Dear Jon, Nice story for a Christmas time. But in real life it is not that easy and peaceful. Nevertheless lets stick to your version for the holiday time at least and be forgiving to all pluckers and musicographers - including myself - which don't represent the others views.
Best regards to you and All the lute community. Jurek On Wednesday, Dec 24, 2003, at 09:50 Europe/Warsaw, Jon Murphy wrote: > Doc, Stewart, and all; > > I see no dichotomy between the idea of the musicians of an era playing > the > music in whichever octave, or whatever style, that fit their > instrument and > skills - and the idea of the modern musicologist attempting to > duplicate the > instruments and play of the specifice pieces with the instruments on > which > they were written. Two sides of the same coin, and each equally valid. > > I play O'Carolan on a modern nylon strung harp, but his music was done > on > the wire strung Celtic harp. My wire strung psaltery might be more > accurate > to the sound (as are the wire strung harp players), but does that > change the > music? It does change the sound, and some of the nuance, but the double > strung aspect of my harp might have been fun for O'Carolan to try. > > So far as I'm concerned both views are right. The duplicator with > original > instruments (as my modern flautist friend who has an "original > instrument" > Baroque group) and the musician playing the music on a more modern > instrument. > It becomes a matter of versatility in musical form versus historical > accuracy, and that is more a matter of personal desire than musical > value. > Does the pianist have to avoid playing pieces written for harpsichord? > Does > a musician have to have the exact instrument for every piece he wants > to > play? Yes, if you define each as a replica of the performance o the > time. > And no, if you don't have a very large warehouse to store all the > instruments. > > The musicologist is right in the attempt to duplicate the sounds of the > period, and the musician is right to play and preserve all the music > that he > can. Each is doing a different thing, and each is valuable to music. > > Best, Jon > > >
