 3. The book would get in the way of the bow. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: 6c guittar
On Jan 30, 2013, at 1:05 AM, Martyn Hodgson wrote: > I'm sorry you feel so defensive - but what is there to complain about > in what I wrote to you? I'm just guessing here, but could it possibly be that you were the only one on the list who didn't understand it was a joke? But I'm on your side on this one, Martyn, since Rob's original message used only a solitary, lonely :-) sign, which is a bit subtle, like only one rim shot, or one nudge in the ribs accompanied by only one wink. And how could Rob have expected you to notice that everyone else who responded to it thought it was funny? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: The English Guitar
On Jan 31, 2013, at 5:24 AM, G. D. Rossi wrote: > I've published articles on this topic - it was indeed called "English" > at the time, and several other things as well. > > I play the JCB in concert regularly and have recorded it, too - it's a > delight to play - both parts work well on the guittar even though the > other part is for violin. Jim Tyler and Taro Takeuci have also recorded > it. > > Definitely lots of good music there - Straube, Geminiani, Marelli, > Schuman... > > I will now bow out of the conversation. Someone should mention Doc's s album "La Cetra Galante" -- which consists of English guitar music, including some duets he plays with himself, such as the JC Bach -- but I'm not going to be the one to mention. Nor will I mention that it seems to be available from iTunes, Magnatunes and Amazon. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: The English Guitar
On Jan 31, 2013, at 7:17 AM, G. D. Rossi wrote: > thanks, howard. Don't mention it. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Newsidler and plucking or not?
On Feb 1, 2013, at 12:39 PM, Arto Wikla wrote: > What makes me prefer my choice is that many, many years ago I happened to > sang "Elslein" in a small group, and the "not repeating" way resembles so > much better to the sound of the that "Lied" than the other alternative. and everyone Newsidler knew would have been familiar with the song -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Newsidler and plucking or not?
On Feb 2, 2013, at 12:03 PM, Arto Wikla wrote: > Just in case someone doesn't have the Elslein tabulatures, here you'll find > the facsimile of my 1980's handwriting in French(!) tabulature by three > Hanses: Judenkunig, Newsidler and also Gerle: I hadn't seen the Gerle setting before. All three of them seem to have extra notes in the first syllable of "Elslein," a way making it swell into the second syllable. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Baroque Guitar Video
I enjoyed the contrast between the strummed parts and the punteado parts. As it went on, I found myself wanting more dynamic contrast within the strummed parts. >>> Your thoughts are most welcome. >>>The link is: >>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3v56-03ajU >>>Chris > >> Well I very much enjoyed it (and, of course, I respect your skill and >> musicianship). >> >> You asked for some thoughts.. and no one has responded yet. I just thought >> that the strumming (were those the improvised bits?) seemed a notch too >> much more intense than the surroundings. E.g.: the opening very staccato >> strums seemed more edgy and nervy than the passages that immediately >> follow. >> >> But great playing and maybe this music needs to be intensified a bit? > > Well - my two pennyworth. The piece does start off with three strummed > variations but I thought they sounded horribly abrasive and I would question > whether that is how Murcia would have played them himself. I couldn't tell > what method of stringing was being used but if you have a high octave string > on the 3rd course - well take it off right now. There is no evidence that the > baroque guitar was ever strung like that in the 17th and 18th centuries. > There were one or two places where (dare I say it) some of the lower notes > sounded twangy... > > In the introduction to "Cifras selectas" Murcia is scathing about the > "punchers or acorn pickers who try to stimulate the ears by thumping the > guitar" and says "God save us from this summer hail storm". A prayer that > I would echo. > > I think the music calls for a more sensitive approach myself. It is not > intended to be proto-type flamenco. > > Sorry - but I didn't care for it. > > Monica To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Baroque Guitar Video
On Feb 14, 2013, at 12:33 PM, Monica Hall wrote: > I listened to it twice with the music in front > of me and I know the piece quite well. > > As far as the stringing was concerned it was impossible to tell what you had > chosen to do, but a high octave string does create this abrasive quality > which is why some people prefer it and which is why I thought it might be > the reason for coarseness of the strumming.. If you can listen to a piece you know quite well twice with the tablature in front of you and still not be able to tell what the highest string on the instrument is, perhaps you should dial back a bit on branding the octave g the Root of Most Evil. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Baroque Guitar Video
On Feb 14, 2013, at 11:44 AM, Christopher Wilke wrote: >> There were one or two places where (dare I say it) some of the lower > notes >> sounded twangy... > Yes, that is a actually special type of ornament that I have mastered > it to perfection. I call it a "mistake." ;-) For what its worth, this > particular performance took place in a gigantic church that was > (believe it or not) filled to capacity. It was a mixed concert with > several soloists and ensembles each doing sets. The organizer of the > event of course chose to put me on after an organist, who naturally > ended his set with all the stops out. I played to the back of the hall. > Having said that, such things shouldn't happen and the fault is mine. Yes. God forbid a guitar should EVER twang. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Origins of bowing.
On Feb 17, 2013, at 4:03 PM, Christopher Stetson wrote: > When it could be assumed that the audience members > were, by and large, of a higher status than the performers? Or perhaps > one of those inverted, false modesty kind of deals? Yes and no, I think. Well into the post-Napoleonic age, the best musicians would almost always be performing for persons of much higher social rank, because they paid best. It went without saying that they would behave as subservients; anything else would be extremely rude. So the modesty would not be false at all. But there may be something else going on. Persons of the lower classes did not, as a rule, bow to each other, but persons of the upper classes did. "At your service" was a courteous greeting between gentlemen. Da Ponte captures this in (Mozart's) Don Giovanni, when Don Juan asks who the groom is at a peasant wedding, and Masetto answers "Io, per servile (I, at your service") and the Don responds, condescendingly if not mockingly, "O bravo! Per servirmi! Questo e vero parlar da galantuomo! (At my service! This is truly spoken like a gentleman!)" Da Ponte could pack a lot of meaning into a few words. The Don finds Masetto's genteel words cute, or presumptuous, or more likely both. So the demeanor of musicians in concerts may be a way of saying, "we know how to behave among people of the best quality." Performers traditionally dress in formal (i.e., impractical) clothes and comport themselves with dignity and bow properly. So it's possible that bowing is actually a way of elevating the musicians' status. At least they don't tug at their forelocks. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Origins of bowing.
On Feb 17, 2013, at 6:04 PM, Christopher Stetson wrote: > I think it's all very primate behavior, and fairly deep in our > evolutionary psyches, if one can speak of such. That would depend on where one is. I wouldn't bring up evolution at a Republican convention, for example. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Damping overspun strings.
In the 18th century, of course, the best players didn't have to worry much about string damping because when master lutenists played, their apprentices did all the necessary damping. On Feb 21, 2013, at 10:40 AM, Christopher Wilke wrote: >Dan, >> Don't you have to play 13, immediately drop "down" to 7, THEN jump > back "up"to damp > > 13 to avoid harmonic confusion? > That is certainly one option. Everything depends on speed/context, of > course. Paul would usually want me to have a slight silence > d'articulation between stepwise notes. Of course, never one to settle > for doing things mediocrely, he would want that silence to be just be a > VERY slight separation. Playing the thumb and waiting to damp until the > last possible moment, only to then immediately jump to the next course > is extremely difficult!() > Another option is to play the 13th course with a typical rest stroke > onto the 12th course, bend the tip joint forward, and then lean back on > 13th with the side of the thumb. Since contact with the strings happens > more slowly, it is more like the stroke itself, producing a more > natural fade-out than the often abrupt "tut" one gets with the usual > damping "bug squashing" technique. Unfortunately, it puts your entire > hand in a bad position to play the next note and so it takes more time > to recover. > The final option is to simply do no damping! Yes, even with overspun > strings, I think the over all musical effect of ringing notes a 7th > apart is not so objectionable to those listening as it is to the > player. My primary motivation in damping is not to avoid ringing so > much as to produce a musical/phrasing/metric/interpretive effect. > Christopher Wilke > Lutenist, Guitarist and Composer > www.christopherwilke.com > --- On Thu, 2/21/13, Dan Winheld wrote: > > From: Dan Winheld > Subject: [LUTE] Re: Damping overspun strings. > To: "Christopher Wilke" > Cc: lute@cs.dartmouth.edu, "Herbert Ward" > Date: Thursday, February 21, 2013, 12:05 PM > > Chris- Don't you have to play 13, immediately drop "down" to 7, THEN > jump back "up"to damp 13 to avoid harmonic confusion? Otherwise, one > gets a staccato spot in a bass line- perhaps appropriately in some > pieces- but not for a usual note-by-note progress in the bass- one that > connects notes "Like pearls strung on a necklace" (roughly quoting > Piccinni here, who knew a thing or two about playing 13 - 14 course > instruments). > With all the other headaches involved with Baroque lute RH techniques, > I just use gut & KF(G) strings and gave up on extra dancing around with > the thumb. I am in awe of those who can do such feats. > My oldest Baroque lute student's 11 or so years-old silver overspun > basses are starting to mellow out very nicely, but the sustain rings on > and on, perhaps for eternity. > The Segovia-Barrios chapter is a strange & sometimes ugly bit out of > 20th cent. guitar history. I gave up Classical guitar in the 1970's and > play the few guitar pieces I really like on a superb 8 course by Dan > Larson. > Dan > On 2/21/2013 7:05 AM, Christopher Wilke wrote: >> Herbert, >> Agustin Barrios used metal strings with rubber dampers and > he took >>much heat for it from the purists who felt that gut was the only >>acceptable material for a serious guitarist to use. Segovia > referred >>disparagingly to Barrios's "wire fence" before he and everyone > else >>switched to nylon strings. I've often wondered if Barrios's use > of >>metal may be the reason he was the first classical guitarist to > record, >>a technology that was not very good at picking up low dynamic > levels. >> I've never known any lute players to use dampers, but it > makes >>perfect sense on unfingered basses which will not be subject to >>intonation problems due to fretting. When I studied with Paul > O'Dette, >>he was always very insistent that the bass part be subject to the > same >>notions of articulation/phrasing commonly used in upper voices, >>regardless of any technical difficulties this may introduce. For >>example, even if you had a fast line that went from the 12th > course to >>the 13th course and then "down" to the 7th course (i.e. B-A-G), > Paul >>would expect that the passing note on the 13th course would be >>unaccented and short. That means that you have to strike the > string, >>return to damp it, and then make a huge leap across all those > other >>strings to land on the 7th course. Doing this accurately, in > time, and >>without a lurching motion that would cause an accent in the wrong > place >>is difficult to say the least. (Ah, the baroque lute: demanding > of >>virtuosity that no one ever hears!) It took me years of practice, > but I >>must say, in addition to giving me the tool
[LUTE] Re: Damping overspun strings.
On Feb 21, 2013, at 10:49 AM, Sam Chapman wrote: > There is far more evidence for a legato > way of playing. One of the first rules we learn on the lute is to hold > down the left hand fingers until they are needed for another note - > doesn't this indicate a desire for sustaining the resonance of the > instrument, rather than cutting it short (i.e. articulating). Cutting a note short amounts to "articulating" only if it's a contrast to other notes. If all the notes are short, it's just choppy playing, and deliberately shortening a note is pointless if that note is surrounded by notes that are inadvertently shortened. So evidence of a preference for not inadvertently stopping notes prematurely through poor technique 1) is not evidence against preventing a bass note from ringing beyond its written value, and 2) is not evidence against stopping stopping notes for expressive purposes. This doesn't settle the question of whether Weiss (for example) would have been perfectly satisfied with how his basses sounded without damping them. O'Dette is a master at controlling the ends of notes, and it's the reason he makes contrapuntal voice-leading dizzyingly obvious: a note that comes after silence is emphasized. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Damping overspun strings.
On Feb 21, 2013, at 2:51 PM, Sam Chapman wrote: > Isn't cutting a note short "articulating" by definition, regardless of what > one does with all the other notes? No. Articulation means lots of things, but none of those things is "cutting a note short" for no particular reason. Here are some definitions offered by that great authority, the Mac OS X dictionary: "articulation |ärËtikyÉËlÄSHÉn| noun 1 the action of putting into words an idea or feeling of a specified type: it would involve the articulation of a theory of the just war. ⢠the formation of clear and distinct sounds in speech: the articulation of vowels and consonants. ⢠(Music) clarity in the production of successive notes: beautifully polished articulation from the violins. ⢠(Phonetics) the act or manner of uttering a speech sound, esp. a consonant. 2 the state of being jointed: the area of articulation of the lower jaw. ⢠[ with modifier ] a specified joint: the leg articulation." In the Harvard Dictionary of Music, Willi Appel defines articulation as: "In singing, the clear and distinct rendering of the tones, especially in coloraturas without text" which is done without stopping the sound, unless you're Nella Anfuso. In wind and bowed string playing, to articulate a note means not to slur it. In music generally, it means the equivalent of enunciation in speech: "articulation" is often used in the sense of something like "general approach toward starting and stopping notes." It does not mean shortening a note as such. > Most authors write about holding down the fingers for as long as possible, > that is, sustaining the notes for as long as possible. > This is not the same as avoiding "stopping notes prematurely". Well no, those two things are more or less opposite. > Whether the rule relates to establishing good technique or creating a certain > kind of sound world (or both) is up for debate. It's up for debate only if you think any serious musician, trained in singing and rhetoric, would ignore everything he learned and play so as never to shorten a note. I can't think of a surer recipe for dullness. All right, I can think of a few, but let's not go there. A musician of the 17th or 18th century would scarcely need to be told what the ideal of articulation (see my last definition) was: you emulate speech and singing, with their consonants and vowels, strong and weak syllables, pauses and exclamations. Your left hand fingers staying put is just a technical norm to allow you to a) play smoothly (legato is too loaded a word here) and b) make the sound fuller and richer. > If we see it as refering to an aesthetic preference and take it literally > then yes, it is evidence against stopping notes for whatever purpose. No, it's evidence for a default setting--it's the basic way to play, to be varied for expressive purposes or polyphonic clarity. Evidence against stopping notes for whatever purpose would be a statement like "Never stop a note for whatever purpose." The people who created the music we go to great trouble to recreate were not robots. They didn't slavishly follow rules any more than we do, and they didn't spend their time reading someone else's instructions to middle-class duffers anyway. On one page of source readings about keyboard playing I find this comment from Guillame Nivers, a composer of organ music, in 1667: "A sign of good breeding in your performance is a distinct demarcation of all the notes and subtle slurring of some." He then describes the techniques for playing detached and legato, and concludes "For all these matters consult the method of singing, for the organ should imitate the voice in such things." And CPE Bach, a century later, writes that "detached" notes "are always held for a little less than half their notated length. In general, detached notes appear mostly in leaping passages and rapid tempos. "There are many who play stickily, as if they had glue between their fingers. Their touch is lethargic; they hold notes too long. Others, in an attempt to correct this, leave the keys too soon, as if they burned. Both are wrong. I speak in general, for every kind of touch has its use." > When articulated playing is regarded as a "period performance practice > technique" and "historically informed", whereas legato is called "totally > modern", I take issue. I guess I'll worry about it if I ever hear anyone say such a thing. I've been involved in early music 30 years and haven't heard it yet. Except from you, of course. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: anyone who can re-fret a lute: North London/South Midlands?
On Mar 15, 2013, at 11:30 AM, Bernd Haegemann wrote: > There is a constant learning process during the tying of the first 3 frets > which leads to a triumphant sailoresque mastery of knothood. I'm living proof that it leads to no such mastery. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Tempo, magnitude and precision.
On Apr 8, 2013, at 7:26 PM, Bruno Correia wrote: > How absolute metric time could have been acheived in the Renaissance? > The tactus was a constant pulse behind the rhythm, but it was an > organic motion not a strict measured time like a metronome. > Actually, the only genre of music (which comes to my mind) that really > plays in time is pop music... How do we know they valued absolute > strict time in the Renaissance? Who were "they"? If "they" were dancers, they probably valued musicians who kept strict time. I imagine a group of amateurs playing or singing multi-part music would keep fairly strict time just in the interest of staying together, unless there were good reason (in the words, for example) to alter the tactus. These were musical activities far more important than solo lute music, and lute players participated in them. Nobody spent the bulk of their musical time practicing solo lute music, which is something we can easily forget if solo music is the biggest part of our own musical efforts. I don't mean to suggest that you should set your metronome at the beginning of a polyphonic fantasy and stick doggedly with it. I think that variation in tempo would have been part of an approach that relied heavily on understanding music in the rhetorical terms that were part of an educated person's vocabulary. You might, for example, vary the tempo if you perceive a phrase as an anadiplosis or an anaphora, and two players might have differing views about such things. So there might not actually have been a "they." Is there any reason to think there weren't just as many views about how to play something as there are now? This was, after all, an age utterly without the homogenizing influence of recordings and radio. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Tempo, magnitude and precision.
On Apr 9, 2013, at 1:16 PM, Bruno Correia wrote: > Absolute strict time was certainly unknown to them (musicians), we take > this idea for granted nowadays because of the mechanical age we live > in. Absolute precision is our game not theirs *Absolute* precision is no more our game than theirs, unless electronic means are used in the actual music-making, rather than just practicing. The demands of dancing and marching haven't changed, and even orchestras led by superstar conductors and rock bands driven by superstar drummers will slow down or speed up unintentionally. > the duties of a > professional included to compose, arrange, teach, play solos, acompany > singers, play continuo and much more. But did the amateurs have the > same duties? Maybe playing solos was indeed very common, and > people spent a good deal of time on it. Assuredly so. Jane Pickering and Margaret Board were serious devotees of solo music, but they would have spent lots of time dancing, because they didn't have television, football or video games, and they would have spent a lot of time singing because that's what musically literate people did. Song and dance informed solo music, because music was primarily about song and dance, and forms taken from song and dance. The galliard and allemande were in their physical memories, and the voice was the sonic ideal, as you've no doubt noticed from all the claims on behalf of one instrument or another that it, above all instruments, most closely approximates the voice. So when we ask what their approach to rhythm was, we have to start with song and dance, as any renaissance musician, amateur or professional, did. What they did with that approach was likely as variable as what we do. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Tempo, magnitude and precision.
On Apr 10, 2013, at 1:37 PM, howard posner wrote: > What they did with that approach was likely as variable as what we do. By which I meant that one person's approach would differ from another's just as we have different approaches today. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Frank from Milan
On May 8, 2013, at 11:33 AM, r.turov...@gmail.com wrote: > The purported "Ellis Island" name manglings is a myth. > Every immigrant's name had to be and was matched to the ship's manifest, and > any deviation was massively illegal. As was selling alcoholic beverages in the United States between 1920 and 1933. There's often a large gap between what's legal and what happens, and you can't legislate competence among overworked immigration functionaries who may not really care about accuracy. More to the point, 12 million people entered the U.S. through Ellis Island. If the functionaries got the names right 99.9% of the time, the descendants of 12,000 immigrants owe their names to clerical errors. Oddly enough, there were 11,998 persons of Slavic or Ashkenazic descent who mistakenly received the name "Francesco Canova" at Ellis Island, including the famous Francesco da Minsk. You can look it up. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bach tab
On Jun 2, 2013, at 10:48 PM, Sterling wrote: > You will have to be way more specific. By which he means that Bach more than one prelude in C major. Do you mean the one from Book 1 of the Well-tempered Keyboard? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Lute in North America?
On Jun 19, 2013, at 4:27 PM, "Braig, Eugene" wrote: > Total irrelevancy alert: Lake Superior only the largest lake in the world by > surface area, not by volume. It is a part of a large system, the Laurentian > Great Lakes, that do constitute the largest freshwater system in the world by > volume. However, all by its lonesome ans because of its tremendous depth, > Lake Baikal in Russia is almost as big a volume of freshwater as the entire > Laurentian Great Lakes system. Here's a groovy little club of which I'm > quite fond:http://www.iaglr.org/. > > Semi-relevant: Do citterns count? No. A cittern is not a lake, no matter how deep it is. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bream interview on BBC
This is fascinating stuff. He talks about his dealings with Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, the origin of Nocturnal, his commissioning of other music, and even a bit about the lute, which got exposure in the U.S. from his appearances on "chat shows" of the sort that did not yet exist in the U.K. The site says it's available for listening for two more days, which doesn't say precisely when it disappears (It's Wednesday evening in Los Angeles as I write). On Jul 16, 2013, at 2:56 PM, G. Crona wrote: > http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036ts1w > > 44 min.. > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Markus Passion by Bach
On Jul 18, 2013, at 1:03 AM, Martyn Hodgson wrote: > There is no evidence that Bach had the gallichon/mandora in mind for > this. There's rather stronger evidence than usual for gallichon in German church music and particularly in Leipzig, if not specifically in any Bach work. His predecessor Kuhnau wrote to the town council in 1704 asking for money to buy "at least one" gallichon, noted that its sound was able to penetrate better than a lute and thus was "necessary for all contemporary concerted music;" he wrote that 'we always have to borrow" them but they weren't always available. A later memorandum Kuhnau lists gallichons among the continuo instruments. He mentions them each time in the plural. In Das neu-eröffnete Orchestra (1713) Matheson wrote that the gallichon was more useful in churches and operas than the lute, the sound of which was too small "and serves more to put on airs than to help the singer." This may not be sufficient to establish the gallichon in Bach's music beyond reasonable doubt, but it is strong evidence for its common use. > The names were very well known at the time for specific > instruments and widely used to distinguish them from the (Dm) lute > proper. This would be important if Bach were always meticulous, precise and clear in designating instruments in his scores, but he wasn't, as anyone who has worked through his designations of the lower lines in the Brandenburg Concertos (or puzzled about the "echo flutes" in Brandenburg 4) can attest. He sometimes failed to designate an obbligato instrument altogether; the unlabeled solo in cantata 90 that is now known as the Hardest Trumpet Part Ever being a good example. The blank wasn't a problem because the part would be given to the appropriate player at the first rehearsal, and Bach knew what instrument that player would use. He was working in a close community of musicians with established working habits and conventions. He didn't have to be precise, just as renaissance composers didn't have to write down whether or not instruments would play with the singers at all, and didn't have to write the text underlay. They were in charge of the performance in a musical establishm! ent in which the composer and the musicians all knew how things were done. > Any use of the gallichon/mandora in this context is a modern invention > - presumably to overcome perceived technical difficulties. But if we > look at the extant Bach 'lute' works, there are many similar (if not > more severe) comparable technical hurdles yet this has not led to these > to being identified as gallichon/mandora works. But several of them have been identified as keyboard works. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Markus Passion by Bach
On Jul 20, 2013, at 1:11 AM, Martyn Hodgson wrote: > Indeed Kuhnau did press (unsuccessfully!) the church authorities for > one or two instruments to play continuo which he called gallichons Is anyone aware of some piece of evidence as to what the town council actually did about Kuhnau's gallichon request? I've conversed with persons equally sure that the purchase was approved, but they couldn't tell me how they knew. I'm intrigued, come to think of it, by the notion that the player(s) wouldn't simply supply his/their own gallichons. Maybe the instrument was new to those parts in 1704. > Further, a few other contemporary composers (noteably > Telemann) wrote church cantatas with a designated gallichon part (NB > playing from a thorough bass part and not an obligatto lute part as > Bach requires in this Passion). But this does not amount to gallichons > being in 'common use' at the time (personally, being a gallichon > player, I wish otherwise - but wishful thinking is, alas, not solid > evidence for historic usage). Kuhnau's statement that "we always have to borrow" gallichons is pretty strong evidence that they were commonly used in Leipzig churches early in his tenure as Cantor (responsible for music in the town's churches) there. It is evidence, if less strong, for their use by his successor Bach 20 years later. Matheson's statement that gallichons were useful, and lutes useless, in church is pretty strong evidence for gallichons in church generally. (It's also evidence for lutes in church, else Matheson wouldn't have made his denigrating remark about lutes.) A rarity of scores that specify gallichon means very little, because continuo instruments were rarely specified. You could just as well conclude, from the lack of scores specifying harpsichord, that harpsichords weren't used in one setting or another. > Whilst Bach might occasionally overlook designating a particular > obbligato instrument, that is not the case here where he clearly calls > for the lute (ie not gallichon or mandora). If he had required a > gallichon there's no reason to suppose he wouldn't have used the term > (as his contemporaries did - see above) You just made a compelling case for regarding the statistical sample of gallichon designations as inadequate, so seeing above doesn't get us very far. > and that he was so ignorant or > vague as to employ a generic term for all fretted plucked instruments. He might use a generic term not because he was being vague or ignorant, but because it didn't matter. He wasn't publishing a score for use outside the Thomaskirche, and he wasn't writing for our benefit. He knew what instrument the player was going to bring, and if the player always brought a gallichon, that's the instrument Bach would have expected. > In short, the burden of evidence points to Bach expecting the (Dm) lute > proper in this Passion - any technical difficulties in playing what he > wrote to be put down to his relative unfamiliarity with the detailed > technical demands of the instrument. No doubt the player would have > adjusted the part to make it technically possible (as in the > intabulations we have of the lute works by contemporary lutenists). I'm not sure why you keep bringing up the notion of technical difficulty, only to knock it down as a straw man. Nobody else is mentioning it. The argument for gallichon is that it projects better in a large space and, being a continuo instrument, is likely to have been present in the orchestra already. I jumped into the conversation only because you made a blanket statement that there is "no evidence" that Bach had gallichon in mind. Obviously, there is evidence in the form of his predecessor's use of gallichon, and indications that the gallichon was the preferred instrument in churches. The question of instrument choice makes more intriguing the question of why Bach replaced the lute/gallichon obbligatos in the St. John and St. Matthew passions with organ in the St. John and gamba in the St. Matthew. Did he find the original instrument unsatisfactory? Did he write the parts for a specific player who retired or died or was traded to Hamburg for a violinist and a singer to be named later? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Markus Passion by Bach 2
On Jul 21, 2013, at 8:52 AM, Martyn Hodgson wrote: > Well, I suppose it all depends on whether we try to identify and employ > the instrument the composer is most likely to have expected to be > heard. The question is not "whether" we try to identify the instrument the composer expected, but HOW we go about identifying it and what evidence we use. You assert that Bach must have intended the d minor lute because he wrote "lute" (of course, we don't know WHAT he wrote in the St. Mark passion, since none of the music survives, but we're all assuming he wrote "lute" because that's the term he used in other passions and the Trauerode), and, as you put it, "a few other contemporary composers (noteably Telemann) wrote church cantatas with a designated gallichon part." From the evidence of those few composers you could conclude, I suppose, that no composer would use "lute" generically, or at least that Bach wouldn't, but you're ignoring relevant evidence. If there was a long tradition of gallichon-playing in the Leipzig church music Bach supervised, you can't rule out gallichon, and you can't state that there's no evidence for it. Which is where I came in, and where I'll exit. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Markus Passion by Bach
On Jul 22, 2013, at 2:51 AM, Martyn Hodgson wrote: > I note that you now have the reference I sent you about Kuhnau's > request for gallichon being refused by the authorities: would you > kindly pass the information onto the other people you consulted who > also were not aware of this - I thought it common knowledge and I'm > sorry that you were inadvertently misled. I wasn't misled. I didn't say I believed them. Or you, necessarily, for that matter. But I will check the article you cited on my next trip to the library. > But it also emphasises that > there was probably not, as you suggest 'a long tradition of > gallichon-playing in the Leipzig church music Bach supervised.'. Not really. Kuhnau used gallichons before his 1704 request, and likely went on using them after. Indeed, Dreyfuss notes an engraving from about 1710 showing a gallichon in the Thomas-Kirche. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Fine Knacks text trouble
Try looking up Castor and Pollux. On Jul 25, 2013, at 12:12 PM, Sam Chapman wrote: > Hi all, > I've been asked by a singer to explain the meaning of a couple of lines > from Fine Knacks for Ladies. Frankly I've never understood them either, > have any of you? She writes: > > "I've been struggling with a verse from Fine Knacks for Ladies, but I'm > stuck. Maybe you could help me. It is the following: > But my heart wherein duty serves and loves, > Turtles and twins, court's brood, a heavenly pair. > > I understand the first row, but not the second one. The words are all > right, but how does it fit in the poem? And what is the link to the > previous one? Is there an allusion to something I don't (but should) > know about?" > > Can anyone help us out? > All the best, > Sam > > -- > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams)
On Aug 4, 2013, at 5:11 AM, Mark Seifert wrote: > Why the piano chauvinism in modern music? I don't like piano (except > maybe Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Hummel, Schumann, Tim Story) You might want to check out this dude named Beethoven. > Bach firmly rejected the newfangled > 1709 piano instruments offered to him. I cringe or become nauseated by > disgust whenever 16th or 17th century singing is accompanied by a > piano. Both inaccurate and irrelevant, I think. Re inaccurate, here's my recycled response to a similar comment last year: Johann Friedrich Agricola related in a 1768 treatise on keyboard instruments that Bach once tried a Silbermann pianoforte (didn't say when or where), and liked its tone but said the bass was weak and the action was too heavy. Silbermann sulked, but spent years improving the instrument, and Bach later expressed "complete approval" of his pianos It's on page 259 of the 1966 "revised" edition of the Bach Reader. "The Piano" (by four authors including fortepiano builders Philip Belt and Derek Adlam), on page 8, connects the "complete approval" that Agricola mentions with Bach's 1747 visit to Frederick the Great in Berlin, which resulted in the Musical Offering. Big Fred had a few Silbermann pianos. "The Piano" says they "are reported [by whom? Agricola?] to have met Bach's complete approval" on that occasion [which is probably speculation], "and the composer served as a sales agent for Silbermann in 1749 (see C. Wolff: 'New Research on Bach's Musical Offering', MQ, lvii (1971), 403)." Of course, Silbermann was famous for his organs and harpsichords, and Bach's admiration for Silbermann's organs is well documented. Re irrelevant: 1) The mid-eighteenth-century piano is about as closely related to the modern one as the renaissance lute is to the modern guitar, and 2) why would Bach's view of the piano be important now? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness
On Aug 3, 2013, at 3:15 PM, Dan Winheld wrote: > The longer this thread continues, the more I feel like I've gone back 45 > years in a time machine. Severe jet lag? > This is EXACTLY the situation I encountered as a young Classical guitar > student at university all those years ago; and my love of the lute & early > music only compounded the scorn & weirdness reaction. I had long forgotten > that such cold, lifeless, unmusical souls are to be found in academe. Of course, it's not EXACTLY the same, because in the intervening 45 years early music has become an industry, and the opinion of mainstream musical academia in is no longer as important as it used to be. There was a time when leading early music groups would come to Los Angeles to play in churches in concerts arranged by the local early music society. Theyr'e now playing in Los Angeles Philharmonic subscription series. This coming season, you can hear the Venice Baroque Orchestra, Hesperion XXI, and the Akadamie für Alte Musik Berlin in Disney Hall on Sunday evenings a couple of hours after the LA Phil plays there. (And yes, the LA Phil itself has grasped the notion that you don't play Mozart the way you play Rachmaninoff.) These days there are early music programs in unlikely places there was time when anyone would have giggled to imagine early music programs at USC or Indiana University (a friend who did a chemistry post-doctoral stint there in the late 1970's called Indiana a "culture-free environment"), and I'm still trying to get my mind around "Juilliard Baroque." I knew a kid who graduated in piano from Julliard in the mid-1980's who didn't know who Christopher Hogwood was; he was more ignorant of early music than anyone I'd run into at random in the Tower Records classical section. Indeed, the biggest change I see on the horizon is that early music, for so long an experimental field in which performers figured it out as they went along, is likely to become an establishment, in which aspiring performers get received wisdom from university and conservatory teachers. It's likely to change the type of people who go into early music; in the 1950's and 1960's it took an adventurous, questioning mind and a missionary zeal to do it. I won't pretend the early music literacy has filtered down much from the elite levels. My son's cello teacher has yet to betray the least sign of knowing that there have been any changes in music performance in the last half century. I'm looking around for a new teacher... -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: colonel public Lute awareness
On Aug 5, 2013, at 5:51 PM, Edward Mast wrote: > Disdain for either early or later music is foolish. Duke Ellington is > reputed to have said: "There are only two kinds of music; good music and bad > music". And since no two persons will ever agree on which is which in every case, this might be the most useless comment ever made on any subject. While I think Ellington was (reputedly) talking gibberish, I second Edward's point. In particular, I don't know why anyone who's heard three minutes of his music would want to trash Brahms -- who, by the way, was one of the great early music pioneers of his age. He was a collector of pre-Baroque music, directed public performances of music by Gabrieli and Schütz with his choir, and published an edition of Couperin. He was also a genius, whose music has benefited, I think, from the attentions of HIP performers. If you're a diehard HIP/period instrument person (and hey, who isn't?), there are a good number of HIP Brahms recordings: for starters, the symphonies and German Requiem by Norrington and Gardiner, the serenades by Spering/Capella Augustina, the string sextets by Monica Huggett's Hausmusik, the piano music by Hardy Rittner and Jan Michels, and the violin sonatas and horn trio by Isabelle and Alexander Melnikov. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams)
On Aug 5, 2013, at 4:37 PM, Mark Seifert wrote: > Are you a piano player as well as a lute enthusiast? No, and my guitarist's repertoire of derogatory comments about the piano is now used only to annoy my keyboard-playing wife. There's an upright piano and a Flemish double-manual harpsichord in our front room. Over the years, I've written a good number of program notes for piano recitals, and the first thing a professional writer has to do is take the music on its terms. The annotator has to appreciate the music he writes about. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness (but re guitar exams)
On Aug 5, 2013, at 4:37 PM, Mark Seifert wrote: > I think it was Greenberg who said in his Bach course that Bach didn't > like Silbermann's pianos, though he loved Silbermann's organs and > harpsichords. Bach was the heaviest hitter I could think of for help > in politically attacking the modern piano Goliath. Your point is well > taken that those old pianos weren't like the newer ones. But I doubt > the interesting archival hearsay that Bach provided his complete > approval The only source is Agricola's account, and I'd be hard pressed to come up with a reason to believe the part about Bach saying the bass was weak while not believing the part about his later approval. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: colonel public Lute awareness
On Aug 7, 2013, at 3:16 PM, Leonard Williams wrote: > I believe the criterion for judging good music from bad lies in the quote > (also Ellington??): "If it sounds good, it is good." This is either tautology or useful advice for anyone in the habit of judging music by its smell. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness
On Aug 7, 2013, at 7:28 PM, t...@heartistrymusic.com wrote: > Brahms used to play in seedy waterfront bars. And perhaps a brothel or two. Probably a myth, albeit one spread by Brahms himself. More thorough research since 1985 strongly suggests that it was a bit of self-mythologizing (i.e. horse manure). -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness
On Aug 12, 2013, at 10:50 AM, "Braig, Eugene" wrote: > By the way, can you use any reentrant tuning schemes on tromba marina, or > does that depend upon its scale length? It depends on how willing you are to tolerate a toy tromba marina. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: now- How did Iadone play?
On Aug 13, 2013, at 3:47 PM, Edward Martin wrote: > Not only that, but I found a photograph of Iodone with Hindemith > > http://music.yale.edu/news/?p=8933 The picture of Hindemith showing his Yale graduate students how to hold a pencil is certainly interesting, but anyone interested in early music should follow the link to the original article in the previous issue. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Hindemith lute concerto
On Aug 17, 2013, at 4:08 PM, David Tayler wrote: > Yes, there was a concerto for Iadone. This seems like a more definitive statement than the one you posted six years ago. Have you acquired new information since? Or am I reading too much into it> On August 13, 2007, David Tayler wrote: > there may be anecdotal evidence for a more elaborate concerto as > Joseph Iadone several times described playing > a lute concerto to me back in the late 60s, early 70s. Iadone was of > course heavily involved in Hindemith's Collegium at Yale. > > From the description, it seems more likely that this piece was > either an arrangement or a piece written for Hindemith's students, > possibly a reworking of the > material for one of the other concertos. But that is conjecture; I > don't have my notes from that time, his wife might know. There are > probably some Hindemith works still out there. > > I never pursued looking for the piece, because Iadone always > commented about how the lute was completely drowned out by the orchestra, > although I suppose modern recording techniques could fix that in a > jiffy. His wife might know. > > -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Time to work on how we look?
On Aug 20, 2013, at 12:35 PM, "Mayes, Joseph" wrote: > I have to agree that the visual "choreography" takes away from the enjoyment. > Weather it's the fellow playing F C d M (incidentally with some wrong notes > and rhythms) who looks like his dog just died, or Tatiana, who looks for all > the world like she is experiencing some sort of sexual gratification. And what's wrong with sexual gratification? Music is no place for prudery; I say we need more orgasms, not fewer. At least she looks like she's enjoying herself, which (if the research about responding to visual cues is correct) ought to be a big plus in selling the music to listeners'/ watchers who are not already Bach aficionados. I hope she doesn't worry about what some stick-in-the-mud old lute players think about her face when she plays. If you really want to talk about strange facial stuff (and they do), there's Vivica Geneaux: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnIxa-QUL5U To be fair, she doesn't look like that when she's not shooting the rapids. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Time to work on how we look?
I've read this description many times, but this is the first time it's ever grossed me out… On Aug 20, 2013, at 6:53 PM, Christopher Wilke wrote: > Howard, > > > On Tue, 8/20/13, howard posner wrote: >> And what's wrong with sexual gratification? Music is >> no place for prudery; I say we need more orgasms, not >> fewer. > > At least some of the olden ones agreed with you. Consider the famous quote by > Charles Burney about his visit with C.P.E. Bach in 1772: > "I prevailed upon [Bach] to sit down again to a clavichord, and he played, > with little intermission, till near eleven o'clock at night. During this > time, he grew so animated and possessed, that he not only played, but looked > like one inspired. His eyes were fixed, his under lip fell, and drops of > effervescence distilled from his countenance." > > Chris To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Hindemith lute concerto
Wonderful stuff, but it will sound like mostly gibberish if you're not familiar enough with the original Flying Dutchperson overture to expect the real thing. On Aug 22, 2013, at 8:57 PM, Ed Durbrow wrote: > This gets funnier as it goes on, but they play to well in tune. > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrV1DiQznHk -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Liuto forte etc.
Mostly, it's just a question of practicality. There are only so many instruments you can afford to own and keep strung, only so many you can bring to a concert and keep in tune and find a place to stash around the stage when you're not playing them, only so many you can fly with, and only so many you can drive around town with unless you have a full-size van. You can't play Piccinini on a six-course, but you can play Francesco on an archlute. Francesco did not have this problem. On Aug 23, 2013, at 11:18 AM, Sean Smith wrote: > > It's an interesting trend and I don't know what to make of it, Dan. > > A few years ago I went to a concert of a well-known poster on this list and > the Francesco pieces were played on an 8-c lute and the Dowland on a single > strung archlute. It could easily be argued this was standard practice that a > period player living a few years post-composer-mortem would have played their > pieces thusly. (I do notice, however, the FdM pieces in British sources only > appearing in predominently 6-c mss tho the Cavalcanti bucks the trend) But > now I see so many single strung arch lutes replacing the double and now this > Liuto Forte/arch guitar(?) that I continue to marvel. > > Why are we seeing so many future instruments playing past compositions? Do > they really sound better? (in a sense, they sound great though I miss that > 4th octave!) Are those instruments more convenient since the 'future' > instrument can play more repertories? I remember years ago at LSA seminars > 10-c lutes were so popular because you play Dalza to Dowland and I heard > great players playing Sermisy, frottole and Pivas. Yes they sounded great but > when they were played on 6-c's there was such a greater dimension to the > sound. And in playing the smaller lutes more idiosychrosies came to light. > (thumb around the neck, sympathetically ringing bass notes, right arm > position, etc) > > In my case, I have tried to limit my instruments to 6-courses and this week > I'm lucky enough to have a wonderful gig on Sunday w/ some period dancers. > For the Arbeau and branles all is well. But the request has been made to > explore Caroso and Negri in the future. I've only started to compare Il > Ballerino (1581) and the Nobilita (1600). And I'm seeing my "limitation" very > nicely in the F chords: the earlier books will unabashedly have an inversion > to use as low a bass course as necessary (as in Capirola). If I were to find > a 7-c for the later book should I faithfully preserve the idiosynchrosies > when playing from the earlier? > > Ok, that's splitting hairs but there is a larger trend of future instruments > on past pieces and it does raise questions --and ocassionally hackles. > > Oh, and here's my latest conundrum re: the Iodone concerti. What is the HIP > lute for that? I suspect most of our period ren. and baroque players would > not be equipped for it. The Liuto Forte certainly wouldn't be period, either, > but may sound nice! > > Sean > > > On Aug 23, 2013, at 10:36 AM, Dan Winheld wrote: > > One more thought/question regarding the Liuto Forte; it seems that there > is/has been a trend for more single-strung archthings these days; I tried one > once- tension felt pretty tight, and the string spacing rather wide. H!?! > > On 8/23/2013 10:29 AM, Dan Winheld wrote: >> Franz; >> >> Very well reasoned & eloquently written response- you have made me quite >> curious to see & try one of these things out. I have an instrument of my >> own that fits no historical classification but provides an alternative tone >> color; a seven string steel-string guitar acquired cheaply on a whim while >> awaiting the completion of my vihuela. I have it strung/tuned as a "G" tenor >> lute at a=415; it works best as a fake Orpharion (flexibility of modern >> steel strings allows tuning to the relative Bandora intervals, more creative >> fakery!) Of course, it is no closer to a real Orpharion/Bandora than the >> modern Classical guitar is to the lute, but it does provide that wire string >> sound- and is far more satisfactory for Renaissance music than the modern >> Classical guitar with its boomy, opaque bass response and dull lack of >> clarity (on most guitars) if played without nails. >> >> One more wrinkle about polyphonically oriented lutes- My Chambure model >> vihuela is strung with a doubled 1st course. This has the salutary effect of >> integrating that course with all the others in tone color; becoming the >> "soprano" section of the choir instead of the solo prima donna, singing >> alone above the chorus. But it took time to work out the best >> tension/diameter/pitch combination- and then, the very hard work (for me) of >> refining the right hand touch for clean sound without clashing or twanging >> of the strings- which then benefits good touch on all other courses as well. >> >> While done or at least attempted historically at certain time
[LUTE] Re: future-instrument creep (was Liuto forte etc.)
Two things to keep in mind: 1. I don't really think there's a future-instrument creep going on. Many of us have been lutophiles long enough to remember when we didn't know enough to raise most of the questions you bring up. Players are certainly more conscious of the variety of historical instruments, notwithstanding the occasional generalized remarks about the "Old Ones" or whatever around here. But doing something about it is another thing. 2. It's rare that a lute player has much of a choice about whether to play a Diversi Autori Lutebook Concert. Most of the gigs are for ensembles (as would have been the case three and four centuries ago), and sure, I'm happy to do a solo between the trio sonata and the solo cantata. I'll just put down the theorbo and play a Francesco recercar on my six-course before picking up the archlute for the cantata. I'm sure the audience won't mind waiting while I tune 31 strings. On Aug 23, 2013, at 1:45 PM, Sean Smith wrote: > Again, the practicality is understood. What I should also mention is that it > influences the concert choice of music: > > "I have an 8c. To make best use of it I will play a concert that spans a 100 > years. ...because I can." vs "I have a 6c. I will play a concert that might > have happened out of the Diversi Autori lutebook. ...because I can." We are > often influenced by our instruments more than the music or the history. > > or (or add the following statement to the above concert choice) > > "I have an 8c and it would be pointless to add an 8ve'd 4th course for all > the music I play so I will play the pre-1560 dances w/out." (valid, no?) > Followed by: "There are things about that 4th course that I don't need to > know and the audience needn't learn about them either." It took me a long > time to appreciate that 4th course and to get past that bothersome jangle but > tho it took years I'm appreciative that I stuck to it. Are players doing > themselves and their audience a disservice by being quickly dismissive of > earlier instruments in the pursuit of pan-appropriate lutes? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Ebony Pegs
On Sep 28, 2013, at 5:48 PM, co...@medievalist.org wrote: > I know that today we know there's too much silica in ebony to use as tuning > pegs This will come as a surprise to most of the violinists in the world. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Ebony Pegs
On Sep 29, 2013, at 11:28 AM, Chris Barker wrote: > This is true about silica... And the fact that ebony dries at different > rates with and across the grain. I have recently noticed that a number of > fine violins have light colored pegs, possibly boxwood. You'll find an interesting discussion of ebony and "boxwood" here: http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?ID=14644 > I have observed > this more in recent years than in the 1970s and earlier. I wish I could > remember where I read the article about ebony pegs going out of round. Any peg can go out of round. At least one lute maker (Ray Nurse) will tell you to regard pegs as disposable items like strings and frets. My ten-course has ebony pegs. I've had them worked on once in the 29 years I've had the instrument. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Vivaldi
Hi Arthur: Might you you be confusing the concerto in G, RV 532 with the "Noah's Ark" (for lots of pairs of instruments) concerto in C, R 558? On Oct 13, 2013, at 10:15 AM, Arthur Ness wrote: > But notice the original instrumentation includes 2 "Salmo" (=chalumeaux), > 2 theorbos and the violins are designated "violini in tromba marina." (See > the red stripe.) The comment that the Malipiero score is "urtext" is misuse > of the term! > > I have never discovered convincing explanation about what "violini in > tromba marina" are. I know what a > tromba marina is, but violini? The best explanation is that one plays the > notes in harmonics. In the solo sections??? Any other explanation? I don't > buy the explanation by that they are to be played on board a ship. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Vivaldi
Arthur Ness wrote: > Vivaldi also composed three concertos for violino in tromba marina (RV > 211, 311 and 313). This fiddle-like instrument, which was popular at > the Piet`a, has three strings tied to a floating bridge, which produces > a raspy sound according to Michael Talbot. The fundamentals tend to sound low and raspy, but the harmonics have a muffled brassy sound, hence the "tromba." It can sound a bit hurdygurdyish. There are some Youtube tromba marina videos, but they tend to be unimpressive either in playing or recording. You might start here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHWbJZjZMPs > There are several articles > detailing with Vivaldi's use of "exotic" musical instruments. I wouldn't confuse "violino in tromba marina" with an actual tromba marina, an instrument not likely to be able to get the notes. We don't actually know what Vivaldi meant by "violino in tromba marina," but the most likely meaning is violin to which something has been done to make it sound more like a tromba marina. One solution is to put something on the bridge to produce a bit of buzz. You can see Europa Galante's two solo violins use aluminum foil here in R 558, the very concerto we have not been discussing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9QQQ0CU3CE -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Capo and meantone
On Oct 29, 2013, at 2:20 PM, Leonard Williams wrote: > I know this has come up on several occasions‹Capo with anything but > equal > temperament doesn¹t work. I¹ve noticed, however, a pattern to meantone > fret placements, the space between frets being (starting at the nut, > relative to ET placement) long to 1st, short to 2nd, long to 3rd, short to > 4th, etc. Would a capo work if placed at the second or fourth frets, > thereby maintaining the pattern? > > Thanks and regards, > Leonard Williams Yes, its easier to get it to work on the second and fourth frets, but keep in mind that all the frets can be moved. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bream Collection... I just noticed
On Dec 6, 2013, at 8:20 AM, erne...@aquila.mus.br wrote: > his recordings do not fit into what I like to hear, > say Hopkinson Smith and alumni. If you can direct me to "Hopkinson Smith and Alumni play Britten and Villa-Lobos," I'd love to hear it. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bream Collection
On Dec 6, 2013, at 10:06 AM, Geoff Gaherty wrote: > I feel the same way about Wanda Landowska and the harpsichord. Even if the > Pleyel harpsichords she used were well on their way to evolving into the piano The harpsichord had evolved into the piano a century or two earlier. The Landowska harpsichord was more like the modern metal-frame piano trying to re-evolve back into the harpsichord. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bream Collection... I just noticed
On Dec 6, 2013, at 12:52 PM, William Brohinsky wrote: > I have to admit to not understanding the idea that the purpose of the list or > of lutenists should be to try to force people's direction one way or the > other. I don't think anyone has actually expressed that idea. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bream Collection... I just noticed
I think you're veering a bit far from the definition of "force," but OK. On Dec 6, 2013, at 2:00 PM, William Brohinsky wrote: > Ernesto said: > Generally speaking, we want to get more guitarists into the lute, not the > other way around, isn't it? > > yes, someone expressed that idea. > > > On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 4:09 PM, howard posner wrote: > > On Dec 6, 2013, at 12:52 PM, William Brohinsky wrote: > > > I have to admit to not understanding the idea that the purpose of the list > > or of lutenists should be to try to force people's direction one way or the > > other. > > I don't think anyone has actually expressed that idea. > -- > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > --
[LUTE] Re: Nails and lute playing
On Dec 11, 2013, at 9:06 AM, Sean Smith wrote: > Interesting video and it's a shame about the sound quality. He sounds like a > good player. I wonder if he would have benefitted from a carpet under his > chair or a screen just behind him. So much sound seems lost to the volume of > the hall. The microphone's distance from the guitar means it picks up more indirect sound than direct sound. > I think I'm noticing that the brightness we expect from nylon is mitigated. Odd; I thought I was hearing all the brightness I'd expect from gut. Maybe it's an artifact of listening to Youtube. Gut strings are brighter than garden-variety nylon (as opposed to carbon-fiber nylon), all other things being equal, because they're denser and therefore thinner. Unless I'm mistaken, Hao is playing the piece in low-pitch A minor (about A= 392, a whole tone below 440), which means much of it sounds a minor sixth lower than you normally hear it. Some parts, of course, are a minor third higher. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bream Collection... I just noticed
On Dec 14, 2013, at 3:44 AM, gary wrote: > Recently, a message was posted referring to Andres Segovia as a "bully". I > think that's a little harsh, I know it's become popular to bash Segovia and > that he had a huge ego, but I don't recall him actually bullying anyone into > agreeing with his views. There were stories about him rigging competitions in favor of his chosen disciples and otherwise throwing his weight around, but it would be hard to confirm things like that, because people (other than Michael Chapdelaine, I suppose) don't like to admit to being bullied, and Segovia's cult of personality was such that it wasn't in the interest of anyone in the classical guitar community to criticize him openly. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bream Collection... I just noticed
On Dec 14, 2013, at 8:46 PM, Franz Mechsner wrote: > I think Segovia had dedicated so much genius and effort into his views > on music, interpretations, fingerings etc. that he was unable to > imagine that a student could have done better Never mind students; he thought he knew better than composers. My personal favorite example is Sor's D minor study, opus 6 number 9. Sor marked it "andante agitato." In Segovia's edition of Sor studies (which features Segovia's name in much bigger type than Sor's on the cover) he changed it to "con calma." Up yours, Fernando... > Some > teachers think, students should follow them first then develop their > own ideas, Some of Segovia's master class "students" were better players than he was, and in any other context, the "master" tossing a student out of a master class because the student didn't religiously follow the master's transcription (even the portamento inserted into a transcription of a piano piece) would be a grotesque absurdity. But of course, for many of those students the point of being in Segovia's class was to put "student of Segovia" on their resumes -- as if it actually meant something other than "I played in his master class" -- and perhaps even get some sort of testimonial. So I suppose the rules were different. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Segovia whatever
On Dec 15, 2013, at 9:26 AM, Tobiah wrote: > I find his tone anemic, his rhythm unmusically erratic, I certainly agree about his rhythm (and unless you've heard his recordings from around 1930 you don't know the half of it), but he pulled a lot of sound out of the guitar. In 1977, I heard him in the 3,200-seat Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, a cavernous and not particularly resonant space where the LA Philharmonic played until 2003. He was 84, and obviously having memory or concentration problems, so what he played often bore only a passing resemblance to what the composer wrote. But he was quite audible, for better or worse. Mostly worse. I had never heard him live before -- though I was warned what to expect -- and as someone with pretensions, however small, of being a guitarist, I was embarrassed for my instrument. Apparently Segovia read my review of that concert in the Los Angeles Times a couple days later, and threatened (I don't know to whom) never to return to Los Angeles. "You made a lot of people very happy," someone at the Times told me. "He's a hateful old man." The Times music critic, Martin Bernheimer, was not among those I made happy. He'd reviewed Segovia's LA concert the previous year, and wrote what most critics were writing about Segovia: the guitar's a joke and there's no good music for it, but Segovia's definitely the greatest. Bernheimer was understandably miffed about being made to look foolish by his newest and youngest stringer (I was 20 at the time). That review eventually finished me as a Times stringer, a career in which I could have earned hundreds of dollars a year. The subject of how much Segovia helped create the classical guitar's popularity and how much he caught the wave at the right time can be discussed endlessly, but we should not forget 1) that the classical music establishment looked at Segovia, and the guitar, with much condescension, and 2) that he brought some disrepute on the instrument by atrocious performances in his later years, when someone less egotistical would have realized it was time to retire. Of course, his concerts in the 1930's or 1950's could have been embarrassments as well; I wouldn't know. But Segovia was helped a lot by talking dog effect: he was hailed as the greatest classical guitarist by lots of people who had no idea there were any others. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Segovia: the early years
On Dec 15, 2013, at 1:47 AM, William Samson wrote: > Segovia's early years seem to be unclear. Does anybody know where he > learned to play? Did he study with a master? I just happen to own a copy of Segovia: an Autobiography of the Years 1893-1920, translated by W.F. O'Brien (McMillan 1976). I may be the only living person who does. Odd little book, full of all sorts of descriptions of people's faces and clothes, and painfully obvious as an attempt to bolster the Segovia Legend, which often involves denigrating the contributions of other guitarists. But for what it's worth: He wrote that his aunt and uncle (he lived with them rather than his parents, for reasons he doesn't explain, although he was old enough when he was handed off to remember the event) had him take lessons from a nasty violinist he doesn't say how old he was, how long he had those lessons, or even whether it was violin or guitar that he was studying who pronounced him talentless, whereupon his uncle Eduardo stopped the lessons. At some unspecified later time, but apparently before he was ten, a "strolling flamenco player" stopped in their town, and gave him lessons. "In a month and half I had learned everything the poor man knew that is to say, very little." That was apparently it. He describes himself as completely self-taught after that, except that his friends "unearthed a guitar manual of sorts, thanks to which I was able to find the notes on the instrument." Why not find a teacher? "My uncle could not have spared another penny, no matter how low the fees, to pay for a teacher. Moreover, my family wouldn't have allowed me to drop out of school in order to study an instrument outside those commonly heard in concert hallspiano, violin, cello." -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Segovia and Pujol (was Bream Collection…)
On Dec 15, 2013, at 1:01 PM, "Chris Barker" wrote: > Tarrega taught Pujol to play with nailess right hand > fingertips, and Pujol passed that technique on to others. I presume that > Segovia's use of nails, and increased volume of his instrument because of > that, might have gotten him bigger audiences. Segovia's "Autobiography of the Years 1893-1920" says Llobet and Tarrega never played concert halls because they were convinced that the guitar wouldn't be heard in one. In the next paragraph, he talks of playing at the Palau, a hall that "seated over a thousand persons!" He then says, "Pujol not the musicologist, but the managing director of the Palau arranged to meet with me " That offhand reference to "the musicologist" is the only mention of Emilio Pujol in the book. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Segovia and Pujol (was Bream Collection…)
On Dec 16, 2013, at 7:51 AM, William Samson wrote: > A recent programme blurb for a Nigel North concert says that he was > first inspired by Hank B. Marvin of The Shadows (Cliff Richard's > backing group). Not just at first. About 20 years ago, when I gave Nigel a ride from San Francisco Airport to Humboldt, a journey of five or six hours, he regaled me with a cassette or two of the Shadows. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] More Segovia stuff
On Dec 15, 2013, at 1:01 PM, Chris Barker wrote: > Tarrega taught Pujol to play with nailess right hand > fingertips, and Pujol passed that technique on to others. I presume that > Segovia's use of nails, and increased volume of his instrument because of > that, might have gotten him bigger audiences. Llobet was a Tarrega student and played with nails, according to Segovia, who didn't care for his tone. And according to Segovia, he played bigger venues because he didn't buy the prevailing view that it would't work. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: More Segovia stuff
I meant, of course, that Segovia played bigger venues... On Dec 16, 2013, at 3:29 PM, howard posner wrote: > Llobet was a Tarrega student and played with nails, according to Segovia, who > didn't care for his tone. And according to Segovia, he played bigger venues > because he didn't buy the prevailing view that it would't work. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Mille Regretz?
On Dec 17, 2013, at 7:45 PM, theoj89...@aol.com wrote: > Does anyone have a source of a lute in tabulation of Mille Regretz by Josquin > des Pres? Seems like I remember one, but cannot locate it. Cheers, Narvaez' Cancion del Emperador is a setting of Mille Regretz. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bream Collection... I just noticed
On Dec 18, 2013, at 8:00 AM, JarosÅaw Lipski wrote: > Bach was known for bullying kids from his choir Really? Do you have a source for this? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bream Collection... I just noticed
On Dec 18, 2013, at 9:07 AM, Geoff Gaherty wrote: > I recall reading that he was fired from an early gig for improper relations > with one of the women in the choir. I don't doubt you read something of the sort, as there is a lot of rubbish written about Bach. He was reproved for a number of things when he was organist at Arnstadt, including getting into a sword fight with a bassoonist, and playing stuff that was too weird, too long or too short during services. Minutes of the Arnstadt Consistory note that in November 1706 they asked the 21-year-old Bach "by what right he recently caused the strange maiden to be invited into the choir loft and let her make music there." He was not fired. He requested his dismissal seven months later, after he had accepted a more lucrative job in Mühlhausen. The maiden was likely his cousin Maria Barbara Bach, whom he married the following year. History does not record whether she was really strange. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bream Collection... I just noticed we got so far away from the [LUTE]-forum
On Dec 18, 2013, at 1:47 PM, Dan Winheld wrote: > Is it just me, or is there not something ironic about a serious minded 21st > century LUTE-list member finding a great 20th century musical icon (think of > him what one will otherwise) "outdated"? Not at all. Implicit in the whole early music movement is the assumption that the mainstream classical approach to early music was outdated, including icons like Karajan, Stokowski, and yes, Segovia. Their approach was an early-to-mid-twentieth-century approach that became outdated when we learned better. In Joel Cohen's Reprise (1985), a book about the early music revival that is quickly becoming a historical document in its own right, he tells of a young French tenor who encountered his former voice teacher at the Paris Conservatoire and told her that he just sang a Machaut mass in concert. She got upset and said, "How many times times must I tell you? There's no future in that crazy modern music!" -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bream Collection... I
On Dec 19, 2013, at 5:27 AM, Christopher Wilke wrote: > This also fits in nicely with Richard Taruskin's often stated thesis > that early music performance practice today is really a modern > fabrication that seeks to apply 20th (now 21st) century aesthetic > preferences to past music. This would make sense only if there were a single 20th-century aesthetic preference. Taruskin's usual lucidity rather deserted him here, floating away in a sea of abstract nouns. It all falls apart when you try to be specific about it. For example, he famously suggested (in his article in Early Music magazine around 1983, if not in Text and Act, a book I've never succeeded in slogging all the way through) that Emma Kirkby's straight delivery had as much to do with Joan Baez as with being historically informed, an odd notion in my view, since I always found Baez' vibrato too intense for my taste. But even assuming Taruskin chose a good example, why did Kirkby emulate Baez, rather than some other singer who was popular in the sixties and early seventies? She could have chosen to sing like Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Rod McKuen, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin (wouldn't you love to hear Jagger and Joplin sing "Sweet Kate"?), John Lennon, Andy Williams, Merle Haggard, Birgit Nilsson or Beverly Sills, all of whom represented current aesthetic preferenc! es. Why not any of them as the model for a "modern fabrication"? I'm inclined to go for the obvious explanation that answers questions rather than raising them: people in early are doing what they think they're doing. The important thing about "20th-century aesthetic preferences to past music" is that the 20th century preferred past music. Audiences turned out for music of the 18th and 19th centuries more than for the new stuff. That had never happened before. Classical music, and the symphony orchestra in particular, became museums preserving music of previous generations, and the logical and inevitable outgrowth of that phenomenon was that some of the curators wanted to do it "right," just like the curators who cleaned the old cloudy varnish off the Rembrandt painting called the "Night Watch" and discovered it wasn't a night scene at all. > Indeed, the technically clean, vibrato-less, > metronomic, inexpressive character of many performances of early music > nowadays seems to be an artistic reflection of mechanized > industrialization, assembly lines, Because early musicians spend lots of time in factories Beware the logical fallacy of "they exist at the same time, therefore there must be some cause and effect," or you can wind up joining the "vaccination causes [insert your favorite ailment here]" crowd. Cause and effect requires a mechanism. In any event, mechanized industrialization and assembly lines have coexisted for nearly a century with continuous vibrato, which is largely a post-World War I development and is still the dominant way of playing and singing classical music -- some higher-level orchestras have taken to playing Mozart differently from the way they play Rachmaninoff, but it hasn't filtered down much to the less exalted professional ranks. > and the repeatable, homogenized > regularity of product made possible by the use of computers. I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you talking about digital recording, or something else? > It would be too much of a stretch to suggest that the approach of > Segovia and contemporaries provides a model of early interpretation > today, but one might be able to argue that, being older, some aspects > of those aesthetic priorities were (un/subconsciously) closer to the > spirit of earlier times than the modern performance dogma. True in a very limited way, insofar as the spirit of earlier times was "I play the way I play because I like to play that way; I play the best way I can based on my own inclinations and the way I was taught to play." That's essentially the way nearly everyone did it until the early music movement built momentum, and it works very well until you start playing something outside the current style, such as -- oh, I don't know -- Mozart or Bach. Or Dowland. Or Beethoven. The notion of fidelity to Beethoven's intent, let alone Albeniz', did not occur to most musicians of Segovia's generation. Toscanini, who was older than Segovia and active the first half of the 20th century, was known for being faithful to "the score" precisely because it made him unusual. Critics, biographers and the musicians who played under him went on and on about it. Landowska's comment about "you play Bach your way and I'll play it his way" was similarly famous because it was out of the mainstream. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bream Collection... I
On Dec 20, 2013, at 2:51 PM, Christopher Wilke wrote: >> This would make sense only if there were a single >> 20th-century aesthetic preference. > > Who is to say there is not? Those alive during a historical period are too > sensitive to the trees of plurality to discern the forest of ideology > motivating seemingly disparate activities. If you really want to argue that a single 20th-century aesthetic encompassed The Descendants doing "Everything Sucks" and the Berlin Philharmonic doing Mahler, nobody will stop you, but I don't think anyone will be convinced. >> The important thing about "20th-century aesthetic >> preferences to past music" is that the 20th century >> preferred past music. Audiences turned out for music >> of the 18th and 19th centuries more than for the new >> stuff. That had never happened before. > > Hardly. Audiences turn out in droves for new popular music: "product" > intended to be enjoyed for a while before being discarded in favor of the > next hit. It may come as a shock to us on the list, but very few people in > the general population pay attention to classical music at all. I suppose I was being imprecise, although you appear to have correctly understood that I was talking about classical music. I don't think the lack of attention to it in the general population will shock anyone. > Consider how many early music performers today improvise in concert. All the competent ones, if you mean ornamenting and playing continuo. If you mean getting in front of an audience and making it up from scratch or asking the audience to suggest a theme for improvisation, I imagine it's pretty rare, which is not surprising. Listeners who paid to hear Mozart in 1785 were paying to hear Mozart improvise as part of the experience. Listeners paying to hear Mozart two centuries later were not. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Identify Painting?
Are you sure it's a painting and not a photograph? On Dec 26, 2013, at 1:09 PM, Robert Clair wrote: > > Can anyone identify this painting: > > http://www.elroberto.com/pix/LutePicture.pdf > > This copy was on some promotional material from the French record label Alpha > Productions. > > thx > > Bob > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: 2014
On Dec 31, 2013, at 5:59 PM, "Mayes, Joseph" wrote: > I'll add my bit - Happy!! Happy!! Well, if you must: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nlfUAsTZXo -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Say love and Queen Elizabeth
On Jan 23, 2014, at 3:01 PM, R. Mattes wrote: > if you exdend it and go up again > you end up with something often called "Pachelbel-Sequence". A poster on another list some years ago asserted that Pachelbels canon is based on the Aria del Granduca. If you look at sequences of four or five notes, youre going to find all sorts of correlations. Think twice about concluding theres a causal connection. There are only so many combinations of notes, and similarity does not mean identity, as weve had occasion to remind posters whove maintained that the renaissance vihuela and the charango, or the viola da gamba and the guitar, are the same instrument. In 1959, Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic did a television broadcast featuring music with themes that started with How Dry I Am (G-C-D-E). It included the second movement of the D major Water Music Suite, the Moldau, the Merry Widow Waltz, the Schubert Arpeggione Sonata, the slow movement of Beethovens Second Symphony, Brahms 1st Piano Concerto, Strauss Death and Transfiguration (end), the Nocturne from Mendelssohns Midsummer Nights Dream, Coplands Appalachian Spring dressing of Simple Gifts, The Partys Over, the horn solo from Till Eulenspiegel, then gets into themes that use the same notes in different orders, then gets into the theme in minor: the finale of the Pathetique sonata, and the the entire last movement of Shostakovichs 5th Symphony. He somehow missed the famous quickstep from the 1812 overture. The show was called The Infinite Variety of Music. You can read the script in his book of the same name, or, if you have 48 minutes and 46 seconds to kill, listen to it on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRKw8MENoCs -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Say love and Queen Elizabeth
On Jan 24, 2014, at 2:14 PM, Stewart McCoy wrote: > I > can understand the reticence of Ralf and Howard in accepting musical > allusions in the music of John Dowland. > Of course there will be the same > group of notes which appear in other compositions, a point Howard makes > well, but are we to throw the baby out with the bath water? The question is whether you have a baby or not. If four descending notes constitute a baby, youll have a population explosion on your hands. But dont let my reticence curb your enthusiasm. Anything is possible, and theres no way, unless Dowlands personal footnoted edition shows up, and anythings possible. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: archlute/theorbo in Corelli's Op. 1
On Feb 3, 2014, at 4:36 PM, Roman Turovsky wrote: > that is not related to turbans or theorbos, but rather to the latin TURBARE, > to BOTHER. If you dismiss out of hand any relationship between theorbos and bother, you lack sufficient experience with theorbos. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Dampening frets?
On Feb 10, 2014, at 7:27 AM, William Samson wrote: > My usual plan of attack on a loose gut fret is first of all to dampen > it a little. Gut, unlike nylon, tightens when damp - though it may > take a day or two of repeated dampening for it to achieve the desired > effect. How exactly do you do this? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Dampening frets?
On Feb 10, 2014, at 11:41 AM, William Samson wrote: > Hi Howard, > I wipe them with a slightly damp (not dripping wet) cloth. That might > not suit some neck finishes, but I haven't had any problems with mine. > Bill Hmm. I might muster the courage to try a Q-tip... To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bartolotti's continuo treatise
On Feb 25, 2014, at 8:44 AM, Jean-Marie Poirier wrote: > Here is the passage in question (I am confident that you can read French) : For those who canât, I will helpfully offer a translation from Google Language Tools. I think it speaks for itself. "He had some Italian in the Court, famous for the guitar. He had a genius for music, and this is the only guitar could do something;., But its composition was so gracious and so tender that it would have given the harmony most ungrateful of all instruments. the truth is that nothing was more difficult than playing his way. taste the king for his compositions had made ââthe instrument so fashionable that all played upon the world good or bad, and the toilet was beautiful also sure to see a guitar to find the red and flies. The Duke of York played upon fairly, and the Earl of Arran as Francisco itself. This Frantz had just made a sarabande or désoloit that charmed everyone: for all guitarerie Court began to learn, and God knows the Universal raclerie it was! " -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bartolotti's continuo treatise
On Feb 25, 2014, at 9:44 AM, Jean-Marie Poirier wrote: > Thank you Howard but Google is not completely up to point. Im shocked SHOCKED -- to hear it. > At first sight but a bit more accurate than Google I hope ;-) ! Sorry, but theres simply no way to improve on the toilet was beautiful, and Shakespeare himself would be envious of taste the king for his compositions. Were dealing with great literature here. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bartolotti's continuo treatise
On Feb 27, 2014, at 8:41 AM, Jean-Marie Poirier wrote: > Robert de Visée was obviously one of the best on the guitar, theorbo and lute > of his time, but his French grammar was not really spotless... ;-) He was a Spaniard, and he used Google Translate. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: A Dowland question
You might start with IMSLP. If you go to this page, for example, you can find all the songs in the First Booke set in score: http://imslp.org/wiki/The_Firste_Booke_of_Songes_(Dowland,_John) On Feb 27, 2014, at 9:41 AM, Jörg Hilbert imap wrote: > Dear collected wisdom, > > are you happen to be aware of any modern edition of the Dowland’s songs in > the version for four voices (print or internet)? I only have the facsimiles > and I can’t find something else. > > Thanks for any help, > Jörg > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Bartolotti's continuo treatise
On Feb 28, 2014, at 2:17 PM, Monica Hall wrote: > I think you are being disingenious. What Satoh actually says is > "This is all my imagination and conjecture, based on the few documents > concerning De Visee's life". > > How is the reader supposed to know what is based on these few documents and > what is idle fantasy? I think This is all my imagination and conjecture pretty much gives it away. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: De Visee
On Mar 1, 2014, at 9:29 AM, Christopher Wilke wrote: > before you know it, it's a "known fact" that de Visee was from > Portugual. My offhand remark that started this thread was based on a "known fact" that I gleaned from the liner notes of a Segovia LP (you may commence giggling), when I was not old enough to distrust such things: Visee was a Spaniard, born Roberto Viseo. I never had occasion to inquire further, so until a few days I still believed it. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: backpacks for lutes?
On Mar 6, 2014, at 8:46 AM, Garry Bryan wrote: > > I'm still trying to figure out why they keep their "house guitarist" in a > box, because I'm sure that they weren't referring to the Roosebeck when they > mentioned playing "right out of the box. If you wait for the end of the video of the house guitarist, who is apparently a couple of disembodied forearms (which may explain why hes kept in a box), you can click on a square in the same box and hear a Paul ODette album with the same "Our house guitarist played this Lute right out of the box caption. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Ornamental Lutes
On Mar 16, 2014, at 4:51 AM, Edward Chrysogonus Yong wrote: > so i was asked to play continuo for a Händel Concerto Grosso and spent some > time working it out. at the first rehearsal i discover that the continuo line > is also being played by 3 violoncelli, an electronic harpsichord, and a > double bass all 'playing out'. > > all of these are modern instruments, played aggressively by players more > accustomed to symphonic music. full chords on my large archlute and twiddling > nonstop means i am audible to the celli and to the conductor. the tutti > violins on the other side of the semicircle have said they can't really hear > me, so i wonder if i'd even be heard by the audience. > > i'm sure other lute players have done gigs like this, so what does one do in > situations where one's lute seems largely ornamental? do i just make sure i > look pretty? You play continuo, dont worry about it, and relax knowing there isnt any pressure on you to carry the part. It doesnt matter whether the violinists think they can hear you. If you were playing with a big French harpsichord and baroque instruments, they might say the same, most of the time. And Ill bet they cant distinguish the sound of one of those cellos from the other two, and none of those cellists is writing to the cello list about his predicament. About once a year on this list I have occasion to remind someone that playing continuo isnt like playing a lute concerto. It isnt necessarily about being heard as a distinct, identifiable sound. Youre part of the mix. In a big group youre there to make the overall sound fuller, or mellower, or brighter, or whatever. The group should sound better when youre playing and worse when youre not, even if it isnt obvious why. Youve done your job when the listeners like the sound, not when someone in the third row says, really nice voice-leading on that last six-four chord by the guy playing that weird giant mandolin. And if the sound is really so thick that it doesnt matter at all what you play, just do your best, enjoy the show and chalk it up to practice time. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
[LUTE] Re: Ornamental Lutes
Chris, it took you three and a half hours to join battle this time. You must be slowing in your old age. On Mar 17, 2014, at 10:49 AM, Christopher Wilke wrote: > There is no historical evidence implying that plucked continuo players didn't > want or expect to be heard even in large groups. I wasnt talking in the past tense. The question was about now, in an ensemble with an electronic keyboard and three modern cellos played by cellists with no clue about period practice. The fact is that we can only guess at what the historical attitude was, and risk being simple-minded if we assume there was only one historical attitude. In any event, the question isnt whether the lute is heard, but how it is heard. The second cellist doesnt sit around worrying about whether hell be heard separately from the other two cellists, and if he plays so as draw attention to himself, the conductor wont ask him back. An ensemble is an ensemble, and you have to think about the ensemble sound, not your own. > On the contrary, Weiss writes, "I have adapted one of my instruments for > accompaniment in the orchestra and church. It has the size, length, power and > resonance of the veritable theorbo and has the same effect, only the tuning > is different... [The archlute and theorbo] are ordinarily played with the > nails and produce in close proximity a coarse, harsh sound. > Period performers didn't select powerful, resonant instruments which they > then played with nails, producing an intentionally penetrating tone color, > only to become a subordinate "part of the mix. Its precisely the sort of sound Id want if I wanted to blend with a harpsichord. It might also be the sort of sound Id want if I were the sole continuo player, in which case Id be more concerned about whether my sound was distinct. Weiss was a star, the most highly-paid musician in the star-studded Dresden establishment, and he would have been in a featured position, probably doing a lot of sole continuo in the Dresden orchestra. > Certainly they were "heard as a distinct, identifiable sound. 1. Beware of certainty. 2. So if four theorbos are playing the continuo line, each of them should be heard as a distinct, identifiable sound? > Something is deeply flawed with an ideology ?!?!?!?!? > that allows one to actually feel comfortable writing, "it doesn't matter at > all what you play... chalk it up to practice time" in a serious musical > discussion. Serious musical discussion??? You havent been paying attention. Or youve never played an orchestra gig with clueless modern cellists and electronic keyboards. I have; and and trust me, were not having a serious musical discussion. BTW, the last time I did it, I was playing my Clive Titmuss Strato-baroque guitar. They heard me pretty distinctly, Im sure, but there were times when the group would sound better if I werent heard: for example, the only way to get a heirarchy of strong and weak beats was to play out on the strong beats and back off (or lay out) on the weak ones, because nobody else knew what a weak beat is. If what the audience heard was GUITAR/not guitar/GUITAR/not guitar instead of STRONG/weaK/STRONG/weak, I was just a distraction. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
