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"Date sent: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 02:36:17 +0200 (EET)
From: Arto Wikla
To: lute@cs.dartmouth.edu
Subject: Re: who are lutenetters?
Hi dear lutenetters
I decided not to join this subject, but here I am... ;-)
I am 46 years old (huh! how middle aged...:), divorced 10 yeas
ago. I
work at the Department of Computer Science at the University of
Helsinki, Finland, as an assistant professor (lecturer, senior
lecturer, ... these names differ from country to country). I've been
teaching programming several years, and actually I do like teaching
university students, even if I am not especially interested in
computers... Working in a company wouldn't be my way?
Music is not a hobby to me; it is much more, actually it is much more important to me than computer science. But mostly university gives me my living. I do some lute gigs every now and then. And music generally - not only lute music or early music - is in the center of my living.
I started classical guitar about 1973. And in 1982 (or 3?) was the year I count my lute playing started - I cut my guitar nails. The reason was same as many have had: the lute repertoire was so much more interesting than guitar has.
My lute teacher was Leif Karlson, who was a co-student of Konrad Junghanel in the lute class of Michael Shaeffer in Cologne. Leif was a very good and knowledgeable teacher!
Then in 80's and 90's I've taken part to several early music courses: Trondheim (2 times, Jakob Lindberg), Urbino (2 times, Yasunori Imamura, Andrea Damiani), Innsbruck (Nigel North), Sardegna (Yasunori Imamura), Bremen (2 times, Stephen Stubbs, Paul O'Dette), Nordmaling (Nordic Baroque Music Festival, 3 times, Jakob Lindberg), ...
I started my lute playing with the 16th century music. Then continuo became important - the start was really hard, but really worth of it. As a matter of fact my "career" in the lute list started by writing a small continuo school to the list (1994?). That "school" can still be found in my music pages (see below).
Nowadays nearest to my heart is accompanying a good singer singing early Italian baroque monody. And Monteverdi is clearly my "home God", the "best composer". (I know, in reality there is no such thing... :)
I like to play 16th century composers Spinaccino, da Milano, ..., there are so many of them, ..., the songs of Dowland are gems, ...
17th century: Kapsperger, Piccinini(s), Castaldi, de Visee, ..., and then of course those great vocal composers: Monteverdi, Caccini, d'India, ...
I have a 6 course lute, a 10 course lute, an archlute, and a theorbo by Stephen Barber; a chitarrino by Eero Palviainen, and a 7 course soprano lute by Timo Kontio. Photographs of those instruments can be found in my music pages (see below).
I am not singing in public, but while numbering a bass line, you have to sing to yourself. Anyhow something, which I am very proud of, happened 2 years ago in Nordmaling, in Nordic Baroque Festival:
I was accompanying a soprano singing a Verdelot madrigal setting by Adrian Willaert. There was a strange pause in the soprano line. We had also the Verdelot version, where we could find, what was happening there: the lower voices were answering to the top line: "et i noi pastori", "and we shepherds". We decided the I'll sing that text! Then we went to Emma Kirkby's lesson, and I sang my 4 words. After our performance Emma told me that I have a beautiful voice! You can guess how jealous the proper singers were... ;-) And how proud I was! :)
My early music pages are rather popular. You can find them in http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/~wikla/music.html
All the best
Arto
----------------------------------
Arto.Wikla@cs.helsinki.fi
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/~wikla/"
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