Roman, Exactitude is a relative thing, fallacy is absolute. The Earth centric theory of the Solar System was wrong, Copernicus corrected that and Newton expanded it to include orbital mechanics. Newton was inexact, as Einstein showed, but Newtonian mathematics were quite adequate to land the Apollo project on the moon. (And Einstein ain't the last answer, he didn't accept Bohr's theories on quantum mechanics - and that has gone further).
Suffice to say there is a level of exactitude that is needed to describe an effect, and any reader who wants more detail can get it (at least if I am writing it). Accept argument that includes the necessary and the sufficient, don't demand the entire proof (unless the topic is controversial and of interest to all). I agree that fallacies should be corrected, but not that all the evidence must be presented in order to prove "correctitude" unless there is a counter argument. I have tried to avoid getting into this kind of disagreement with you for some time, but the most recent started with a matter of harp tensions asked by Arto and fell into your expansion of my answer there. I have a plethora of sources as to the wired harp of the Dark Ages and into Medieval time, but to list them would bore the list. And did you really want me to put the actual numbers and the formula for gauge, length and pitch on this list. I have them (and would do it now except that I can't find my notebook - but if asked I'll find it, it is in the mess of my apartment somewhere). It is not a fallacy that the breaking pitch of a string is more a function of length than guage or material (as long as we refer to the common materials - gut, nylon, Nylgut and steel wire - bronze and brass wire are different). But it is true that I didn't detail the numbers that make it so. If that is inexact then I'm sure many on the list are glad that I was inexact. (BTW, it is about one full tone from gut to nylon, with Nylgut in between, but nothing can be exact with strings at the extreme end of their envelope as no string is perfect). So let us have a truce here. Baroque isn't specific as an era, it is a form of music and architecture taken from the Portuguese word "borracco" meaning a mis-shapen pearl. Renaissance and Medieval are eras in the sense of philosophy and civil form as well as music and other arts. In 1768 Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote 'a Baroque music is that in which the harmony is confused, charged with modulations and dissonances; melody is harsh and little natural, the intonation difficult, and the movement constrained'. I don't agree with him, he must have been a purist for the Renaissance music - nor do I take credit for the translation which seems to be more a transliteration. As to the Irish harp Praetorius wrote in Syntagma Musicum (several volumes from 1614 to 1620, I don't know which one) about the contrast between the 'simple common harp' and the 'Irish harp'. The former having a straighter pillar and a smaller soundbox. That matches quite well the Medieval drawings (yes, I know Praetorius wasn't writing in Medieval times, he was officialy at the breakpoint between Renaissance and Baroque if you just look at the years). I could go further in the details of harp history (and the written music) but by now everyone is bored. I'll just add this for your pedantic soul. There is no exact era for anything, what happened in the courts of Italy took time to get to the courts of France, and what happened in England took time to get to Italy. North America is a vast country, but many consider it to be historically singular. My father was born in 1898 in the North West Territories of Canada and lived in an age, or era, that was equivalent to the Eastern US of a hundred years before, and the Western US of thirty years before. The Indians were still free to live their own culture in that area, while 200 miles south they were on reservations. And that in the age of telegraphy (the "instant communication" of the day). There is a point here other than personal history - times and places change at different rates. Renaissance is a concept, and a name placed on it later. Baroque is an era in a limited sense, and put on the era of music and arts in the 19th C. Nothing is exact or uniform about those times. The tradition of the troubador came from Langue d'Oc and was imitated by the trouveres of Langue d'Oui (central France) - but they were the story tellers, the musicians were the low class "jongleurs". So what we see from the distance of time and place isn't as uniform as we perceive it. Who can tell what music Cuchulan's harpist played him in his legendary time of the 7th C., but we know from the legend that he had a harpist. We have better knowledge of the Pythagorean lyre player's music than of that first millenium time, but we extrapolate. Best, Jon (Now I expect another single line "put down" even though I've provided some detail. It doesn't concern me except as it affects the opinions of others on the list. I have no reason to be here on the list except to ask questions about my use of my "lute" and to offer my experience on stringed instruments. As long as there are those on the list that will help me, and that I can help, I'll remain. And I do hope that you will swallow your ego and ocassionaly confess a misreading, if not error. BTW, the "hooks" (an invention of the 1700's) are what we now call "blades", I could send you a drawing. The levers are merely a better way to accomplish the purpose - although I use those "blade/hooks" on my psalteries. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roman Turovsky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Jon Murphy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "lute list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Arto Wikla" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 10:09 AM Subject: Re: thoughts on low tension on Baroque lutes > > Must I make everything as detailed as a primer, or > > can you just accept that I might know what I'm talking about? > Yes. Otherwise you get a messageful of inexactitudes and fallacies. It would > have been for your own good. > RT > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
