For some reason, I am not getting mail from the list anymore, not even my own postings. This was posted on the
http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg01137.html By Stewart McCoy. >Dear Matanya, >I would very much like to know more about the other lute manuscript. So would I. According to Silinskas, that manuscript was deposited in the KGB Archives because, so he said, someone there decided that it was some kind of a CIA/Western/Bourgeois/decadent secret code. He knew about its existence, but never saw it himself. Even today, people shy away from any contact with that organization and its descendants. It is too much for us in the West to figure out what had happened to the Lithuanian KGB archives. Most probably, they are still buried deep someplace, to cover up for all those who used to work for the organization and are still around. >Until manuscripts are copied in some form, be it Graham hand-copying >Straloch, Chilesotti transcribing and publishing his "Da un Codice" >in staff notation, microfilms of Hirsch, or photographs of Welde, >the existence of that precious, irreplaceable music is utterly >precarious. Of course originals are important in their own right, >but Minkoff, SPES, Boethius, and yourself with Editions Orphée, have >all provided a safety net. If the original is destroyed, at least we >still have the music safely tucked away in our facsimiles and >transcriptions. This is exactly the point I made in the Lvov manuscript thread only last week. >It is desperately sad that you and Arthur, who worked together to >produce the Koenigsberg facsimile (and have thus guaranteed the >preservation of its contents) have fallen out. Not only sad, but actually highly detrimental to all concerned. The two major victims of this falling out, the second edition of the Francesco, and the Marco book, are still not printed and made available to all, almost _ten_ years after Arthur walked away from the MoLA series. If you are interested in the details of this affair, they are spelled out here: http://www.orphee.com/RMCG/odette.html > I very much >appreciate what you have both done over the years, together and >separately, to help the rest of us in our tiny world of lutes. There >is a time to work together, and a time to go separate ways. Whatever >your differences now, I hope you will both regard that particular >project as a success. I am sure we both do. Arthur already said that it was his best work, and I'll take his word for it. It was also one the best things I ever did. The only reason I was able to understand that the mysterious Vilnius Academic Library mentioned by Silinskas in his letter to Diana Poulton, was actually the Biblioteka Akademia Nauk, was because I am fairly well acquainted with the Russian language. Silinskas himself, always insisted on keeping this information to himself, refusing to divulge it to anyone. Not to Diana, not to me and definitely not to Daniel Benko, the person who told Paul O'Dette about this. He did not hide the notion that he considered this manuscript his own private property, and that he was entitled to reap whatever he could from his discovery. He wanted his name on it, and that is what we did when we published the book. As for his qualifications as an editor and lute scholar, you only have to look at the few transcriptions from the book he published with Editio Musica in Budapest to understand why I rejected him as an editor. This silly campaign to deny me this little bit of credit of finding the actual location where Silisnkas found it, and arranging for the rights to publish this book, is, to put it mildly, beyond the pale. For the life of me, I cannot understand what is the purpose of this. >Original manuscripts - our sources of lute music - are a finite >resource. Sooner or later everything which happens to have survived >over the centuries will have been discovered. It is possible that we >have already found all we can in Western Europe, but I suspect there >are still sources of lute music yet to be discovered in Eastern >Europe. It would be tragic, if, having survived for three or four >hundred years, they should now vanish for good. The Etwall Hall Lute >Book was mentioned in the 19th century, but no-one knows where it is >now. Will that be the same fate for the other manuscript you >mentioned in connection with Koenigsberg? Hard to tell. One day the political situation may change. All the ex-KGB agents still in important positions in the Lithuanian government would have died off, and the archives would open up. I don't expect this to happen in _my_ life time, and probably not even in yours. Matanya Ophee Editions Orphe'e, Inc., 1240 Clubview Blvd. N. Columbus, OH 43235-1226 Phone: 614-846-9517 Fax: 614-846-9794 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.orphee.com
