Makes me kinda wonder. Have modern human beans who inhabit this industrialized, noise-polluted world had their hearing gradually impaired as they grew up with a background of constant racket, complete with amplified music blaring at them all day long everywhere they go?

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a concert of early Scottish music given by the Baltimore Consort* in a 900 seat concert hall (actually, a converted church). They used no amplification whatsoever. None. The consort consisted of six people, five of whom played a mixture of instruments including recorders and transverse flutes, a couple of viols including a voil about the size of a cello with six strings and frets (but played with a bow—not a viola da gamba, I was told), a rebec, a renaissance guitar, a cittern, and a lute. The singer was soprano Custer La Rue,** who sang five or six songs during the concert. The acoustics in the hall were good, but nothing outstanding, and even though I was toward the back of the hall, every note came through crisp and clear. This is exactly the sort of group that provided music for dances and soirées in Scottish castles and for the court of, say Queen Elizabeth I. These little bashes, as I understand it, often tended to get a bit loud and rowdy, contrary to what some early music aficionados would have you believe, and yet the consorts who played at these things managed very nicely without the aid of modern electronics, i.e. amplification.

Don Firth

(Thread drift)
*Terrific group. They have a whole stack of CDs, a half-dozen or more, on Dorian label.
**Custer La Rue was raised with folk songs and ballads, and she has three CDs (maybe four) of her own out on the same label. She's a trained soprano, and on the ballad CDs, she's accompanied by various members of the Baltimore Consort (mostly by lutenist Ronn MacFarlane), so she sounds a bit more formal than most folkies are used to, but I like her just fine.