Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

There was silence. The ruffians had gone; the harper stood alone. Damiano rested his lute on his boots as the harper approached, stepping with great dignity in his Provençal robe.

"So that is what you meant," he began, with his odd, shushing, boneless Irish accent, "by all that babble about bass lines and polyphony and my right hand."

The younger man nodded, half smiling. "Yes. That is what I meant. Does it seem . . . terrible to you? An offense against the nature of the lute, perhaps?"

The blond man pulled up a chair. "No. It does not. But then I am not particularly sensitive to offenses against the nature of the lute, especially when they seem to flatter the harp." He shot Damiano a sharply pointed magnificent glare. "Oh, my philosophy is unchanged, young man. It is always better to treat an instrument as what it is. But I cannot criticise your music. Because it works. It obviously works. And when music works, philosophies cannot touch it."

-- from Damiano's Lute by R. A. MacAvoy (1984, Bantam Books, New York)

(Ten pages earlier during their previous encounter, the harpist had said about a particular technique, "It has always been the style of the clàrseach. It is not the style of the lute. Why not let the lute be the lute, and if you want to sound like a harp, play one?")