I agree with what David says, below, it's very good. I simply have to experiment, reverse engineering the lute from the music. Then I'll try something else. The experiments, ongoing, are a necessary part of the process. However, I do think there is a point to playing the lute, or I wouldn't do it. The point for me is that it makes beautiful music and allows me to share it with my friends.
Ron's question, made relevant for the listers, freely translates to what's the point of playing lute. There is no point, of course, which is exactly the point. Accepting the fact that we follow such a pointless pursuit, I fail to see why we should stop at holding an instrument that looks like a lute, and not care about how it sounds. Art is a personal expression of universal value, but Western art music is rather coded. I believe that for a player it helps to understand the coding to play the music more convincingly. The sound is part of the coding. Francesco had another sound in his head when composing his pieces, than Dowland, Weiss or Barrios. Monteverdi's orchestra had a different sound than Bach's orchestra, or Beethoven's. Performing their music with another sound will give different results. If only for the preconceptions we have with a particular sound: listen to Sting singing Dowland or Anne Sofie von Otter singing ABBA to get this last point. (Or Dowland on theorbo, De Machaut on carbon strings, Lady Gaga on archlute, Francesco on metall-wound basses and Caccini on 19th century guitar, to mention just a few examples from my own past and present; I'm not here to blame anyone on their choices.) I think sound is an integral part of composition and style, and choosing the right sound will help in getting the answers that we are faced with when trying to play a piece of music convincingly. So, when we take up the pointless pursuit of playing lute, we might as well go the whole hog and try a proper lute with proper strings. Otherwise, what's the point of playing lute? > except I like playing on strings that are > possible to tune. David - had some 30 or 40 concerts and one CD recording in the first half of this year on strings that _are_ possible to tune: guts -- ******************************* 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
