As for myself, I think I love music sufficiently to not wish it were turned
into operetta.
RT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Andrico" <praelu...@hotmail.com>
To: <l...@pantagruel.de>
Cc: <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2012 12:18 PM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Saturday quotes
Thanks for your comments, Mark. I read Liz Kenny's article a few years
ago and decided to politely reserve judgement. I have to say, so many
ponderous academic articles purportedly describing possible motives and
speculative modes of historical musical performance wind up making me
very sleepy. I think I recall, she was deliberately focusing on
non-domestic repertory. But, as you certainly know, the proof is in
the pudding and an effective performance is just that, no matter what
the approach.
Thankfully, there are many vastly different approaches to performing
old music. We choose an approach that suits our personalities, and our
motivation is the more introspective 'chamber' music corner of the
repertory. I've done more than my share of theatrical music (from
different eras both real and imaginary), and that is certainly a valid
and effective approach as well. But the long and short of it is, I
look terrible in panty hose.
As we took pains to point out, we don't pass judgement on those who
focus on the more extrovert repertory and use visuals to enhance
performance art. But it's just amazing what can be done without props.
Best,
RA
> Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2012 14:08:36 +0100
> To: praelu...@hotmail.com
> CC: lute@cs.dartmouth.edu
> From: l...@pantagruel.de
> Subject: [LUTE] Re: Saturday quotes
>
> Reading this I can't help but feel that you are pressing for an
aesthetic that is more a reaction to our modern world than one that
reflects a possible 16th century cultural atmosphere....
>
> Check out this excellent article by Liz Kenny...
> "The uses of lute song: texts, contexts and pretexts for
`historically informed' performance" Early Music 2008/02
>
> Here us a bit of the opening..
>
> "Our enthusiasm for printed sources has obscured other ways of
approaching these songs, and has artificially divided them from the
songs of the next generation. What looks like a perfect balance on
paper may or may not have remained so when the songs were performed,
and the seductive solitude evoked by a book to be kept and treasured at
home may not have always represented composer `intentions', if indeed
we can separate these from performer intentions. The `miniaturist
aesthetic' of privacy, secrecy and the `esoteric' often define this
repertory. `Iconographical representations of the lute in performance
of instrumental or vocal music ... consist- ently depict a theatre of
privacy and solitude ... apart (or distanced) from public, courtly
culture.' This may have been true of one group of performers--the most
iconogenic--but it ignores what others were doing in other contexts,
very definitely in public."
>
> The end (with lots of interesting stuff in-between....)
>
> "Early 17th-century musicians faced a challenge which their modern
descendents have no trouble recognizing: that of adjusting their
personal creative ambitions to different sorts of audience or consumer
demand. This is not compatible with a philosophy of one `right' or even
one generally preferable style of modern performance based on a careful
sifting of his- torical evidence, if the sift eliminates evidence
incom- patible with any single interpretative thesis. Modern ideas of
`public' and `private' are not always helpful: traces of 17th- century
public practice are to be found in privately circulated manuscripts,
while widely available printed books facilitated solitary music-
reading. To illuminate this repertory from scholarly angles we need not
a normative musicology but a more cheerfully disruptive one: we might
then use its tools to sharpen a new set of interpretive skills. As
Robert Spencer said `I see nothing upsetting in that' "
>
> All the best
> Mark
>
> www.pantagruel.de
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mar 10, 2012, at 5:43 PM, Ron Andrico wrote:
>
> > We have posted our Saturday quotes on performing lute songs with no
> > gimmicks:
> > [1]http://wp.me/p15OyV-lv
> > Ron & Donna
> >
> > --
> >
> > References
> >
> > 1. http://wp.me/p15OyV-lv
> >
> >
> > To get on or off this list see list information at
> > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
>
>
>
--
