Elizabeth Pallett Transcript
Elizabeth Pallett:
It's a miracle to me that I can have these people in far off lands and they've got the same passion, the same excitement about this lovely instrument that you really have to, it's like a miniature portrait, you have to look at it closely, notice it, to see the wonder of it, got the shared interest of this love of the past, the sound it makes. The real soul, sort of emotion that it is so fragile, it is so delicate that it feels like you are weaving the most delicate web, this delicate spell and anything can break it. There's nowhere to hide when you play the lute.
Leah Roseman:
Elizabeth Pallett is a wonderful British lute player. Her love of Renaissance music and history is infectious, and she's generously provided this episode with several of her beautifully produced YouTube videos. Her channel, luteweb, is linked in the description as well as her duo Amarylli with Soprano Hannah Grove. We talk about the history of the evolution of plucked instruments in Europe and many fascinating historical figures, including Dowland and Shakespeare. Liz plays various lutes and plucked instruments and teaches at the Birmingham Conservatoire, as well as online with students worldwide. Like all my episodes, you can listen to this on your favorite podcast player, watch the YouTube on my channel and read the transcript. Everything is linked on my website, leahroseman.com. I've also included detailed timestamps.
Hi Liz. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Hi, Leah. Welcome to luteweb corner.
Leah Roseman:
I've been featuring a lot of plucked instruments on the series this season, and I so much wanted to have a lute player, and I'm delighted that you agreed to participate in this project.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Oh, it's an absolute pleasure, absolute pleasure to be talking to you, and it's a privilege, so thank you for asking me.
Leah Roseman:
The lute is such an interesting instrument because it fell out of favor. It was so incredibly popular and so important in the Renaissance and a little bit in the Baroque. So it'd be interesting to dive into that. But before we get into that history, in terms of your personal history, did you start on the guitar or did you dive right into the lute?
Elizabeth Pallett:
No, I didn't, because obviously it is very, very specialized to be a lute player in 2023. It's quite ridiculous when you think about it. But yes, I started as a classical guitar player. And at an early age, I think my parents realized that music was just in me, and they were amazing, really, because my father is a farm manager. I've got one brother, my mother, well, a farmer's wife, but also she's very artistic. She's a ballet dancer. And so I think they recognize that musicality and living on this lonely farm in isolation, they tried to find some sort of outlet. And of course it was the guitar to start with because it was the most accessible. And I think the upbringing had quite a big influence, because when you're on a farm, you have to find things to do.
And one of them was to listen to records, and it was in the days where you could hire records from the library. And one of them was a record of Julian Bream playing John Dowland. I was very young at the time. I was 10 and I was smitten by it. And that was that, I had to play that repertoire on the proper instrument. And my parents supported me and found a lute maker in Norwich. And in fact, my first lute is behind me here. It's the first lute I ever played by David Van Edwards. Very special because all the instruments are very special. And then it just went from there, really. And I don't think there's many parents that would support such an unusual career path, but mine did. They probably didn't realize they didn't have much choice.
Leah Roseman:
So Julian Bream, he was a classical guitarist who one of the most important people for bringing the lute into the modern times.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Certainly to a wider audience. And obviously that was from his amazing career as a classical guitarist. And I think once you start playing that repertoire, this very special repertoire from the Renaissance, early Renaissance, early Baroque, you end up getting a little bit of a bug for it in the context and the composers. And it's that feeling of curiosity. And, yes, so I think he was incredible in terms of just making the instrument its repertoire available. He did it, I was reading a little bit about his thoughts on this, and he was saying that there were very few teachers at the time, and he applied his own knowledge, which was guitar based to the lute. You couldn't really get away with that. Now there's been so much historical research on how to play the instrument and indeed the construction of the instruments that it's changed quite a lot from Julian Breams time. There are a few pictures of him playing these guitar-like lutes. But yes, just getting it out there I think he was one of the pioneers for that and bringing the repertoire back to our ears. So very influential.
Leah Roseman:
Now in terms of sharing music in this episode, we're going to be editing in some beautiful videos that you've made, but I'm wondering, could you just pick up that first lute just to show it to us visually for those watching the video and describe it?
Elizabeth Pallett:
Sure, sure. Okay. So this is your, very out of tune incidentally, this is an eight course. This is the sort of lute that most people would start on. It's an eight course instrument. And when I say that the courses, there are two strings for every plucked note as it were, apart from the top string, which is called a chanterelle. It's bell-like to help bring out that melody, the treble tune. And so in all, I have 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14. I have to count 15 strings to tune before a concert. Yes. So eight course is the standard when people get in touch with me saying, "What lute shall I get I'd like to learn?" I generally recommend seven or eight course, but there are a whole raft of instruments that you could consider playing and that comes in with whatever historical repertoire you want to play.
If you wanted to play the early repertoire, I'd recommend a six course lute. But as you can see, just from basic visual look of the lute, it's got the lovely soundboard with the carved rose. The frets are gut frets, so they're movable. So you can sort of do fine-tuning. And then we have the peg box, which is back at a right angle and this amazing round belly that is ribbed and could be double ribbed. And there are plenty of lutes in the VNA that survived, although there are very few surviving that look like this. The lutes in the VNA survived because a lot of them have ivory or bone marquetery on them. So it helped them to stabilize. But as you can imagine, the wood would only last so many centuries.
So what few surviving instruments there are very, very important reference for lutes. But yes, so this is particular instrument, eight course lute, would've been played round about 1590 onwards, particularly in England, in Europe. Before then we again, we're talking about seven course, six course, medieval lute, and going way back now and then further on you get the 10 course lutes, the Barque lutes, the theorbos, which the extended neck lutes, which I also play, but I wouldn't be able to get it in the screen because it's about six foot long. So there's lots of different instruments. When you say you're a lute player, it could be a lute player of all sorts of instruments, different tuning systems. It's complex, very complex.
Leah Roseman:
This first piece is a little Fantasia by Francesco Da Milano from his Libro Terzo 1562. This was recorded in Great Malvern Priory. You can download different tablatures of this piece and a practice track on Liz's Ko-fi page also linked in the description.(music)
So in terms of the difference between the oud, the grandfather of the lute, the frets are the biggest difference. And then the music evolved because it became harmonic and chordal and then many different voices. So maybe you could talk to that because it was such a huge evolution in the way the lute was played.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes. As far as I understand it, the idea of that this Moorish move up through the Iberian Peninsula brought the oud into Europe. And with that, the musicians and these musicians weren't just players of the oud, they were singers, they were poets, masters of literature, passing on this incredible culture. And because we had this meeting of two, as I understand it, two cultures. We had the Islamic and the Christian cultures, and we know it now as the Spanish crusades, you had this amazing fusion that happened. We know about the oud at this time because there are little pockets of information. And one of the big key pieces of information that we have, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which is an amazing codex from 1220, is compiled in over a long period of time, 1220 to 1280, and it was assembled or commissioned by King Alfonso EL Sabio, who was a Christian King, but really admired this Moorish tradition, the musicians that had brought in this instrument.
And the reason I bring reference to this codex, is because in it has some of the references to the music that they played, single line melody, although we don't quite know exactly what instrumentation. It has reference to the text that was sung, the text is really important at this time, and is almost a root to everything because it developed this tradition called the Ziryab singer, where you would have, as I mentioned, masters singers and oud players who would be singing to a narrative and accompanying themselves. And so this book contains these poems and the music, but most importantly, it contains these beautiful paintings, miniatures of musicians and the musicians playing the oud or the gittern. Some are in Christian costumes, some are in Moorish costume. And you see this amazing rich culture eliding and appreciating each other in a way.
And I think in a way, it is an incredible historical snapshot, this beautiful manuscript. And it's a springboard from which we can use this idea of the oud. And when we look at the pictures, we see the beautiful instruments. It's many roses, it's very thin neck, it no frets, but we see there's the Ziryab singers in their typical hierarchical dress, and we also see them playing with a plectrum. So this is one of the crucial things. So the plectrum, obviously, you can catch other strings, but it's mainly single line melody being utilized here.
Leah Roseman:
So if I could just stop for a minute. So for those people who can't see the video, the plectrum you just picked up is like an oud plectrum, it's long.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
And they used to use a feather. And do you have that because you're playing medieval music or you just have it for the purposes of this?
Elizabeth Pallett:
No, I play gittern. So I used to have an oud, but instruments come and go. But I play the gittern a lot, so I do quite a bit of medieval music and I playing pieces, building up pieces from the Cantigas de Santa Maria codex's is a great thing to do. The melodies are so wonderful. So yeah, I use this a plastic plectrum, oud plectrum, very soft, not familiar to most people, because you usually get this little triangular finger picks that most people use for guitar. But this is a fascinating little thing, and if you look at iconographical evidence, you'll see that they hold it in such a way that you can manipulate and bend the plectrum. You can change the tone, the note with that. So you can get very soft sound. You can get very harsh sounds, warm sounds, all sorts of things. It's very expressive, which you can't necessarily do with a triangular pick. So jolly useful. But yes, they would've used either a feather or it would've been bone, or some sort of ivory. And we know that the plectrums were long, because of the evidence.
Leah Roseman:
There's a little tangent I'd like to go into though, just really, what the way my brain works, you use the word elided, the elision of these cultures, which is not a word people hear very often, and it's a word I heard, I believe it was from my Baroque violin teacher that when a phrase sometimes ends, it's also a new beginning. That's like a musical thing. And have you heard that term used in music, an elision?
Elizabeth Pallett:
An elision, yes. I just think these things overlap so much, and that we know that when the crusades came along, obviously there was a lot going on, but the musicians remained and they continued this tradition of the Ziryab singer, of the oud player, which proliferated not only throughout Spain, but it came up southern Italy. And then the same tradition of the Ziryab singer evolved into something else. There's the Leonardo Giustiniani was a well known Venetian statesman, but he was also known as a poet of the amorous love song. And what was he doing? He was playing his lute and singing all these narrative songs, and this is all we have as evidence of what they were doing.
And so we have this new strand, and there are residues of this Arabic, the culture that the rhythms, the modality of it, and it echoes throughout the centuries. So we think of you first being introduced into Europe, roundabout, I don't know, could even be roundabout seven hundreds ad all the way up to the 13th century. The lute was still around. It's a long time for it to have this massive influence. And so the quality of the music had that too. And when you pick up a piece of Dalza, there's a couple of Dalza videos that I've put out there. You can hear this modality, semi improvisatory, this almost quill-like playing compositionally in the piece itself.
Leah Roseman:
This next piece is Calata Ala Spagnola by Joan Ambrosio Dalza written around 1503 and recorded by Elizabeth Pallett in September 2020 in Great Malvern priory. (music)
And could we talk about a gittern, because that's not a familiar instrument too.
Elizabeth Pallett:
No, I've got a gittern. Can I get it?
Leah Roseman:
Please.
Elizabeth Pallett:
So this is a gittern.
Leah Roseman:
Oh, beautiful.
Elizabeth Pallett:
And if anybody is interested and they want to just check out the Cantigas de Santa Maria, you'll see instruments exactly like this painted in the manuscript, and the characters that are playing them are just adorable, they're pointy shoes. But yes, and so this is double coursed instruments. It's quite basic. This happens to be DG.
So it's absolutely perfect for playing treble lines, for playing divisions, for accompanying the voice, for playing with other instruments. And the gittern is one piece of wood at the back that makes it very special, and it has this sickle neck. But you can see the influences from the Moors with the roses. You can see how it evolved. And this instrument itself was highly regarded for 12th, 13th, 14th century. The gittern was the instrument to play, but it's a bit like piecing a puzzle together that's not got all its pieces. So you have to fill in the gaps and work out what they would've played on this instrument and how they would've played it. So I think that, again, a mix of single line melodies within a group, with the voice, using the lower strings as drones. And you find you've got quite a versatile little instrument. And most of the players depicted are played standing up, and they play it standing up.
Leah Roseman:
So Liz, some people can't see. Also, if we could just describe, it's a lot smaller than the lute, and the bowl is smaller, but I'm curious about the construction, because a lute similar to the oud uses these ribs where these individual pieces of wood are steam bent. But how has this one piece of curved wood shaped?
Elizabeth Pallett:
It's literally been carved. It's very beautiful. It's literally carved out of one piece of wood, the whole thing, in fact, all the way up to the pegbox. And it's quite strange to play, because it feels, the whole thing vibrates, which you don't get that when you're playing a lute or a larger instrument, because the neck is separate. But the whole of this vibrates, which gives it quite an unusual, very vibrant, very loud sound as well. But you can see again the influences of the older instrument, the oud, and of course the use of plectrum. There's a beautiful picture in the Cantigas de Santa Maria of one, one gittern player playing, and the other one tuning up. So it's really lovely.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I'm an independent podcaster who does all the many jobs required to produce the series, and there are a lot of costs I bear as well. Please consider either buying me a virtual coffee as a tip, or becoming a monthly supporter, starting at $3 Canadian, which is close to $2 US or two euros, and getting access to unique perks. The link is in the description. Now, back to the episode.
I was told by a teacher a long time ago that the Preludio evolved in Baroque times out of the lute players need to be tuning up, so it was improvisatory. Is that something you've heard or is that true?
Elizabeth Pallett:
Oh, yes. No, it is very, very much true. As a lute player, even a modern lute player, there's lots of tuning out. So the only real evidence we have is from the very early Cinquecento books by composers such as Spinacino, Dalza, Bossinensis, these are all very early Italian lute composers. And they have pieces in them called tastar de corde, which literally means the testing of the strings. And they start off very just cordal, maybe fifths, maybe adding the odd third. And it literally is a way of just testing your tuning system, doing a little run. They feel very improvisatory.
I think the evidence that we have just proves that because you can imagine just sitting down strumming a few chords. It's just that written down, and they're very, very beautiful. So it's a way for the lute player to test the strings. And then you usually get a ricercar dietro, which literally means the fantasy afterwards, which is a similar style, but it's more formal. I think another function of the tastar de corde was to get your listener sort of in the right frame of mind and get, sort of settle the brain and adjust the ears to the sound world that you are now going to immerse yourself in. So I think that's excellent.
Leah Roseman:
In terms of the context of the music, it often would've been around a feast or a meal time. It's not like they had concert halls.
Elizabeth Pallett:
No. I think there was a lot of, an awful lot of music making, live music making going on, more so than we have now. So yes, it was rowdy, it was noisy. It was probably, some of it was actually quite rough in attitude, as you can imagine, all done orally. So everybody would've, they would've called a tune and everybody would've known it and joined in. There's a lot of Basse dances. So if you know your Basse dance form, you would've just played that. Yes, so very, very social aspect of it. But there was also the art song, which is the one that tended to get written down. The more sort of social side I think is now lost. And we've got to piece it together from testimonials and narratives that we have. But there is one sort of character in history called Pietrobono dal Chitarino, who was working in the court of Ferrara and he's kind of like a linchpin between this idea of the oud influence and the Spanish Crusades and the idea of this, the Ziryab singer and the Justinian singers. He was this sort of linchpin but sort of fills in a few gaps because there's a bit more evidence about him. He was a fantastic player, traveled around, became highly renowned, but also an improviser.
And we know this, I've actually got a really nice testimonial by a musician singer at the time. It's really good evidence as to what they were playing, how they were playing it, and in what sort of situations. It's part of a collection of poems that was written in 1473. And the musician who's written this piece is called Aurelio Brandolini and it's just a lovely eyewitness account of this amazing lute player called Pietrobono. He says, "Come then observe any of you who are afire with the love of the muses set before your eyes, each of these things. Pay close attention to his left hand runs along the entire Kithara of his hand. His hand swiftly travels along the tuneful strings. You will marvel at how all his fingers fly simultaneously, how one hand is in so many places at once. Now it dashes to the very top of the instrument, and now it runs to the very bottom.You could swear there could hardly be just one hand on one lyre, but a thousand hands flying, a thousand lyres sounding. Attend closely how he strikes the string with his ivory plectrum. See with what art he moves the plectrum. With what art he moves the string." And it goes on. And what's really interesting here is that the lute is referred to as a lyre, which is a really important point here, because the lute has this sort of mythical status as well as a physical one, which is the oud, it's origins of the oud, history of the oud and the lute, but also a mythical one, where the lute is basically a manifold of the lyre, which was this connection with the Greek antiquity, which is very much what the Italian philosophy was searching for, particularly with the rise of humanism as it sort of takes hold in Italy, 14th, 15th century. This idea of the lute being the lyre and thus we're talking about the muses Apollo, Orpheus, Mercury, and every composer aspiring to these incredible gods that are able to tame wild beasts with their musical ability. So that's why you hear composers being akin to the great Orpheus, or even sort of jumping a little bit from Pietrobono but even to Francesco da Milano, where he's labeled as Il Divino, the divine one because of his amazing playing akin to Orpheus. So yes, yeah.
Leah Roseman:
I really enjoyed that poem. I'm curious, have you studied Italian and Spanish to read original sources?
Elizabeth Pallett:
I've studied Italian and I continue, I'm one of these people that continues to study because there's so much I want to study. So yes, I have studied Italian and I'm able to pick out rough translations. I always rely on people with a lot more experience in reading old Italian. But it's really, really useful to have the language behind everything because yeah, obviously just when you're accompanying as a continuo player, you understand the text that you're trying to help.
Leah Roseman:
Now was the gittern the forebear of the baroque guitar, or did they just diverge?
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yeah, this again, it's very, very confusing how one evolved out of the other. To say that the gittern evolved, the baroque guitar evolved out of the gittern, I'm not sure it did, to be honest. And the problem is we have generic names. So you've got many names for one instrument, so it's really hard to pin the actual facts down. So for example, the little Renaissance guitar was often called a gittern or a guitarron. And so then you get the confusion of sources. Then you have the vihuela which comes in, which looks like a guitar, but actually is more like a lute.
And I just think they all sort of convert, as I said, all sort of these rich strands of all these instruments evolving. So I would say that yes, that the Renaissance guitar is very much paired up with the vihuela. And then the vihuela would've moved, definitely moved the direction into the Renaissance guitar, sorry, the baroque guitar. But for the lute, no, I'm not convinced really, because I think the lute took, kept its shape, the oud shape. It kept the ribbed back. The medieval lutes have two roses instead of the many roses that you see on the ouds. And I think there was actually a turning point, which I would say is the 1500s where the lutes did change dramatically from a period of having sort of generic names and no historical evidence of what was played or how it was played, other than snippets of characters like Pietrobono dal Chitarino or sort of testimonials like Aurelio Brandolini. We then get evidence after 1500s there's sort of like thousands of pieces of lute music.
The construction of it changes, and most importantly, the use of the plectrum is put aside for the use of the thumb finger. So then we get into this art of polyphonic writing, and I think the manuscripts of the early Italian Cinquecento are really important because they're sort of a real insight into this composed, improvisatory feel. And you can hear the single line melody tradition coming out that probably would've been improvised. And then it sort of develops into this more composed two-part idea. And they called that contrappunto all mente, literally means counterpoint of the minds, where it's not improvised, but it's not solely composed either. And luckily it's been written down. And that's thanks to Ottaviano Petrucci. I'm sure you've heard of Petrucci publications and the invention of movable type, because all lute music generally has come down to is in tablature form, which that's another big subject.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I'm wondering if we'll be able to share images of some of the beautiful tablature.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Absolutely. That won't be a problem. I mean, I'm actually doing a video at the moment on the Capirola Lutebook, which is a handwritten manuscript dated 1517. And it's absolutely beautiful because in the margins, it's got all this, it's got this amazing artwork of fauns and nymphs and wild animals. And it was deliberately composed that way by a student of Vincenzo Capirola called Vidale. And he writes in the preface that I've adorned this book, this beautiful book of music in lute tablature so that it survives the test of time. Because he is worried that because it's just, people won't understand the tablature, they'll just put the book aside and never look at the amazing music. And it's just stunning. And the music is stunning, and it's a real sort of gem for us lute players. And of course, with the modern technology now, it's all available online for you to look at, and it's terrific.
Leah Roseman:
This Ricercar Terzo by Vincenzo Capirola was written around 1517 and was recorded by Liz in May 2021 in Great Malvern Priory. You can see the beautifully decorated manuscript online. I'll include a link on my website in this episode's show notes.(music)
It's such a beautiful idea to adorn one piece of art with another piece of art, to absolutely further elevate it and draw the importance. I was thinking we should have some guitar music, that I know you've produced some beautiful videos, but could you pick up your guitar and just show us?
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes, yes, of course. This is the baroque guitar. This is, as you can see, it's quite small. And in fact, if you look at paintings of the vihuela, the vihuela is almost wider, bigger than this instrument. This is the closest we're getting to our modern classical guitars as we know it now. The tuning system is similar. We still have the double courses. So we've got the Chanterelle, which is the top single strong, and then we've got double courses with octave stringing on the fourth course. But we have this beautiful sunken rose, which is made of parchment, and you have the ribbed back, so you can see the similarities to the lute. But no longer do we have the bent back peg box, but in the peg, the pegs extending. Still got frets for tuning. Yes, beautifully decorated. I mean, this particular instrument's quite plain. You can get highly decorated baroque guitars, and they're just stunning. And yeah, there's an amazing collection in Oxford, the Ashmolean Museum of these instruments.
Leah Roseman:
Just because some people can't see it, Liz, I mean, you're saying it's plain, but it's not. It's absolutely beautiful. It has this gorgeous carved rose, and then there's further decoration on the instrument.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yeah, a lot of them have decoration around the rose as well, similar to the inlay done on the bridge as well. But it's just, I have absolute respect for the makers of these instruments. They're just stunning the way they put these beautiful instruments together. The craftsmanship is just something else.
Leah Roseman:
This next piece, Jacaras by Gaspar Sanz on baroque guitar dates from 1674 and was recorded by Elizabeth Palette for her lute web channel in June 2022. (music)
So when you had started on classical guitar, before you played the lute, you presumably had long nails on your right hand?
Elizabeth Pallett:
I did, yes. Yes.
Leah Roseman:
And you no longer have that?
Elizabeth Pallett:
No, no. I mean, if I didn't have nails, I'd be really, really happy. Yes, they're filed down to the absolute quick. You want to have that real flesh on the string, on the gut strings. You feel really in touch with the sound, the tone, you can articulate and you've got, it just, what you want to express inside emotionally can then come out musically. Whereas with nails, I-
Elizabeth Pallett:
Whereas with nails, I feel there's a barrier. There's not to say there's some great players with nails, and also there's evidence that they use nails. Strangely enough, there's a bit of a hot contentious issue among lute players, "Shall we use nails, shall we not?" So there's still conflict going on, so I have to be careful what I say, but I'm a no-nails lute player.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes. When folks come and get in touch with me and they say, "I'm a guitarist. I want to play the lute." I do ask them with fear and trepidation, "Are you prepared to get rid of your nails and move over to the dark side?" Because it is a big decision-
Leah Roseman:
Interesting.
Elizabeth Pallett:
... to take.
Leah Roseman:
Let's talk about your teaching a little bit. Do you want to put that down first?
Elizabeth Pallett:
Sure, thanks.
Leah Roseman:
On your YouTube luteweb, you have these wonderful videos." You can play this".
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
Designed for guitarists mostly.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes. They're designed for folks who are... They don't necessarily have to be guitarists, but it's usually that quarter of people that get drawn to it. But also, there's a lot of players out there who are just taking up the lute because it's far more accessible than it ever used to be. There are more instruments available, and it's the good work of the Lute Society of America and Chris Goodwin here in the UK of The Lute Society that's just putting the music out there, making people realize that it's a lovely thing to do. I get a lot of players who have just literally bought a lute and want to learn to play it and want to go from there. There's some great players that just need a bit of guidance because sometimes there's almost too much stuff out there, and it's just knowing what to focus on and know how to do it correctly.
Because I guess there's a lot of material out there, and that comes with the internet, but there aren't that many teachers out there, whereas if you go on a YouTube channel for classical guitarists, there's a huge tidal wave of teachers and people that can explain technique, but very little for lute. It's mainly geared towards those sorts of people that have got over the initial stages of getting a lute and plucking the string but want to know, "How do I get the best sound? How do I understand the tablature?"
A little bit of background, I think it's important to put the piece into its context in order to be able to play it properly. The whole concept of these videos is to firstly, introduce a piece. Secondly, encourage my listeners to think, "Oh, I could have a go at this too." And then thirdly, you can download the edition that I've made with just little extra handy, helpful hints that help you unpack the tablature, because it's difficult with tablature because everything's hidden in the code. If you had a normal piece of music, you'd be able to see if the melody went up or went down. You could be able to see what the rhythm is. You'd even be able to see what the time signature is. But with tablature, you can't do that.
There's lots of pondering and decision-making, and I think sometimes a lot of the detail can easily be missed, especially if you're new to an instrument, starting out, and that could lead to frustrations. "I want it to sound nice. It's not sounding nice". There's just helpful hints as we go along and an exploration of composers and manuscripts. I just am obsessed with Francesco da Milano, so I'll probably be doing more Francesco da Milano videos. Also, as I mentioned earlier, the Vincenzo Capirola Lute Book. I think that's another one that's, "Why not introduce people to this wonderful book full of beautiful tunes?" Yes, it's just a nice, gentle way of introducing the instrument, its technique, and the repertoire to people.
Leah Roseman:
The lute has one of the largest repertoires of any solo instrument, from what I understand.
Elizabeth Pallett:
It's huge. Yes, it is vast, partly because the span of its popularity is huge, actually.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Elizabeth Pallett:
We've got all the stuff that's unwritten, but then from the 1500s onwards, you have 300 years of gorgeous music all the way up to Weiss. Then, of course, we get into the realms of Bach, who loved the lute and owned lutes himself but didn't actually intend his pieces - Although you get the Bach lute suites, they didn't... Of course, you can play them on lutes, they're fiendishly difficult, but mainly they were played on the lautenwerck, which is the hybrid harpsichord lute-sounding keyboard.
Leah Roseman:
Oh, I didn't know about that.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Oh, yes. When you get the Bach lute suites, these amazing pieces generally were played on this incredible keyboard, which he had designed gut frets with special plucking mechanism because the lute, at this time, he absolutely adored the music of Leopold Weiss. They met, and he was so inspired by this music. But the lute has its limitations. If you take it out of certain keys, it becomes impossible to play. Of course, Bach was all about extremes and polyphony, and there's only so much... Leopold Weiss obviously could do lots, and did lots, but we're on the outer fringes of what the lute was capable of.
Leah Roseman:
I was just wondering, do you think it fell out of favor partly because of the music? Of course, it got changed the way it was written, but ensembles got bigger and louder, and you wouldn't have even heard a lute.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Possibly. I think one of the things that happened was the way the music developed. I think the lute music was at the forefront of development in terms of its polyphony, its ornamentation, it's greater start. Almost the harpsichord repertoire was not quite catching up with it. Just as composers developed their own skills, they took over. I think this idea of keys and modality expanded the ever-pushing of the boundaries in music through history, left the lute behind, basically. Yes, there's that aspect of the development of instruments and stringing. Metal strings meant a louder sound. That might have had something to do with it as well. But I think it's just this progression towards new things, new ideas as we move, juggernaut our way through history. I just think the lute is not an instrument that could have kept up terribly easily, especially not with the baroque lutes, because the D minor tuning, although beautiful, is quite inhibiting and very specialized.
Leah Roseman:
This instrument that Bach developed, did other people use it? Was it particular to him, this hybrid?
Elizabeth Pallett:
It was very particular to him, actually.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Certainly, I know he had one instrument, the lautenwerck, maybe two. He also had a couple of lutes. We know this because of his will. He was, but probably the technique of the lute could not match what he had in his head. Now we have guitarists who have to scale the transcriptions for their own instruments, which, again, it can be done. Of course, it can be done. We always think of the lute suites being played on the lute, but the actual fact is they were played on a keyboard, most likely played on a keyboard in the latter. There's no tablature, no surviving tablature. It's all handwritten, some in Anna Magdalena Bach lute autobiography book. Treble and bass, so it's very keyboard-like. But people do transcribe it. I'd just like to point that out, and they do play it on the lute.
Leah Roseman:
In terms of composers, do you think Anonymous was often a woman?
Elizabeth Pallett:
Ooh, that's exciting. That's a very exciting question. Yes, there are lots of female lute players, and we don't know very much about them. There are a few female composers, such as Barbara Strathdee, that we know of who are really strong women who got themselves into the point of the pyramid by hook or by crook. Francesca Caccini is another one. Not so many lute plays, but in terms of domestic life, females played the lute. Certainly, I've read, socially, if you were in an upper-class family here in England, your daughters would've been schooled in lute playing. It was part of being an educated, all-rounded person.
There's lots of evidence of female lute players in the manuscripts as well. You have the Margaret Board book, you have the Jane Pickering Lute Book, and these were young ladies, as part of their education, would be having lessons with the masters. In fact, Margaret Board, we know she had lessons with John Dowland because he signed the manuscript. There's a little lesson going on, a harmony lesson, in his writing. The pieces in them are really sophisticated for really good players. It's thought of that girls played the lute, but they probably didn't do it publicly. They probably weren't going out to do it as a musician at court. They wouldn't have been allowed to do that, sadly. Then perhaps once they've married, they would be playing it less.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Elizabeth Pallett:
There's very little record. But in the higher educated circles, it was a necessity to be taught in the art of music, poetry, and dance. If you weren't, it was frowned upon.
Leah Roseman:
Now, you're always traveling in time every day as a Renaissance specialist. But as a teacher now, you travel because you're teaching people all over the world, so virtually.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes, I do. I love it. It's really fantastic. I love the way that I... It's a miracle to me that I can have these people in far off lands and they've got the same passion, the same excitement about this lovely instrument that you really have to... It's like a miniature portrait. You have to look at it closely, notice it to see the wonder of it. Once you just look at it for a little bit or just listen to it for a little bit, it's just beautiful. I love being able to introduce a beautiful piece to a student. They may be in Japan, or they may be in Canada, or maybe in New Zealand, who knows?
We've got the shared interest of this love, love of the past, the sound it makes, and the real soul emotion that it can... It's so fragile. It is so delicate that it feels like you are weaving the most delicate web. It's a delicate spell, and anything can break it. There's nowhere to hide when you play the lute, and when you're recording, it's even more precarious. There's just nothing you can allow to... Anything can distract, so you're trying to present these perfect golden strands, and I love sharing that with people. The repertoire, of course, speaks for itself. Dall'Aquila is one of my favorites at the moment. I just find it so deep and so profound. But again, you have to look closely, listen hard, and then you hear it. It's beautiful.
Leah Roseman:
This Recercar is probably by Marco Dall'Aquila, written around 1535 to 1540, and was recorded by Elizabeth Palette for her luteweb channel in May 2022.(music)
You're also teaching at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire,-
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes, correct.
Leah Roseman:
... where you studied as a student. It was one of the places you learned.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes, I did.
Leah Roseman:
It must be so interesting having gone back as a tutor, as a professor.
Elizabeth Pallett:
It's really exciting. I love... Yes, it is. And I got so much out of the conservatoire. I thought it was just an amazing experience for me. Again, I've always been a minority musician, I'm not mainstream, obviously. But to have that incredible support from the tutors, and it acted as a springboard for me, gave me confidence to go out into the world and into the profession as a lute player. So to be able to still be teaching there is a wonderful thing. I can carry that on and give something back because they gave a lot to me, so give something back to the institution, inspire guitarists, open this new world to them, that they don't know about. And they're often playing the repertoire, but very tiny bits of it. I say, "You could play this, or you can play this, or you can play this." And giving them the tools or almost the key to unlock those doors is terribly exciting.
I work with a lot of singers at the conservatoire as well. That's amazing too, because again, there's huge amounts of repertoire for the voice that's not necessarily touched upon, particularly if it's lute-based, that we can explore. We've done things like Henry VIII songbook, which is really exciting to bring that to life. All these amazing manuscripts that I know of, suddenly, you can breathe life into them with young people. I think that's very profound and moving to have that, to be able to do that for somebody. It's nice.
Leah Roseman:
Although you don't do it as much now, you have a lot of expertise and experience with playing figured bass with Baroque opera and so on.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes. I still do a lot of continuo as part of the Amarylli duo. Basically, we construct our own arrangements of pieces and formulate programs, so there's still a lot of continuo bass playing going on. Yes, I used to do a lot of early opera. Monteverdi's Poppea is one of my favorites, as is L'Orfeo. We did a tour of Jonathan Miller's L'Orfeo, so that went around places, Mexico and all sorts of lovely places, which was an incredible experience to be a part of. To be playing with a theorbo as part of that band. Yes, so the early opera is very exciting. To be a continuo player in a band, you feel like the linchpin, glued along with the harpsichord player, holding everything together. When everybody's in the same zone, as it were, it's like flying. Nothing else can compare. Incredible.
Leah Roseman:
Because it's improvisatory, not everyone listening will know what figured base is and what that means.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Basically, you have your bass line. The bass line is your guide, and then you are constructing material above that to support your singers, your trebles, or the instrumentalists above. You have a lot of personal musical decision-making to do, and how you're going to spread a chord, how you are going to highlight a certain word. The energy that you give to a chord can really bring out the rhetoric and vocal pieces. It's very individualistic. It's part of your character. You develop that as you gain experience of continuo playing. There's lots of decision-making and what you're playing. You can't replicate it. You can't write it down. If I were to play a little sequence and then you say, "We'll play it again." I probably couldn't because it's just the way it comes out. That side of it's really exciting. Playing the notes that aren't on the page, I love that. That gives me a lot of excitement.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Elizabeth Pallett:
I still do that. I still do that. Even if I'm playing Peter's tablatures, there's lots of notes in it that aren't on the page. I think that's how it should be. Because it was always that way. Always that way.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Literacy wasn't a huge part of everybody's lives, so they're always using their ears.
Leah Roseman:
You mentioned Amarylli, and we're going to share one of your videos with the soprano, Hannah Grove. I was reading about her, I was fascinated because she studied physics at Oxford. Another one of my guests studied physics at Oxford, the jazz singer Diane Nalini. Then another singer also had studied physics. I thought, "What's with these singers in physics? They're so smart."
Elizabeth Pallett:
Physics. They are smart. I don't know. I think it's probably the universe that you end up coming around to all of these. The sciences merge into the arts, and then the arts merge into the sciences. I'm sure it's something to do with that. Of course, if you were a philosopher in Renaissance, you'd be learning the arts, music, and sciences altogether. There would be nothing unusual about that. It's just now, we separate them.
Leah Roseman:
Very true. This is a beautiful duo, and you should just talk about your projects coming up.
Elizabeth Pallett:
We are two souls that have the same outlook. We love the repertoire. It's a strange thing when you've been playing music with somebody for so long in a way, their mind is open. When you're playing music together, you're thinking the same, and you know how somebody's going to react. You just have this incredible unity between you. That's how I feel with Hannah, that I know how she's going to express something and I know how to follow her. Likewise, she knows if I'm going to bring something out, she will replicate it, and it's very hard to articulate that in words, so we can only do it when we're playing together. So this joy of that experience has come together, and the product has been Amarylli, and the programs that we put together tend to be theme-based.
We've put a beautiful program together called "The Tales from Sherwood Forest", the ballads of Robin Hood, and all the stories that he got up to, which is really good fun. We've got another one called "John Dowland and His Solace", where we explore the works of Plato and humanism in Dowland's songs. Literally, two days ago, we did a concept called the "Delight of Solitariness", which explores this idea of solitude in the Renaissance, not as a negative thing but as a creative process. We explored that through Dowland and upwards, and this idea of heroic melancholy being a big feature of the Renaissance.
Leah Roseman:
With soprano Hannah Grove in her duo with Liz on their channel Amarylli, this is John Dowland's Weep Ye No More Fountains from Dowland's third book of songs, 1603, and was recorded at St. Leonard's Chapel in Malvern from April 2023.
Hannah Grove:
(Singing.)
Elizabeth Pallett:
We did rather a controversial program, which you probably wouldn't believe. But we have done a controversial program called Vere in Song Shakespeare's Music. And, this was born out of a lockdown obsession that I came across with this idea of the authorship of William Shakespeare. And the question that there has been over that, I don't know if you know anything about this, that William Shakespeare is indeed a pen name, or is argued to be a pen name. And that the author of these amazing plays that we have is indeed the Great Edward de Vere, 17th Earl.
So yes, we called it Vere in Song. So we researched all Vere's poetry to see if we could find links with his poetry in the Dowland songs, for example. Because a lot of the poetry, we don't know who wrote them. There's hardly any information to the origin of the poetry. A lot of it is anonymous. So, can't help thinking that Edward de Vere had some say in this. The Shakespeare had some say. So, we're trying to put across this idea that a lot of the Shakespeare's songs that we know are Vere songs. So, there's this tussle here that's going on between who is the real Shakespeare.
Leah Roseman:
I'm really ignorant about this. So I mean, Shakespeare had his theater company. He was an actor.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
And people knew him to be this... That it was a pen name.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes. Well, this whole argument has been raging, I think, for a couple of a hundred years or so, that the real Shakespeare behind the name is Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. And, we don't know why he wrote in anonymity, probably because there was some scandal. We're not quite sure. There's some new evidence coming to light that Edward de Vere is the true author to the plays. And, one of the most, I think, poignant pieces of evidence comes in a book by Henry Peacham called Minerva Britanna, where the front piece has a playwright behind a curtain, who is penning his name.
And, as you know, the Elizabethans love their clues and their riddles. There's lots of clues and riddles in this front panel. And, above, it's got a reference to Minerva Britanna. Minerva Britanna was a Pallas, I think that's right. Pallas who was the English goddess of the arts. And, she would shake her will by her spear. You see. So, we have an anagram of the name Will Shakespeare, which was always hyphened, being the true patron of the arts. And then, in this front cover, it points down to the playwright behind the curtain. And if you turn it upside down and you re-translate the Latin, which I'm not very good at Latin, there's an anagram of I am Edward de Vere.
Leah Roseman:
Oh wow.
Elizabeth Pallett:
And there's all sorts of things like... I think it's in the Complete Gentleman, again, by Henry Peacham, where he lists all the playwrights. And William Shakespeare is not on that list. But Edward de Vere is on the list. And there's a whole raft of videos out by Alexander War. And, he just goes into these explanations as to why Shakespeare is not who you think he is. And in fact, he set up a society called the de Vere Society, which we did a concert for and a little piece. And, he's got all these videos called Henry Peacham knew. And, John Dunn knew. Everybody knew basically.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So the actor that the Elizabethan audiences would've seen was somebody else, not Edward de Vere. He wasn't acting.
Elizabeth Pallett:
So Edward de Vere, no. Edward de Vere wrote the plays.
Leah Roseman:
Right. But, in my incredibly small knowledge of Shakespeare, I understood that he wrote plays, and then he had a company, and that he was acting. So there was somebody.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes. I think that's where it gets a little bit muddled. So, there probably was somebody that was called William Shakespeare.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Elizabeth Pallett:
But was an actor and that probably had shares in the company.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Elizabeth Pallett:
It's another hot, contentious issue. And, I was just really just intrigued by it all. Because it came as a bit of a bombshell. In schools we're taught, William Shakespeare came from Stratford and he wrote the plays surely. There's all this evidence, people have been writing books about it. But then, you think about it, the counter argument, well, his original manuscripts don't exist. They're published 20 years after his death or something. His children were illiterate. There's hardly any handwritten evidence of his writings. And how did he get the knowledge that he got to write these plays unless he had access to the key archives, the education, the knowledge of courts abroad, the political side, the knowledge of the law in order to draw all this amazing, stunning material together in these plays. I think, it's somebody highly educated from very high up in the court.
Leah Roseman:
Absolutely fascinating.
Elizabeth Pallett:
There's a film about it. You have to watch it.
Leah Roseman:
Yes.
Elizabeth Pallett:
It's quite a good film. It's called Anonymous. So, it's good fun. Yeah, I'm not sure how much of that is real. But they've tried to put the argument forward about the question mark over Shakespeare.
Leah Roseman:
So, John Dowland, he was very highly paid in the Danish court for a while, which I found fascinating. One of the most highly paid people. And, he wrote all this great lute music. But, mostly he's known for these sad songs.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
Can you speak to that?
Elizabeth Pallett:
Well, Dowland, goodness, he's a fascinating character. And, one that I wrestle with a great deal. And, as a lute player, obviously you get obsessed with Dowland and you can't help it. And, yes, he's known for being one of the highest (paid) lute players in Europe. I think it's 500 daler. He's just a fortune basically from King Christian IV, when he was appointed to the Danish court. I think it's around about 1598, I think, there's a period about eight years, six years he's at the court. And you think of him, yes, he's a successful lute player who publishes these books of songs, four books of songs. And then, there's Pilgrim's Solace and there's a Musical Banquet. And then, of course, there's all the lute solo repertoire, which actually, there's only one piece in his own hand. The rest has been handed down, as we mentioned earlier, through lessons or through an oral tradition. Some from professional players, but never by Dowland himself. And there's only a few pieces that are actually signed by him, authenticated by him. So he's still very much in this oral tradition.
So you think he must be really successful, right? But, he's not. And, I think, the end of his life is very sad. And, I think, from the very start, he gets off on the wrong foot. We know very little about his early life, where he came from. We know that he was born five years after Elizabeth comes to the throne. So there's this quite difficult political background with Catholicism, Protestantism. So, I can't imagine what that was like. Complete turmoil. And we don't know his background, so you don't know if it's a high ranking family or not. We're not sure. But, the first real point of evidence is, we know he goes to France as a servant of Henry Cobham who's an English diplomat.
Now, this is a key point in Dowland's life. Because again, it's like piecing pieces of the puzzle together. And there's lots of pieces missing. And that, one of the pieces we have is a petition that's drawn up by English merchants in 1583 of a situation where musicians in which Dowland is named are imprisoned for Catholic rhetoric, for... What's the word? It crimes against protestant Queen. There's talk of terrible conditions of whipping. And, there's a plea in the petition to get this young man out if there's any way you can relieve us from this situation. How he's released, we don't know. But he comes back to England.
But, it's a critical point, because he's got the stigma of a Catholic about him in a protestant world, where it's not a good idea to be a Catholic. So, whether he is or he isn't, or whether he is got caught up in a conspiracy, we don't know. So, there's all this controversy around him. Some people think he's a spy. There's all sort of other things going on. I don't think he's a spy. I don't think he's a Catholic. I don't think he's protestant. I think he's just a musician trying to do his thing really. But, problem with having an experience of being incarcerated as a Catholic, crimes against protestant Queen, his application to become a court musician after the death of the English lute player, John Johnson, is declined.
And, he goes into a little bit of a spiral after that. He gets completely knocked back. And, that's in 1594. And he goes abroad. That's when he travels across Europe. And, this is really lovely, because you can chart his travel depending on where his music remains in various manuscripts, which is really sweet. But we also know that he doesn't really get on very well. He's restless. He can't settle. He's getting into arguments. There's lots of letters of apology going on between courts as he rubs people up the wrong way. And his plan was to go to Rome. But, he ends up in Florence and is confronted again by Catholic exiles. And there's this incredible letter that he writes to Sir Robert Cecil, who's privy council to the King... To the Queen, sorry. And, this letter's dated 1595. So, it's not evidence that we're dealing with after the event. And, where he writes, "I'm not a Catholic. I've never conspired against the queen." And it's very emotional. He rages basically against these injustices.
And so then, he gets his first book of airs published, 1597. And, this is really successful. And it's got things like His Golden Locks, Now o now, and Can She Excuse, all those lute songs that everyone's familiar with. And, just after this, that's when he gets his appointment to the Danish court and life seems good. As far as we know, on paper, it looks fine. And he starts to become what we would think of as household name with the publications of his second book, third book, the Lachrimae, the Seven Tears, which is 1604. But, we know that in 1606 he's dismissed from the Danish court. So yet again, he has to leave places in a bit of a hurry. Having not been so successful, we know that he ran out of money and they cut his money supply off. Having been hailed as the greatest musician in that court, he was now just having to be thrown to one side.
It's very hard to say for sure what happened. Was it his personality? Was he a Catholic? Was he just bound up in politics at the time? Was he just really difficult to handle? But basically, there's witnesses that he just didn't do too well. And, I keep quoting Henry Peacham, because he's such an excellent reference for this time. And, again, from the book, Britanna Minerva, he writes a poem on Dowland. And, the book's beautiful. It's the one that I talked about indicating Edward de Vere. The book's beautiful, because it's got all these amazing pictures in above the poetry. And, the one for Dowland's poetry is a songbird on a dead bush with the rain coming down, and the fence broken, and the house is broken, and the wind howling. And, is it all right if I just read the second verse of it? Because I think it's really telling as to how Dowland's career ended.
And he says, "So since (old frend) thy yeares haue made thee white, And thou for others, hast consum'd thy spring. How few regard thee, whom thou didst delight, And farre, and neere, came once to heare thee sing: Ingratefull times, and worthles age of ours, That lets us pine, when it hath cropt our flowers."
So basically, it's saying that nobody wants to hear Dowland anymore. Your voice has gone into the past and your bloom has ended. Which I think is a really harsh thing to write. But we know he felt like that, because in his preface in a Pilgrim's Solace, he writes, and this is the only pieces of evidence we have, it's usually from Dowland's own writing, is that he's angry that he never got furtherment. He says that when he went abroad, he never meant to get embroiled in conspirators. And, he's not very happy with these musicians that are court at the moment. They don't know how to make divisions properly.
And, he is having a bit of a go. And he just sounds thoroughly unsatisfied with life. And, another example is 1613, he finally gets a place at court. King James is the first court. And, we know that Robert Johnson, who's the court lute player, he gets paid 45 pounds for his songs and music. And Dowland gets paid 2. So, the balance has really gone downwards.
Yes. So I think he has successes, but I don't think that they fulfilled him as much as he wanted. I think he always wanted that place at court under Elizabeth's reign. And once that didn't happen, his hopes were dashed. And so, I think the key moment was his youth experience in France, where he got tainted with that Catholic outlook. I mean, he denies ever hearing Catholic mass. But, we know that's not true. He's a very complex character. It'd take many hours to go into his core history.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Very interesting. So Liz, I'm curious if you could travel back to the Renaissance. Are there historical characters that you'd love to be able to spend three weeks with?
Elizabeth Pallett:
That's really interesting. I don't think I would want to spend time with Dowland actually. I love his music. And that's why he's still talked about today. The songs are just divine. His solo music for the lute, it's just astonishing. But actually, I don't think I would want to spend much time with him. I think he's probably quite a difficult character.
I would like to spend time with Edward de Vere, actually. I think he was really fascinating. I want to know why everything he wrote, he wasn't allowed to sign his name. I want to know how his mind managed to construct these amazing plays. Every reference to music in those plays is spot on. So he must have had a musical education. Yes. I would be quite interested to meet him. Yeah. And also, I love Dall'Aquila. That's another, Marco Dall'Aquila, character a 100 years earlier, obviously, 1520, who I'd like to meet, because I think he was on the fringes of somebody who could have been really important but didn't quite make it in terms of having his material written down. But what literally we have is stunning.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Well, yeah. But then, I feel I do meet these people all the time because I'm playing their music, so they're speaking to me through their compositions. And, that's enough actually.
Leah Roseman:
What's your practice routine like?
Elizabeth Pallett:
Ooh, that's an interesting one. I have an interesting life, because I have three children. And their age ranges at the moment are from 8 to 17. So, each child has intensities for their age range. So, my practice routine is not so much a routine, it's trying to fit it in, when I can, because they're just top of my priority list is them really to give them everything I can. But, they're so generous and they allow me to... Because obviously, it's very intense doing what I do. They know that, "Mommy's going to be practicing." They know where to find me playing my lute. Luckily, it's not a loud instrument, so I can play at all hours. And not so much a routine, it's just when can I fit it in into the corners of my life, so I can get everything done I needed. Which is hard. But, it's enjoyable. It's what it's all about. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So, to wrap up, if you could maybe just reflect on... I mean, you've spoken about this before in this episode about bringing this music to light, but there's such an incredible wealth of undiscovered music. Is that something that is important to you?
Elizabeth Pallett:
Absolutely. Absolutely, it is. And, I have this energy in me. There's so many manuscripts, and now they're all digitized, they're just at the tip of your fingers, it's very frustrating. Because, I want to just bring it to life. Of course, that takes time, many years. And I'm just not never going to be able to get through it all. But yes, it's just unbelievably exciting when you come across a piece that you know it's not been recorded before. And there might be a couple of people playing it out there, but how deeply have they unpacked the music? How deeply are they looking into what it's really trying to say? And just bringing that out of the tablature onto the instrument, and then contributing your own personality and thoughts to it, and having that fusion together, and being brought out to present. It takes a lot of time, but it's very, very exciting.
Yeah. That gives me a real buzz to do that. And, technology is just incredible, in terms of just having access to the material itself, because obviously, that's something you couldn't even do, what? 10 years ago. Hardly any of it was digitized. But it is now. But it's a long process. So, I just keep getting excited about the little bits that I'm able to do and present to people. But that brings in a new raft of, suddenly you're a camera woman, a sound engineer, and editor, which I never thought I'd be able to do, but learning about it.
Leah Roseman:
And have you considered taking the audio from some of these beautiful videos and just putting them out on Bandcamp, so people can buy?
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes, I have. One of the things I think that the lute is so visual actually, the instrument itself, I think, people really like to see you play. There's a lot of people that get in touch with me, and as we touched on technique. They really want to know how you're playing it, what you're doing, or what your hand position is. And there's a lot of detail taken in and people take a lot of detail on. So, they really like to see you play the instrument. But yes, I mean, one of the additional strands to my videos, you can play this that I'm going to add is actually a track that you can play along to. But yes, there is possibility of putting it out on Bandcamp. I haven't tried that yet. But it's something that I could. Yeah, definitely.
Leah Roseman:
As soon as you do that, I will be there to buy your album.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Oh.
Leah Roseman:
I mean, you can release individual tracks.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
People often do that. It's because you have the audio.
Elizabeth Pallett:
Yes. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
It's just repurposing it.
Elizabeth Pallett:
It's just repurposing it. Yeah. I haven't really thought of that. So, the ricochet of the lockdown is still... Trying to absorb the aftershocks of that, yeah, at the moment. I'm catching up. But yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks so much for sharing all this beautiful music and history today. It was just really illuminating.
Elizabeth Pallett:
You're welcome, Leah. That's very kind of you to have me. It's been a joy. So, thank you.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Thanks for following the series on your favorite podcast player and sharing your favorite episodes with your friends, all of which help find new listeners. I have lots more episodes coming in this season three, with a fascinating diversity of musicians, and their stories, and music. Please consider either buying me a virtual copy as a tip, or becoming a monthly supporter. The link is in the description. Have a great week.
