>Funnily enough I don't take great exception to this, >although it baffles
me
>as to why you would want to be in the company of >lutenists if you think so
>little of our ability as performers!
Stephan,
I wish I were in the company of more lute players, but living out here in
Taos, in a house with solar power and water collected from the rain, I don't
get to see many humans let alone lute players.
Seriously, I didn't criticize the ability of any lutenist, just the
reliance on sight reading. Don't forget I'm a lutenist as well, I don't
consider myself a guitarist..
Don't think that you have the whole lute repertoire at your instant call
if you haven't worked on every piece
. If your giving a concert of Weiss and decide half way thought to play
the Chaconne and happen to have the tab handy, this will hardly be a
professional concert, will it?
The other day, Nancy Carlin was telling me about the steady decline of
members of the LSA. This I think is true all over the classical music world
not just guitar and lute. If you think this is bad try going to a Jazz
concert.
Michael Thames
www.ThamesClassicalGuitars.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Denys Stephens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "lute net" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2005 4:01 PM
Subject: Re: memorization
> Dear Michael,
>
> You wrote:
>
> "I wonder if lute concerts will ever be on the level of guitar concerts
> where lutenist's have the proper professional stage presence to not be
> staring at their music all the time. This might give them more appeal to
> the general concert going public, and more acceptance by guitarist's. I
> always felt a little jiped when a guitarist would play a concert sight
> reading the whole thing, I thought they didn't spend enough time learning
> the music."
>
> Funnily enough I don't take great exception to this, although it baffles
me
> as to why you would want to be in the company of lutenists if you think so
> little of our ability as performers!
>
> The paths of lutenists and guitarists diverged 30 years ago - there is a
> tradition of playing from tablature amongst lutenists, but I would not
> necessarily equate it with sight reading. I think you will find most lute
> players spend as much time studying the music and developing their
> interpretations as any guitarist - it's just a different way of working.
> The lute repertoire is very significantly larger than that of the
classical
> guitar.
> Segovia (whom I admire greatly) did much to establish the form and content
> of the guitar recital format, which included playing from memory, but it
has
> to be said that the content of his performances was predictable.
> There are only so many times that you want to hear the Bach Chaconne, the
> Villa Lobos preludes and so on before your ears glaze over, whether played
> from memory or not. I don't know what others on the list think, but I have
> certainly noticed a marked reduction in the number of classical guitar
> recitals since the 1980's and I think the lack of repertoire is very much
> part of that.
>
> Lutenists, by way of contrast, have a sufficient wealth of repertoire to
> play concert after concert without playing the same piece twice. I'm not
> claiming that we always do that, but there is great scope for variety.
> We don't need to hang our careers on grandiose "interpretations" of the
> same few pieces. Renaissance music is not Romantic music (in the
> context of the music history definition of the word) - the players role is
> often to detach one's ego from the performance and let the music
> speak for itself.
>
> So it's a different world to that of the classical guitar - please feel
> welcome to be part of it, but try to understand that there are reasons why
> we do things our own way.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Denys
>
>
>
>
> To get on or off this list see list information at
> http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
>
