Thanks to all for their quotes from historical sources. My immediate question is answered, but I welcome an ongoing discussion, of course.
> there is one explicit mention of damping in Mace (1676). He indicates the > damping of a note with two small dots before it., and calls this effect > "Tut". > "The tut is a Grace always with the Right hand ... strike your Letter, > (which you intend shall be so Grac'd) with one of your Fingers, and > immediately clap on your next striking Finger, in doing you suddenly take > away the sound of the Letter ..." Mace Sounds to me like an indication for staccato. > can't believe that harpsichordists used damping and sustain, but that > lutists completely ignored this practice. Of course, as Chris also pointed out, articulating lines is indispensible in good music making. My question was about historical evidence for the emphasis on the technique of damping basses in modern baroque lute methods. There does not seem to be much. To me, this looks like one of the modern practices in early music: modern strings inviting modern techniques. It's hard to get back. Like position of the right hand. Or double versus single first course. Inappropriate uses of appropriate temperaments and vice versa, continuo playing on good-for-all equals appropriate-for-nothing instruments (did I mention baroque guitars in Bach?), standards of 392, 415 and 466 for baroque music, the fashion to poppify a lot of baroque continuo bands, &c. I'm not complaining about it or accusing anybody, only observing what I'm part of; we're not as hip as we could or should be, there's a lot of early music Esperanto going on. David -- ******************************* David van Ooijen davidvanooi...@gmail.com www.davidvanooijen.nl ******************************* To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
