Monica,
--- Monica Hall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > What are it's musical advantages? It seems to be > creating rather a > problem....Surely it would make more sense from a > musical point of view to > tune the instrument straight down from treble to > bass - like the violin, > harpsichord etc... > There are a number of advantages to having the top two strings down an octave: the ability to voice chords very closely; the ability to double notes within a chord for voice leading and increased volume; the ability to set up and play suspensions without too many awkward shapes that are difficult to transition to and from musically; the ability to play the exact same note in different places without shifting for tone color or to take advantage of a particular temperment; the ability to easily play close melodic intervals (i.e. thirds, seconds and even unisons) very smoothly; and of course the cross-string effects. Of course, many of these things are possible in a "standard" tuning, too. The re-entrant tuning, however, gives more practical and easy options. There are of many solo pieces that are impossible to play in anything BUT re-entrant tuning. Note that most of the above things are especially useful for someone providing an accompaniment. Lots of the solo repertoire takes advantage of the tuning in a more subtle way, however. Chris > >> You seem to be suggesting that instrumental music > was still > >> essentially the same as vocal music in the 17th > century but surely > >> the whole point is that instruments have their > own idioms which > >> reflect what they are capable of. They don't > simple imitate vocal > >> music - even when they are accompanying it. > > > > I hope I'm not suggesting anything other than what > I said -- that the > > sound picture a 17th-century theorbist or > guitarist had in his head > > was a 17th-century sound picture first and a > theorbo or guitar sound > > picture second, and would have been dominated by > the vocal models of > > the day. > > Certainly not as far as the guitar is concerned! > Singers can't strum 6/4 > chords! The earliest guitar music is very unvocal. > > > > Doesn't it strike you as odd that the only > instruments in which we > > have to discuss whether octaves should be > displaced in melodic > > passages are the instruments about which we're > unsure of the > > stringing? Is it more reasonable to assume that > they're an island in > > the musical landscape, or that we haven't figured > out the stringing > > questions? > > I see no reason why they shouldn't have their own > peculiarities. Certainly > other instruments do. Harps weren't always fully > chromatic. Brass > instruments could only play the notes of the > harmonic series and so on. > > It would be interesting to know what sort of strings > you are using to put a > high octave string on the second course of your > theorbo. There are people > who argue that you should have a high octave string > on the 3rd course of > guitar - and then they tell you that they use > nylgut. > > Monica > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ
