Dear All, Recent mailings to the list have set me thinking about the cost of lute = music. In my experience it's always been expensive - my copy of Diana Poulton's Dowland edition cost the equivalent of my two weeks wages when it was published. I didn't resent it at the time - it was incredible to see all = of the music for the first time. Since then, although I work in a reasonably = well paid profession, the cost of living and raising a family has necessitated a = special effort to acquire most of the lute books on my shelf. I have winced on = occasions when writing the cheques, but I get a lot more enjoyment from the music = than I do from the huge sums I pay the garage to service my car! Some of the = music I am interested in has never been published, which for me necessitates = the time consuming and often costly process of trying to get a microfilm print = from the library=20 that holds the original - doing this puts a fresh perspective on the = cost of facsimiles! All in all, I'm grateful to all of the publishers who have taken the = trouble to make lute music available - when I started playing there was very little = available, so it's much, much better today.=20
Whilst reflecting on this I began to think about the cost of printed = lute books in the 16th century - how did the cost of books then compare with now? In the one tantalising reference to Petrucci's Libro Tertio of Giovan = Maria=20 (quoted by Brown, Instrumental Music Before 1600, [1508]1) from the Regestrum B of the Biblioteca Colombina, Seville, the final line of the entry reads: "Costo en Roma 110 quatrines por Setiembre de 1512." I am neither a linguist nor a numismatist, but I guess this refers to the cost of the book? Can anyone throw any light on what this means, and if it is the cost, how it relates to the present day? Best wishes, Denys --
