At 12:23 PM 11/2/2005, bill kilpatrick wrote: >as with the europeans in south america who referred to >their instruments as "vihuelas." on what basis do >musicologists today justify their reclassification of >the instrument and say they - the south americans - >were wrong?
I'm not sure what you mean here, bill. The name of an instrumental concept is whatever people are/were calling it. There is no inherent, biological-like lineage with musical instruments, so what is called vihuela today is "vihuela," but obviously of a slightly different concept than what was called vihuela by Mudarra et al. >in which case, i presume the musician tuned his >instrument accordingly and played the piece. what's >the fuss? Go right ahead and enjoy...but retuning my guitar that is patterned after the 1937 Hauser does not make it a vihuela. It is what its maker called it: guitar. >with darwin in mind, i don't see how slight variations >in the size and individual markings of a seagull - for >example - outweighs its essential, inherent >"gullness." Indeed, but a herring gull is not a ring-billed gull in spite of the fact that only folks who are really into such stuff can tell them apart. Charango is even more different from whatever we know of 16th-c. vihuela than those gulls are from each other. As herring and ring-billed are both species of gull, charango and the thing called vihuela in the 16th c. are waisted, necked chordophones, but not of the very same concept. >if you're contemplating a "separate but >equal" thesis, beware ... I'm not sure what this means. These named concepts are all slightly, quantifiably different with a little overlap at the fringe. Whatever qualitative notion you lay on them to consider them equal or not is personal. >if what we're talking about is retuning, i couldn't >agree with you more. what's in name? ... retune and >pluck on - it's the thing itself that counts. Absolutely, and enjoy. ...So why be so hell-bent to name the thing that most of the world (minus one) calls "charango" something that nobody (plus one) calls "vihuela" as vihuela? The names are only there to describe concepts, and the concepts are clearly different, even if only slightly in some cases. The appropriate names for these things are still what their contemporary users and makers call them. >i find it hard to believe that musicians around the >world dropped their 4 or 5 course "vihuelas" or >guitars immediately in favor of a 6 course model - >especially in places where "many rude husbandmen and >artificers ..." strutted their stuff. i suggest there >was a gradual change - and in the case of south >america - 5 course instruments continued on as before. I am aware of precious little 16th-c. literature to address 5-course vihuela and none to address 4-course. Still, of course, you're right in that any such conceptual shifts in the application of a term would spread gradually across regions. There is plenty more recent, relatively well-documented evidence in "guitar" shifting from describing a 5-course thing to a 6-string thing, and the transition progressed very differently in different places. >if they hadn't disappeared altogether here in europe >we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. I'm still mighty into 5-course guitars as are a number of early-music buffs. There still is a currently active instrument in Portuguese folk styles called viola da terra. I've mentioned it before. Look into it; you'll find it interesting. >your scholarship is as impressive as ever. i don't >think i'll ever get you to acknowledge the historic >validity of my cute little chordaphone of choice but >i'm learning more about it - through you and many >others on the list - than i ever would have on my own. Please don't mistake me for a scholar of such stuff. I'm just a fish guy with an unhealthy passion for plucky music. For scholarship, ask me about the freshwater fish assemblages...or almost anybody else on this list about vihuela. Best, Eugene To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
