Viola da Gamba Society of America

RECOMMENDATION LETTER FROM: Steven Plank

To Whom it May Concern:
I am very pleased to write on behalf of my former student, Loren Ludwig. I taught Loren during his
undergraduate years at Oberlin, both in academic and performance settings, and have followed his
post-graduate years with great interest. As an undergraduate he was remarkably gifted, extraordinary
in his mastery of traditional historical narratives, but even more so in his eagerness and ability to
interrogate them. That has, unsurprisingly, become a signature trait of his more advanced work, as
well.
For a young scholar, Loren possesses quite a range of interests. Because of his well-established
performance career as a gambist, his exploration of the consort literature in early modern England is
especially deep-rooted; however, he is also an experienced teacher and scholar of modern vernacular
traditions, including hip-hop and jazz. Although these areas seem at first glance to be discrete, I think
in his work they are rather “contrapuntal voices” around a central theme of what music can tell us
about society and the human condition, and it is a counterpoint that he wields with ease.
The development of his recent research exploring the congregational use of “Yankee” bass viols and
the relationship of that practice with the flourishing of American instrumental traditional music is a
well-formulated project that explores timely questions of national identity and vernacularism in a
novel way. Rendering the boundary between church practice and traditional, vernacular music
interestingly fluid, Ludwig’s study promises to locate a forging of American identity amid that
fluidity, and in the doing, enhance our knowledge of the constituent parts, as well. He is an
imaginative and lively questioner, and this project will give him ample room to indulge that bent, as
for instance in his probing the absence of bass lines in traditional sources as a possible off-shoot of
the decay of the earlier congregational practice.
I am pleased to recommend him enthusiastically to your attention. He is a dynamic scholar, whose
broad interests and creative mind presage stimulating contributions to musical discourse in the years
ahead.
Yours sincerely,
S. E. Plank
Andrew B. Meldrum Professor and Chair
The Department of Musicology
Oberlin College