I am reminded of an old joke. The searcher for truth is in search of the ultimate guru. He travels to India and Napal, he works his way through the villages, climbing ever higher into the Himalayas. He follows every lead in his search. After years of trekking, and always uphill, he finally comes to the place he is being guided to. There is a mystic in a cave, a great ascetic who contemplates everything. "Oh ultimate guru, tell me the meaning of life". "Life is a fountain, my son". "Damn it to hell, I climb every mountain, I seek through the villages, I spend years looking for the ultimate guru to tell me the meaning of life - and all you can say is Life is a fountain". The guru says "isn't it?".
I work my butt off and wear down my fingers and now you tell me that Dowland liked thumb over?. Ah so, like the guru, whose disappointment had to be greater than the seeker's - after all he had devoted a life to the principle that "life is a fountain", and a life on a mountain top, whereas the seeker had only wasted a few years - I wonder at any absolute. O'Carolan was the definitive Irish harpist of the 18th C., he was blind (as were many early harpists, a good job for the blind who couldn't bring in the harvest). What if there were a fine lutenist without a thumb? Would he be able to play the songs of the time with the other four fingers, I think he would have found a way. Not the same sound exactly, but he might have started a "four finger" school of the lute, were he skilled enough. And we might all be playing without using the thumb if the cognoscenti of his time decided that his technique was best. Oh tempore, oh mores - and who was the Paris Hilton of the renaissance? (Pompadour might have a claim to her time). Best, Jon > Michael Thames wrote: > > > Is Dowland suggesting thumb out, rather than thumb under? > > Yes. > > It comes up pretty often here. There's a remark in Johann Stobaeus' > manuscript that Dowland changed from thumb-in to thumb-out in mid-career. > > For newbies, here's a more complete quote from Dowland: > > "...stretch out your Thombe with all the force you can, especially if thy > Thombe be short, so that the other fingers may be carried in a manner of a > fist, and let the Thombe be held higher then [sic] them, this in the > beginning will be hard. Yet they which have a short Thombe may imitate > those which strike the strings with the Thombe under the other fingers, > which though it be nothing so elegant, yet to them it will be more easie." > > HP > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > >
