Today's Listening

One of the finest lutenists on record is Hopkinson Smith. Here he is playing a chaconne by Vieux Gaultier from a whole album of his music.

Performances like these make me a bit doubtful about Taruskin's claims that the early music performance practice movement was entirely or mostly driven by our modern taste for brisk tempos and crisp rhythms. This might be true in some areas of the repertoire, but it seems a big stretch when it comes to 17th century French music.