On Sunday, September 21, 2003, at 03:38 AM, Jon Murphy wrote: > OK, I give up. I'll never play a lute. I'll play something that > resembles a > lute.
The lute maker's art of today is the result of a great amount of research into how lutes were designed, built and played during its historical "heyday" (by which I mean the 16th-17th century, not the time of the Trouveres etc.) The advantage of that dedication to historical accuracy is that we have instruments that, theoretically at least, can make the best of the music originally written for them. The disadvantage is that lute enthusiasts go round and round with a game called "when is a lute not a lute?" and they tend to pontificate from great heights on the various answers to that question. > I think that some here (and I should bow my head as a newbie) may be > too > purist. My rather jaded view is that we see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear and believe what we want to believe. Basically, IMO even HIP-ness is ultimately a popularity contest: we each end up with what we personally consider to be a "real" lute: based on our perceptions of "real" and "lute." Although there are definitely those who will spend thousands of dollars on an instrument purely for the sake of its historical accuracy, I still think that at the end of the day we've each written our own version of the story. > Duplicating the instrument > doesn't duplicate the music. It does, to an extent. Especially if one also duplicates the historical playing technique. > But imitating the sound of the instrument > brings you close, and that is in the notation and the basic structure. I don't like the word "imitation." I had a teacher once who told me, "imitation is the compliment mediocrity pays to genius." Even though he was speaking very tongue-in-cheek, I've stayed away from that word! I think of it as "emulating" an ideal rather than "imitating" a sound. Do you mean that tab. is better than staff notation for playing ren.lute music? That's my belief absolutely. But also, and more essentially, the sound of the historical lute is produced by the instrument one plays, the way one plays it, and the way one's ear is tuned to what one is trying to achieve. Best regards, David Rastall
