Evidence of guitar in the 1610 Vespers: no. Evidence of guitar with voice in Italy at this time: certainly. James Tyler in his book The Early Guitar gives a four-page listing (pp 96-99) of Italian printed songbooks with alfabeto, starting with Kapsperger in 1610 and with many others crowding in shortly afterwards. On page 80 he cites Milanuzzi 1624 as including five Monteverdi arias.
On the face of it, then, absolutely fine to use the guitar. But - as implied in Monica's latest - *all* those books are of secular music. Not sacred music. From which it would seem that the guitar was kept firmly outside the church. Inappropriate, then. (Although yes, it is fun...) P 2009/12/17 Monica Hall <[1]mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk> Not just at the moment. It would take too long and I fear my comments would fall on stony ground. I first heard the Vespers performed fifty years ago so I think I have heard every possible permutation of it. I can't say that adding the baroque guitar this piece did anything for me ...but at least I listened to it. Monica ----- Original Message ----- From: "David van Ooijen" <[2]davidvanooi...@gmail.com> To: "Lutelist" <[3]l...@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2009 5:34 PM Subject: [LUTE] Re: another day at the office On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 5:57 PM, Monica Hall <[4]mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk> wrote: [use of b-guitar in Monteverdi's Maria Vespers] inappropriate Can you tell us why you think so? David -- -- References 1. mailto:mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk 2. mailto:davidvanooi...@gmail.com 3. mailto:lute@cs.dartmouth.edu 4. mailto:mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html