Regarding the Spain versus rest-of-Europe issue ( a most fascinating
topic--thanks for introducing it, Robert Barto ), English Prof Brittany
Hughes said that one reason the Spanish kings/queens so brutally
expelled or forced conversion on the "Moors" (1523 was an important
date of escalation, and then the worst of the Inquisition was imposed
in 1609) was that the Turks liked to raid the coast of Spain from their
ships, escalating anti-Muslim hatred throughout this period. She
didn't mention why the Jews were so oppressed, as they seem like
innocent bystanders. I wonder if they also tried to eliminate the
lute, because it was seen as a Moorish instrument, or the lute belly
reminded them of something really evil, like the belly of a pregnant
woman, heaven forbid.
In defense of Spain, Dr. Teofilo Ruiz of UCLA in his "Terror of
History" course said that the Spanish ended their witch hunting decades
before England and Germany (and America). Maybe the adverse effects of
eliminating Jews and Muslims helped them realize that getting rid of
all their witches wouldn't improve anything.
I had a really spooky/scary experience in 1973 after I got a minimum
wage job vacuuming dust off the books in the dark stacks of Widener
Library (built after the Titanic went down in honor of a son of a
Boston Brahmin family). Was sitting on the cold concrete floor dusting
a row of books when I encountered a black leather clad tome whose
binding showed one word, my last name spelled correctly, and the date
"1728" in silver Gothic letters. Shocked and amazed, I pulled it out,
opened it and discovered it was a baroque legal textbook discussing in
incredible detail some issues regarding die Hexen. Though I was
studying German at the time, I couldn't quite figure out if it covered
how to identify/prosecute or how to defend/absolve the witches! There
were columns and tables of criteria, and even some numbers. I suspect
the botched Salem trials and executions before the turn of the century
caused Germans concern so they wanted to do a better legal job than the
crazed Massachusetts clerics. Talk about having a skeleton in one's
family's ancestral closet. I tried later to access that volume on
line, but the book appears to be gone. Since classes had ended, I
didn't take the book to my German teacher Herr Reller, but I also
feared what the book might contain. I believe by 1728 the Spanish had
gotten over any obsession about Hexen, but not yet England and Germany.
Mark Seifert
On Wednesday, May 6, 2015 4:07 AM, Mathias RAP:sel
<mathias.roe...@t-online.de> wrote:
Read Hillary Mantel on that topic, you'll get another view.
Mathias
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [1]lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu
[mailto:[2]lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf Of
> Chris Barker
> Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2015 6:11 PM
> To: 'Monica Hall'; 'Edward Chrysogonus Yong'
> Cc: 'Lutelist'
> Subject: [LUTE] Re: Spain vs. Italy
>
> I agree on Thomas Cromwell as well! Had Henry VIII not been king at
that time I'd
> call him a thug too!
>
> Chris
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [3]lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu
[mailto:[4]lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf Of
> Monica Hall
> Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2015 9:19 AM
> To: Edward Chrysogonus Yong
> Cc: Lutelist
> Subject: [LUTE] Re: Spain vs. Italy
>
> Yes - Simon Schama has likened Cromwell and his supporters to the
Taliban in
> Afghanistan.
> They were certainly responsible for destroying some of our cultural
heritage.
> And Thomas Cromwell a century earlier was just an avaricious thug.
> Monica
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Edward Chrysogonus Yong" <[5]edward.y...@gmail.com>
> To: "Mark Wheeler" <[6]l...@pantagruel.de>
> Cc: "Monica Hall" <[7]mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk>; "ml"
<[8]man...@manololaguillo.com>;
> "Lutelist" <[9]lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2015 10:55 AM
> Subject: [LUTE] Re: Spain vs. Italy
>
>
> >
> > England falling to 16th C Catholic Spain may have been better for
> > music and culture than falling to Cromwell and the Puritans, just
saying...
> >
> > ========
> >
> > II?III? I.I>>IuI-oIII?I 1/2I^1I-oII 1/2 II+-III'II?I 1/4IuI-I?I 1/2
IuI-o IuI-I|II 1/2I?I IuI 1/4IuI IuIII 1/4II,I..
> > HA| litterA| electronicA| ab iPhono missA| sunt.
> > aeCURe>>aaeuae>>P:c, 1/4eae-oe-aaa 3/4iPhonea
> > This e-mail was sent from my iPhone.
> >
> >> On 5 May 2015, at 4:40 pm, Mark Wheeler <[10]l...@pantagruel.de>
wrote:
> >>
> >> Regarding Elizabeth I's racism here is an interesting article
> >>
> >> [11]https://www.press.jhu.edu/timeline/sel/Bartels_2006.pdf
> >>
> >> What Monica says about not judging the past by an inappropriate
set
> >> of criteria is true and is also appropriate to the "racism" of the
> >> English Queen.
> >>
> >> It may not be PC, but I personally am exceedingly happy that
England
> >> did not fall to 16th century Catholic Spain!
> >>
> >> All the best
> >> Mark
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> On May 5, 2015, at 9:41 AM, Monica Hall wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Yes - you are right. We shouldn't judge the past by an
> >>> inappropriate set of criteria.
> >>> Spain has got a bad press in the English speaking world because
most
> >>> of us study history from an English/Northern Europe point of
view.
> >>> Queen Elizabeth I was a racist - want to expel all coloured
people
> >>> from England. So was Shakespeare. Jews are always villains.
> >>>
> >>> Monica briefly
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "ml"
<[12]man...@manololaguillo.com>
> >>> To: "LUTELIST List" <[13]lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
> >>> Sent: Monday, May 04, 2015 8:53 PM
> >>> Subject: [LUTE] Re: Spain vs. Italy
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Spain was not an exception regarding free vs. conservative
> >>>> thinking. I mean, Spain was not more conservative than England
or
> >>>> France, in regard to what is right or wrong in religion,
morality
> >>>> (for instance
> >>>> sexuality.) and so on. Fear was (and is) the explication of
nearly
> >>>> everything.
> >>>>
> >>>> Perhaps Jean Delumeau (La peur en Occident, Fayard, 1978) hits
the
> >>>> nail when he says, concluding his wonderful book, that Satan was
> >>>> seen everywhere. He is the enemy, he inspires the turks, the
> >>>> witches, the heresies, the plagues, etc. When the attention is
> >>>> focused on jews and 'moriscos' (that is what happens in Spain),
the
> >>>> witches are not so closely monitorized. In other european
> >>>> countries, not so much worried with jews, heresies (here the
> >>>> protestants, there the catholics) were prosecuted instead. Only
two
> >>>> countries, Delumeau continues, "escaped from this general fear:
> >>>> Poland and Italy. The latter perhaps because of being more pagan
> >>>> than his neighbors (that was Erasmus' opinion), or because the
> >>>> church was controlling it better than elsewhere. In any case, it
> >>>> seems that Italy lost his mind because of these fears in a
lesser degree than
> other countries."
> >>>>
> >>>> But. if we read Carlo Ginzburg's Il formaggio e i fermi. Il
cosmo
> >>>> di un mugnaio del '500 (1976), a seminal work in micro-history,
> >>>> Italy suffered under the inquisition as well.
> >>>> Galileo's case is of course very well known.
> >>>>
> >>>> It's all too easy to project from our present time to that past.
> >>>>
> >>>> Regards from Barcelona, dear lute friends. :-)
> >>>>
> >>>> Manolo
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> El 04/05/2015, a las 19:27, Sean Smith <[14]lutesm...@mac.com>
escribiA^3:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> That's what I'm thinking, too. The very first piece in Dalza's
> >>>>> book is the Caldibi Castigliano and it certainly points to a
> >>>>> refined and complex idiom unlike anything else in his Ferrerese
or
> >>>>> Venetiana dance cycles.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Sean
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On May 4, 2015, at 9:52 AM, Gary Boye wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> A word of caution here:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> We are making judgements based primarily on the printed
evidence
> >>>>> (i.e., the 7 main vihuela tablatures); there was a great deal
of
> >>>>> music (most of it!) that took place in Spain outside of these
> >>>>> formal, published works.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Publishing was a big deal in the 16th century. Getting an
> >>>>> imprimatur from a conservative and literally Inquisitorial
> >>>>> government was unlikely with a large collection of dance music;
> >>>>> much easier to play it conservative and stick to sacred
> >>>>> intabulations. The vihuela manuscripts hint at a wider
repertoire,
> >>>>> as does the existence of guitar music from a later period. Who
> >>>>> knows what was happening on the streets, but the Inquisition
> >>>>> wouldn't have had much to do if everyone in Spain was a
straight-laced as
> the vihuela tablatures make it seem .
> >>>>> . .
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Gary
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Dr. Gary R. Boye
> >>>>> Professor and Music Librarian
> >>>>> Appalachian State University
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> On 5/4/2015 12:37 PM, Dan Winheld wrote:
> >>>>>> In other words, because the only two ethnic/cultural groups
that
> >>>>>> had any rhythm were invited to leave the premises at once. It
was
> >>>>>> said that when all the Jewish & Moorish doctors, scholars,
> >>>>>> scientists, and artists & academics showed up on his doorstep,
> >>>>>> the Sultan of Turkey asked "Has the King of Spain lost his
mind?"
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Lacking some rhythm myself, I do enjoy the all the great
vihuela
> >>>>>> music a lot- but even I have to sometimes "move" over to Italy
&
> >>>>>> Germany for a little jumping around.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Dan
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On 5/4/2015 3:36 AM, Ron Andrico wrote:
> >>>>>>> Well, the first answer that springs to mind is because Spain
had
> >>>>>>> recently kicked out all the dance musicians, who had moved to
Italy.
> >>>>>>> They were left with a bunch of upwardly mobile courtiers
> >>>>>>> (Milan), and serious-minded priests with so much time on
their
> >>>>>>> hands that they intabulated every piece of vocal polyphony
they
> >>>>>>> could put their hands on.
> >>>>>>> Actually, there is quite a bit of dance music in Fuenllana's
> >>>>>>> print, some but much less in the other six published books.
> >>>>>>> Also, there was quite a bit of dance music evident in Naples,
> >>>>>>> which was Spanish at the time.
> >>>>>>> RA
> >>>>>>>> Date: Mon, 4 May 2015 09:29:52 +0200
> >>>>>>>> To: [15]lute@cs.dartmouth.edu
> >>>>>>>> From: [16]r.ba...@gmx.de
> >>>>>>>> Subject: [LUTE] Spain vs. Italy
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Hi all,
> >>>>>>>> In the early 1500s, why are dances so common in Italian lute
> >>>>>>>> music
> >>>>>>> and
> >>>>>>>> so rare in the vihuela rep. ?
> >>>>>>>> Thanks
> >>>>>>>> --
> >>>>>>>> Sent from my Android phone with GMX Mail. Please excuse my
brevity.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> To get on or off this list see list information at
> >>>>>>>> [17]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> --
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
--
References
1. mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu
2. mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu
3. mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu
4. mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu
5. mailto:edward.y...@gmail.com
6. mailto:l...@pantagruel.de
7. mailto:mjlh...@tiscali.co.uk
8. mailto:man...@manololaguillo.com
9. mailto:lute@cs.dartmouth.edu
10. mailto:l...@pantagruel.de
11. https://www.press.jhu.edu/timeline/sel/Bartels_2006.pdf
12. mailto:man...@manololaguillo.com
13. mailto:lute@cs.dartmouth.edu
14. mailto:lutesm...@mac.com
15. mailto:lute@cs.dartmouth.edu
16. mailto:r.ba...@gmx.de
17. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
