A Guide to Playing the Baroque Guitar

Acknowledg ents

ix ACK NOWLEDGMENTS The performance of period music involves a seamless blending of skill and scholarship . So said both of my esteemed teachers, walter kaye Bauer, with whom I studied the five-string classic banjo, tenor banjo, and mandolin as a teenager in Connecticut, and Joseph Iadone, with whom I later studied the lute. walter, a brilliant musician, music director, and composer, gave me a first-class grounding in technique and musicianship which served me well in all of my subsequent musical endeavors. As I would later discover, the techniques he taught me for playing the classic, gut-strung, finger-style (no nails) banjo of the late nineteenth through early twentieth century bore surprising similarities to those for the lute and baroque guitar. His insistence that I learn as much as possible about the composers and historical background of the music I was playing in order to interpret it in a manner that was true to the period would remain with me throughout my career as a performer and teacher. Joseph Iadone was a musical prodigy and already a virtuoso on the double bass when, as Paul Hindemith’s prize pupil at Yale University, he was instructed to take up the lute and play it in the maestro’s famed Collegium Musicum. I suspect that most students of a modern instrument at a professional school of music would balk at having to learn to play an early instrument that isn’t even from the same family, but not Joe. He embraced the lute and its music with passion and was soon a virtuoso on that instrument as well. Indeed, the major portion of his long career was as a lute soloist and member of the internationally renowned, pioneering early music ensemble, New York Pro Musica. It was my good fortune to meet Joe in my late teens when he was teaching lute and early music performance at the Hartt College of Music in Hartford. Amazingly, he agreed to let me study with him privately and as a result profoundly changed my life. As a teacher, Joe didn’t just give me lute lessons and help me develop a solo repertoire; he also gave me an appreciation of ensemble playing and some very important advice. first, do not automatically assume that what you read in reference books is correct; some of the information they contain is simply outdated, oft-repeated misinformation. And secondly , do not trust modern editions of early music until you’ve examined the originals (or facsimiles of the originals) yourself. I would later pass his advice on to my own students and it is implicit in my writings, including the present guide and anthology. It would be impossible to acknowledge by name the countless librarians across the United States, Great Britain, and Europe, who were so helpful to me over the years when I invaded their libraries, usually arriving on short or with no notice on free days during concert tours. These patient, conscientious men and women enabled me to study and work with the original books and manuscripts that form the basis of this and previous publications, and I am most grateful to them all. I would like to acknowledge a special colleague and friend, Dr. Nina Treadwell. Nina came from Australia to study with me when I was teaching at the University of Southern California. Even as a student she set standards in performance and scholarship that were hard to match; and now, a noted musicologist and revered teacher, she is passing on her ideas about historical performance practice to her own students at the University of California at Santa Cruz and giving her colleagues in the international community of researchers—myself included—a whole lot to think about. At Indiana University Press, I thank Paul Elliott, editor of the Publications of the Early Music Institute; Music and Humanities editor Jane Behnken and her assistant, Sarah wyatt Swanson; and Candace McNulty, copyeditor. And finally, I would like to acknowledge the help of my patient and loving wife Joyce. for the past thirty-five years I have benefited from her uncompromising belief that one must always finish the things that one starts and that the ideas that are buzzing around chaotically in one’s brain must be organized and communicated as clearly and succinctly as possible. She has worked in partnership with me in every way and in all my ventures, and there is no way that I can adequately thank her. Pasadena, California July 2010 ACK...