Sorry I'm late to this discussion, but for what it's worth:
Well said, Howard. Dance and song are what it was all about, back then (and now).
Some modern lutenists seem to habitually play "out of time" in a more or less random manner in an attempt to be "expressive" rather than boring. (In my opinion Nigel North does *not* come into this category, as his playing always has a musical direction). Bending the timing of notes is always necessary to a greater or lesser extent, but it is always necessary that it has a context in order to be understood, and that context is a steady tempo or (more importantly) a comprehensible rhythm. Bending time should only be done for musical/rhetorical reasons, not randomly. It only has an expressive effect if the listener has a clear idea, on the basis of what has just been played, of when the next beat is going to come.
BTW, tempo "rubato" is always just that - stolen, not borrowed. If you take more time over some notes, that's fine but you don't ever speed up to compensate. No one ever did, it would sound ridiculous.
Martin To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
