On Nov 29, 2007, at 8:58 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Really, really bad example. Lots of ensembles do >> "German Music, >> 1712-1720." They title it "Complete Brandenburgs" >> and sell lots of tickets. > > But this isn't quite fair - "Bach" and "Brandenburg > Concerto" are names people recognize.
You accusin' me a' cheatin? You're the one who set it up by picking an example of narrow specialization that would include six chart- toppers. Narrow specialization doesn't mean lack of interest. It's precisely those programs that sell. "Violin concertos by Venetian composers published in Amsterdam in 1725" seems arcane, but audiences will come to hear "The Four Seasons." "Viennese chamber music written in 1806" sounds bland, but they'll come to hear Beethoven's opus 59 quartets. "Italian operas written for Prague theaters in 1787" is a loser; "Don Giovanni" is a winner. Concerts of music by one well-known composer are safe programming bets. > But even a concert of all-Weiss > masterworks would be a hard sell to all but hardcore > lute players. II can think offhand of all-Weiss CDs by Lutz Kirchhof, Konrad Junghanel, Yasunori Imamura, Toyohiko Satoh, Hopkinson Smith (2), Robert Barto (8?), Richard Stone, Jakob Lindberg, John Schneiderman, Michel Cardin and Franklin Lei, and I'm sure half the folks reading this post could double the listing. Please don't, by the way. The point is that somebody other than lute players must be buying the bloody things. And whoever's buying is more likely to by "Weiss Lute Sonatas" than "German Lute Music of the 18th Century." > (A somewhat well-known viola da gamba > player I know claims Weiss is "weird and > incomprehensible." What the...???) He's right. Weiss on the gamba is weird and incomprehensible, particularly if the gambist plays directly from the tablature. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
