The Fundamentals of Lute Playing, Episode 35: Finding Community

[@traviscareylutes]

Hi Loudon, thanks for this! Your description of what's happened to the early music "scene" over the past 15 years or so is spot-on. I live in Vancouver, Canada, and playing opportunities have dried up a lot! However, in August we had a one day broken consort workshop at the Canadian Renaissance Music Summer School, which was facilitated by a local player, Evan Plommer, and led by Lucas Harris. Ray Nurse, a giant of early music as a player, maker and musicologist was in attendance too. It was a ton of fun, there were gamba and recorder players, and singers, and we put on a mini-concert at the end of the day. The best thing about it was that it was a new thing, and I think forged the kinds of connections that have not been made around here in years. There is life in the old beast! There are new players coming up! (And by the way, the LSA Lute Rental Program has been helping a lot in that area, so congratulations on that.) Cheers!

[@laudonschuett3019]

Hi Travis! First of all, I'm a big fan of your instruments, always love playing them when I get the chance : ) I'm sorry we didn't get to meet at Lute Fest this year. I stayed home for a family medical reason. Hopefully, in the future. I'm really glad to hear that there are good things going on in Vancouver. One of my former students just did a summer program with Lucas and loved it so I am sure it was fantastic. I'm a big fan of the consort and broken consort repertoire. I'm hoping that we are just living through a period of change and that the community will come out stronger in the end, maybe with more local level investment in early music. Anyways, thank you for your note and looking forward to your next workshop video. Cheers from Nashville, Laudon

[@MrDyne01]

What a wonderful lesson! Thank you.

[@laudonschuett3019]

@@MrDyne01 thank you : )

[@vanessagreen3986]

I have noticed that lute seems to be something guitarists pick up as adults. I have never met a single person who has played lute as a child (then again, I’m in the south.) So that’s a difficult thing when it comes to community. Children have groups of adults rallying around the funding of their musical communities (and even then, sports rule in our culture.) so not only is the adult supporting their own learning of the lute financially, there is little support around it. Combine that with lack of university programs (I think we are learning we cannot rely on universities to promote beauty; it is more utilitarian and when they lose a teacher who has typically devoted their existence to the success of an instrument department, the university cannot fill the shoes of whoever that wonderful teacher was and typically administrators don’t “get it.” To summarize this ridiculously long comment, children are missing from luting community; our culture and the adults in it would probably support children learning more than other adults but that is how the opportunity would be created for adults.

[@laudonschuett3019]

@@vanessagreen3986 absolutely! I know there are some child lute programs in Europe but definitely not a thing here. Smaller and cheaper instruments would definitely help : )

[@vanessagreen3986]

@@laudonschuett3019there’s this program in KY that inmates build mountain dulcimers that get used for educational programs. Now I know a lite is structurally way more complicated than a mountain dulcimer. It would be cool to see what instruments they are using with the children in Europe.

[@miqbri]

The lute society in my country is a bit inactive, I have joined the original / UK one a week or two ago just to support them and with a benefit of getting access to more music than I could ever dream of playing (although I am eyeing Marco Dall'Aquila publication but that is far in the future for my playing). I think in general it seems like there are many groups on Facebook, which I have not used in the past 15 years but I have started joining them and checking them out recently. I would love to attend early music recitals or concerts, but I have yet to seen any organized in my city. Maybe there are few a year, I'll keep my eyes open. :)

[@laudonschuett3019]

@@miqbri believe it or not, it is the same problem in many parts of the United States. If you live in NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc. there are tons of things going on but if you live somewhere else it can be very isolating. It definitely helps to be open to making friends with singers and bowed string players : )

[@miqbri]

@@laudonschuett3019 I mean, I believe it. US the pretty spread out, Nashville is half the size of Prague.. :) so yeah, must be even harder there

[@laudonschuett3019]

@@miqbri I will do some looking around Prague because I feel like there should be a lot more there. I will let you know if I find anything : )

[@miqbri]

@@laudonschuett3019 Thank you :) I don't think you'll be more successful than me searching in Czech but maybe you can 'smell' the early music. I've found a performance of "Czech lute" but that's a name of a baroque piece, I'm not sure there is even a lute part. Maybe Jan Čižmář plays some theorbo in it :D

[@laudonschuett3019]

@@miqbri I will do it the American way…yell loudly in English until someone helps me 😂 I will ask around on FB : )