> ----- Original Message ----- > From: "David Rastall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Martin Shepherd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 1:29 PM > Subject: Re: Double 1st (HIP message included) > > > > On Sunday, January 4, 2004, at 02:47 PM, Martin Shepherd wrote: > > > > > ...we should not ignore the evidence just because it suits our > > > prejudices. > > > > I am quite willing to ignore it if it fails to suit my needs! If gut > > strings sound too dull and heavy in the bass, or fail to stay in tune > > because of the weather, or fray and break too readily in the treble, I > > am not going to use them. If I can get a better sound playing > > thumb-one way as opposed to thumb-some other way, I will do it. I've > > been playing the lute long enough to know what works for me and what > > doesn't, and it's that consideration that shapes my playing, not the > > tyranny of history (not even the benign dictatorship of history!). I'm not suggesting that anyone should be subject to any kind of dictatorship. I explicitly said that we ought to be guided by our own ideas (we can't have any others, after all) in evaluating our experiments. If we try gut bass strings and they don't work, we will have to use something else - but at the same time we might wonder why they don't work and try to find some that *do* work. > > > > > Of course the most important thing is the music,! > > > > I agree, but learning to reproduce old masters, fascinating as that may > > be, is only a small part of learning how to play the lute. The painting analogy is only useful up to a point. A musician has to create something new each time, basing the creation on a set of (imperfect and incomplete) instructions - the score. Dowland's tablature will not teach anyone to play the lute, any more than having exactly the right lute and exactly the right strings will guarantee a good performance. But that doesn't mean that we should not study such information as the score does provide (ornament signs, for example). We may still choose to ignore some of this information, of course (still no dictatorship here). > > > > > ...we wouldn't be doing what we're doing if we didn't believe that the > > > technology which makes the music possible wasn't inportant too > > > otherwise we'd all be playing it on the electric guitar... > > > > I dont know about electric guitar, but a lot of orchestras, bands, > > brass ensembles and soloists of all types and from all imaginable > > backgrounds, do play early music on modern instruments. We lutenists > > are not the only ones making music with this old repertoire. Are you > > going to say all the rest of the world is wrong? If you are, then I > > would have to suggest that you do so because it suits your, uh, I hate > > that word "predjudices," let's say your likes and dislikes. Again, I'm not saying what people should and should not do. Personally I am quite happy for people to play lute music on any instrument which comes to hand (including the electric guitar), but that doesn't preclude me from being intensely interested in historical information about what lutes may have been like in the past. I just noted that, as an observer of the modern revival of the lute, some "unhistorical" things have been discarded (metal frets, single second course) while others (wound strings) still remain. The double first course was common in the past but is almost unheard of today, so I was merely encouraging others to try it. Incidentally I don't own a lute with a double first and have never played on one in public - but I have tried it, and I may try it more seriously next time. When building lutes, I have found that the closer I get to the historical models, the better they sound, so I have some faith that the old guys knew what they were doing, and histori! cal research is not in vain.
Sorry, no flames, David - thanks for your input. Martin
