It is interesting that you should be the one to respond when your youtube
contributions show that your own rh technique is second to none in terms of
looking just like the iconography! Your sound is entirely convincing to me.
My teacher, Diana Poulton played with pinky on bridge and produced a lovely
tone - nothing brittle about it. I wish I could do the same! Unfortunately no
recording of her playing survives, as far as I can tell.
Bill
Sent from my BlackBerry smartphone from Virgin Media
-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Wilke <chriswi...@yahoo.com>
Sender: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 04:12:30
To: David Tayler<vidan...@sbcglobal.net>; lute<lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>; William
Samson<willsam...@yahoo.co.uk>; Martyn Hodgson<hodgsonmar...@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Right hand plucking position - was Re: Quality vs Quantity
Martyn,
A related and by no means insignificant concern for performers is
what modern audiences expect to hear. What if the close-to-the-bridge
position implies that listeners back in the day expected a very
brittle, nasally, banjo-y sound? That may be nice to know, but I'll bet
few audiences today would enjoy everything performed sempre sul
ponticello.
You may very well be the most authentic kid on the block, but if
everyone alive thinks you make an ugly sound, you've just thrown your
work onto the pile of irrelevance. You can stand on principle and hope
that people will eventually come around to your HIPness, but it takes
an iron will to tough it out through the years when audiences don't
come, promoters don't hire and critics (if they notice you at all)
bash. There is also the financial disincentive provided for the
satisfaction of being a marginalized figure. I for one don't
particularly enjoy playing for posterity or corpses.
I should mention that I'm an advocate of playing close to the
bridge and I wrestle with these issues myself.
Chris
Christopher Wilke
Lutenist, Guitarist and Composer
www.christopherwilke.com
--- On Tue, 3/27/12, Martyn Hodgson <hodgsonmar...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
But putting such thoughts to one side, the real issue is how else
are
we to attempt to recapture as best as we can what the early
composers
had in mind and what their auditors expected to hear; other than by
looking at the historical evidence rather than to our own
prejudices.
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