> >Puritan? 1670s? With that Unreconstructed Good Time Boy Charles II > back on the throne since 1660? I don't think so! Besides 'Puritanism' > is a much misunderstood concept, thanks to >the 19th century.
IIRC the initial question was about the probability of baroque lute music being played during a ball. One approach considers the matter-of-factness: In a house where there was but one lute -- of course, they would use it for solo music as well as for dancing. Another considers the appropriateness: Lutes for dancing? Never shall you mention ! IMO one aspect has so far been unmentioned, i. e. the rise of the theorbo and the guitar. Prints by Robert Ballard (1611, 1614) or Pierre Gaultier (1638) contain intabulations of ballets that had before been performed on stage by court orchestras for real dancing. That can be construed as suggesting that real dancing at home possibly was accompanied with lutes as late as, say, 1640. When the d-minor lute came into more frequent use, however, there seems to have been a parting of the ways. Lutes were more and more confined to solo music, including all those stylized courantes and allemandes with uneven numbers of measures, whereas music on stage and real dancing in public was accompanied with the theorbo and/or the guitar, playing in a band. Just a thought Mathias To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
