On Dec 21, 2009, at 6:48 AM, Monica Hall wrote: > But surely the prohibition applied only to playing musical > instruments in worship on the Sabbath not other days of the week.
As a practical matter, it did, probably because of the lost-Temple business. > I seem to remember when doing some study of Judaism that people > mustn't play them or listen > during their official period of mourning either unless they need to > to earn their living. > This may seem irrelvant to the Monteverdi Vespers but I think the > point is that all religions have quite precise rules concerning the > way prayers and ritual is conducted which in the case of the > Catholic Church in Italy in 1610 probably excluded using the > baroque guitar during the liturgy and offices. Anything doesn't go. Tosh and nonsense, my dear (or perhaps nonsense and tosh; I always forget which comes first). How is it possible that the Catholic Church could have had a precise rule excluding the guitar at Vespers, and such an eminent scholar as yourself not be aware of it and be reduced to speculation? The point is that every instrument, including the organ, was at some point considered improper for services, but rather a lot of them sneaked into church somehow. We can't say categorically that any instrument wouldn't have been used in Mantua in 1610, or Venice in 1640. Nor can we exclude "secular" sounds in the Dominus ad adjuvandum, which uses a secular fanfare over the super-falsobordone intonation of the text, and breaks it up with interludes that are obviously galliards. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
