The color of the string is a result of the processing of the casings making
gut strings. It is a consequence of the nature of the casings themselves,
the chemistry used, the Ph of the water etc. So finished strings can end up
being a rich brown color, a nearly white color, and anything in between.
And it means very little in terms of the quality of the string.
Damian
Quite often one finds red-ish strings on
non-successive courses, i.e. the 5th course and the
9th course might be red. As an example: the lute
player on the cover of Hoppy's 'Vieux Gaultier' CD
(who's the artist?) plays an instument with the first
and second courses red but also the BASS string only
of the 7th course. All the other ones are pale.
Why?
Chris
--- Jaros³aw Lipski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Dear All,
Very often when I listen to such a discussion I
think what the old guys
would say about all this string business. In our
century we have very
scientific attitude towards music making. But are we
sure this is all real
science? We base on paintings and treatises, but can
we say loaded strings
are often mentioned in such a writings? Or can we be
sure that this reddish
color indicates copper loading? And then, I wonder
how the artist (not very
scientific minded creature) would paint a demi-file
string with copper wire?
Would he be able to show the whole structure of the
wiring? Or would he mind
showing it? Then, we have to look at the painting
process in general and
put it into the proper context (not so scientific I
am afraid). Is the tone
color absolutely realistic on all paintings from the
period? Very often I
find spectrum shifted towards brown, yellow, or red
side.
This is not to say I exclude loading, but probably I
would be more careful
on deciding what is historical and what is not.
Best wishes
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