Sebastián Núñez also favors the baroque guitar as the
more probable dad. at this point however, i'd be
pleased if someone on the list would acknowledge the
link between the charango and any one of its possible
progenitors. once that gets established it's
relatively easy, i think, to quash the notion of it
being somehow different than its earlier relation
simply by asking what modifications were made to
warrant the name change. after all, a pedal steel
guitar looks nothing like the original but it's still
called a guitar.
it seems to me that one of the major pit falls of
reenactment in musical terms is the totally artificial
classification that gets cast back over past events
from our modern perspective. what was being played in
the country during the baroque period was probably not
much different than what had been played during
medieval times. these critters with their ukuleles as
you say represent a continuous process in music, not a
fixed period.
as for historically informed performance, i believe i
would be more accurate in that regard if i call my
instrument a vihuela - that's what they would have
called it.
don't you ever sleep or are you an early riser as
well?
kind regards - bill
--- Garry Bryan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Very interesting, but...
While the Charango may have been a descendant of the
vihuela de mano( or the
guitar, or the viola de mano, or the medieval lute
), the modern Charango has 4
or 5 courses. The vihuela de mano repertoire
(Narvaez, Mudarra, Milan, et al )
seems to be written for 6 course instruments.
If you want to accept the suggestion that there is
no true example of a vihuela
de mano in existence, fine, but the instrument that
the music was written for
would still have 6 courses. Not 5 or 4.
At any rate, a couple of stone critters holding
ukuleles is not terribly
compelling since The Potosi façade was begun in 1547
and completed in 1744. At
what time were these mermaids carved? Were they
Renaissance or Baroque?
Depending on the answer to that, maybe we can now
say that the Baroque guitar is
a descendant of the Charango? :)
Here's a link to a photo of the façade:
http://www.rolandogoldman.com.ar/html/history-righ.htm
, for those who are curious.
-Original Message-
From: bill kilpatrick
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, May 15, 2005 9:27 PM
To: vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: las sirenas
here's something to support the idea that a
charango
is a vihuela:
- twin mermaid sculptures holding vihuelas on the
portico of the church of san lorenzo (1547 - 1744)
in
potosi - las sirenas petreas vihuelistas o
charanguistas de la portada de la iglesia de San
Lorenzo de Potosí. - taken from an article on
the
following site:
www.charcas.com/sirenas.html
- another, more detailed history of these
sculptures
can be found here:
http://home.enter.vg/maiorg/Charanguito-18/Index.html
- the earliest documentation of the word
charango
that i've found is mid-19th cent.
if charango iconography pre-dates the documented
use
of the word charango then what do you suppose
these
instruments were called?
this amounts to nothing however, if you believe
the
spanish colonists to the new world didn't know the
proper name for their instruments and you do. in
which case, no amount of documentation will alter
your
opinion.
sincerely - bill
and thus i made...a small vihuela from the shell
of a creepy crawly... - Don
Gonzalo de Guerrero (1512), Historias de la
Conquista del Mayab by Fra
Joseph of San Buenaventura. go to:
http://www.charango.cl/paginas/quieninvento.htm
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