Klarinet Archive - Posting 000649.txt from 2004/08

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Period Performance in Wagner?
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 13:31:16 -0400


Re. period-style performances of Wagner, David Dow wrote,
> violins with cat-gut strings

and Tony Pay wrote,
>>Yes.

(Yipes, I hope Shadow Cat didn't read that!) Kevin (my violin-playing
husband) says that modern and period gut strings have always been made of
sheep gut, not cat gut. According to our friend the violin repairman,
nobody can quite figure out where that cat gut myth got started, though
it's been following fiddlers around for more than two hundred years!

Lelia Loban
http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/LeliaLoban
[I haven't agreed to the new Terms and Conditions, and can't get into my
own site as a result, but Sibelius still hasn't removed my scores or web
page.]

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 20:16:06 -0300
To: <klarinet@-----.org>
From: "Shadow Cat" <666@-----.org>
Subject: Re: [kl] Period Performance in Wagner?
Message-ID: <4paws20claws-manyteeth666dead-mouse>

I'm making my stupid pet human type this. (Of course I read it, you
ninny.) She thinks she fell asleep at the computer again, while in reality
I control her big clumsy fingers, typing away.

Cat gut indeed! -- exactly what I'd expect a screech-stick player to say!
-- although Kevin certainly makes my guts hurt when he sight-reads. Maybe
that's where this pernicious lie got started: cats listening to horrible
fiddles and howling in pain as our poor little guts twisted in knots.
(That "Hey, diddle diddle" story is a fat steaming lie, too. Cats never
play fiddles. I don't know if cows jump over the moon or not, and I don't
care, either, as long as they don't jump in here.)

As far as I'm concerned, both the humans should quit their instruments
right now and take up watching TV all the time instead, so I can sit on
their laps all day; but if they have to play these nasty noises, the least
they could do is go out back and practice in their new, huge, ugly, 2-story
shed that they pretentiously refer to as "the studio." (Let's just call it
"the dump," why don't we.) Maybe at least Lelia will repair screech-sticks
out there now, instead of polluting the house with them. Of course, out
there, they might breed unchecked. In the house, maybe at least I have
*some* deterrent effect.They found an ant nest in the old shed. I'll bet
they end up with a screech-stick nest in the new one.

Ssssst!
Shadow Cat

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