On Sep 9, 2012, at 2:52 PM, A.J. Padilla MD wrote: > There's a saying somewhere that if there's a bagpipe in the same room with a > lute, you can't hear the lute being played, even if the bagpipe is not. > Same thing probably applies to the krumhorn!
Not quite. The world hardly has need of aphorisms about lutes and bagpipes in the same room. Frankly, it disturbs me greatly when people mangle PDQ Bach, something that should be held sacred. It's like listening to Republicans trying to quote the Bible. So, from a reliable source (me in September 2007) here's what Peter Schickele actually said in the introduction to PDQ Bach's Sinfonia Concertante for bagpipes, left-handed sewer flute, lute, double-reed slide music stand, balalaika, and ocarina: "The interesting thing about this lineup of instruments is the problem of balance. When the bagpipe is playing you can't hear anything else, whereas the lute is such a soft instrument that if there is simply another instrument in the room with it you can't hear it, whether it's being played or not. So the problems of combining these into one work are tremendous, as you can imagine, and they are problems which PDQ Bach found no solution for whatsoever. But the lute looks nice, and I think that in this day of recording, that's one thing we've forgotten: the visual aspect of a concert. It's a very nice lute. We hope you enjoy it. Think of it while you're listening to the bagpipes." BTW, if you're used to reading and interpreting scripture you'll immediately not the ambiguity about whether the it in "whether it's being played or not" is the lute or the other instrument. On the recording (An Evening with P.D.Q. Bach), the lute (Stan Beutens) was quite audible. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
