No early brass list that I'm aware of. I wish were. We could have endless discussions on the appropriateness of spit valves on sackbuts and what have you:-)
There's no serpent list. There is a Serpent Forum, which is Web-based discussion forum, not an e-mail list. Pretty heavily tilted towards men, but so is the low-brass world (although I we do have a female sackbut player in the two groups that I'm involved with). Guy -----Original Message----- From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf Of dem...@suffolk.lib.ny.us Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2009 8:32 AM To: Lute list Subject: [LUTE] Re: Imbalance > Recently, the harpsichord list has been castigating itself for its > excessive 'macho-ness' and lack of female participants. which is curious, I have known about as many female keboard players as male; perhaps it reflects the greater likelyhood of males being online rather than males playing the instrument. > Also - I've been thinking how early music email lists take on the > characteristics of the instrument they discuss - like dogs and their > owners resembling each other. Is the last an objectively acknowledged phenomena? When looked for anything is easily perceived. > I'd say this lute list has > the widest dynamic range. wonder if the early brass folks have a list... > I wonder what the Serpent list is like... wide ranging topics, all slightly off :-) I was an engineering student at Northeastern University 1967-1970, never saw a single female classmate; there was a moated dormitory full of female nursing students, and rumors of the odd female engineer, but I never saw or met a one. MIT was better integrated, but even there the ratio was high, at least 20:1. Membership at the MIT model Railroad club included one wife who was actually an engineer (against perhaps a dozen students and more than a score of alumni working engineers). This predated widespread access to the nascent arpanet, but included a huge sample of those likely to be users in the future. You needed a bit of geek in your soul as well as on your curricula vitae to get on to the internet in the early days. There is a program in my home library called "library geeks", one can schedule an hour with a 'geek' for explication of technical mysteries, I have observed some degree of m-f parity in those lessons, perhaps that reflects on an improvement in the home statistics. Hmm, I just queried one of the geeks, he perceives a 75/25 female participation; even better as it suggests those seeking instruction were not participating, suggesting both an existing bias and a correcting trend. I have observed several of them declaring a need to communicate with online offspring. The written name is often ambiguous, so it can be difficult to interpret membership lists, as well there are members who are commercial, institutional, and otherwise non-playing; but with some care one can consider the lists of the various societys, lute, american lute, american recorder, viola da gamba, historical brass etc. I recall with a chuckle the inside cover photo of one performing group, 6 male brass players surrounding one female, must have been taken early in the day because all of them are sorta sleepy looking, the solitary female has a particularly intriguing look about her, almost a glow... Maybe those few ladies now involved are keeping the satisfactions to themselves :-) -- Dana Emery To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
