On Feb 21, 2013, at 10:49 AM, Sam Chapman <manchap...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There is far more evidence for a legato > way of playing. One of the first rules we learn on the lute is to hold > down the left hand fingers until they are needed for another note - > doesn't this indicate a desire for sustaining the resonance of the > instrument, rather than cutting it short (i.e. articulating). Cutting a note short amounts to "articulating" only if it's a contrast to other notes. If all the notes are short, it's just choppy playing, and deliberately shortening a note is pointless if that note is surrounded by notes that are inadvertently shortened. So evidence of a preference for not inadvertently stopping notes prematurely through poor technique 1) is not evidence against preventing a bass note from ringing beyond its written value, and 2) is not evidence against stopping stopping notes for expressive purposes. This doesn't settle the question of whether Weiss (for example) would have been perfectly satisfied with how his basses sounded without damping them. O'Dette is a master at controlling the ends of notes, and it's the reason he makes contrapuntal voice-leading dizzyingly obvious: a note that comes after silence is emphasized. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
