On Oct 5, 2009, at 6:07 AM, theoj89...@aol.com wrote: > Are paintings an accurate representation of its use?
Of course not. They represent what an artist thought someone would pay to have. The artists painted for patrons, not future musicologists. > Was it primarily a woman's instrument (such as the harp)? Was it > widely,and primarily used for self accompaniment of the female > voice - if so, what was played? Was it depicted more as an > allegorical representation? Despite the atttempts at humor, I am > honestly curious- There are all sorts of reasons, I'm sure, but the principal reason is that theorbos are spectacular-looking things. Years ago, a group I was with played what might loosely be called a "concert" because that we thought we would be professionally videotaped. Two thirds of the video turned out to consist of panning around my theorbo with a near-pornographic intensity, ignoring everything else going on (which included some semi-staged comedy). -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
