After some thought this is my response to what Lex said in his posting on 26^th August.
The vihuela is irrelevant. It is a different instrument with a different repertoire. Vihuela music can be played on the classical guitar simply by tuning the third course down a semitone. Today the vihuela is usually tuned in unison throughout but this may not have been so in the 16^th century. If the 5^th and 6^th courses were octave strung this might alter our perceptions of the music. The baroque guitar has nothing in common with the classical guitar. Whether or not there are bourdons, there are always high octave strings on the 4^th and 5^th courses. Although its possible to leave out the bourdons, leaving out the treble strings is another matter. I have listened to Lexs recording several times with the music in front of me and most of the time it is difficult to hear the bourdon on the fifth course because all it is doing is creating parallel octaves in which the upper part is more audible. In the very few places where it might (on paper) make better sense of the counterpoint to omit the treble string, as in bar 7 of the gigue, it is hardly practical to do so. So the imitative entry, where you can hear the bourdon if you listen carefully, just sounds confused. In the Sarabande the bass line falls a 7th at the cadence following the double bar - this big chord I comes out of nowhere! Paradoxically the bourdon on the fourth often sounds to me more prominent especially in odd places in the campanellas. There may be no evidence for excessive ornamentation, super-intricate (folk-rock) strumming etc.etc. etc. (and I am not particular fond of these either). But neither is there any evidence that Italians thought of the guitar as having seven strings rather than five and that used the separate strings of the fourth and fifth courses independently as a matter of course. It is also unfair to suggest that other people play the music the way that they do because it is fashionable and that they havent given careful thought to what they are doing. Actually I enjoyed the video. It is a pleasure to listen to and a lot to learn from watching someone else playing. But the point I was trying to make was that it is in no respects better than the version on the CD played with the French tuning. I wonder how many listeners would notice the difference Stuart and Alexander seemed unsure of which method of stringing was being used. There are always problems. The comments in my later message on 25^th August were not directed specifically at Lex. There are a lot of people (including friends of mine) who dont seem to understand the way in which the high octave strings completely alter the character of the music. As ever Monica -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
