Lute

I enjoy polymaths. They don't have to be world straddling Leonardo da Vinci figures; the only important attribute is an eager interest in a breadth of things. I'm fortunate in knowing several. Four of them have blogs which interact from time to time with this one. I ran into one yesterday and spent an enjoyable couple of hours feeding when I should have been doing other things.

And to another I sat and listened for an hour today.

Eric Franklin is nominally a chemist, and an infectiously enthusiastic one, but with a range of other passions from ferrets to early music. Today grew from the latter: he took an audience through a history of the lute music. The journey was delivered in three simultaneous, interweaving strands: commentary, document, and music played on a series of instruments appropriate to each period and built at home.

Fifty years ago, Miss Norville (primary school teacher) told me that Greensleeves was written by King Henry VIII. Yesterday, Eric disillusioned me; it was, apparently, written decades later.

The photograph was not taken yesterday. It's from the week when I first encountered Eric, four years ago, and has been lifted from the Artist at work project.