On Jan 7, 2007, at 6:17 PM, Dale Young wrote: > ...There can > always be exceptions. But that means there is always A RULE. The > old guys > knew best.
Definitely a very useful dictum for today's HIP musicians to live by, but the problem is that we seldom seem to talk about what those rules were. If we were to speak in these discussions of Baroque musicmaking of the uses of classical rhetoric, "affekt", symbolism, word-painting (in the case of vocal music), "decorum", some degree of sensitivity toward contrapuntal and imitative compositional devices, some sort of awareness of antique style, modern style, galant style, French style, German style etc., etc., etc....then maybe we would see the use(s) of the third finger in a somewhat more practical light. We might also reach the conclusion that all the abovementioned things are totally irrelevant to Baroque lute playing... But to my mind they are relevant, because we need to know what the music is really saying, and to that end we have to know the rules the Baroque player/composers established, including which fingers they used. But we also need to bear in mind that the best Baroque composers were not opposed to the idea of making innovations in their compositional styles and playing techniques. The best of them were sublimely creative musicians, not just keyboard-operators. And if they were of less stature than that, why take them seriously at all? My two-cents' worth on the tangled and baffling "Affair of the Rogue 3rd Finger." D Rastall [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.rastallmusic.com -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
