There is a philosophy, physiology, ideology and what not in this. One important part of creating a professional musician is exactly that - to intimately familiarize one with as much of material as possible. It enables musician to build a set of rather automatic responses and tools, to deal with any material that closely relates to the kind of music he studied. For a highly trained symphony conductor, for example, it will take still more "indoctrinating" (this time in earlier music styles and aesthetics) to make a good sense of, say, an average lute piece. But once "indoctrinated", for a professional it will cut down (considerably) the time needed to make the performed piece "his own" (singers especially approach the music this way). Then, the question arises, just how many listeners will relate internally to the performer's innards. One of the beautiful qualities of early music (and also, simpler kinds of music like folklore) is that the inner musical relations are usually so clear and simple, that there is very little room for "interpretatio! n", and thus, to a listener it becomes more universal. There still is the room for mannerisms, which will confuse a listener, not familiar himself with the style, etc. etc. As far as hearing "what you know, not exactly what you really hear", a well trained instrumentalist "hears" the piece immediately in his instrument's realm (including fingerings, positions, timbral relations), and pretty much knows what will happen in this or that case. This helps the piece to work well on the instrument. An amateur will be more likely to have an "abstract" image of the piece, and have a harder time representing it the best possible way on his instrument. However, in case of a lute tablature, which is highly "digital" affair (representing positions in lieu of connections), a very strong desire (and a skill to do so) to connect material together is needed. That skill may be impeded by a lack of familiarity with the piece. How's that for philosophical?
alexander Arto Wikla <wi...@cs.helsinki.fi> wrote: > > Dear lutenists, > > after having played and arranged quite a few pieces to lute, one perhaps > interesting idea occurred to my mind: When I work (play or arrange) > pieces that I know already from childhood, years and years before knowing > what the lute is, my attitude is very different to playing and also > arranging, compared to the to me new "early music" pieces: it is > (naturally) much easier to see (=hear) those familiar pieces as "music". > > Well, nothing news or nothing so clever in that, but as far as I > understand, knowing the pieces, and hearing what you know, not exactly > what you really hear, was also the norm in the times of lute > intabulations: When a song is well known to you, you hear it also in an > intabulation that does not "repeat it all"! > To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
