On Mon, 2010-01-18 at 14:54 +0000, Martin Shepherd wrote: Thanks Martin en daniel for the interesting reply! My feeling is that playing technique <<could>> have been a reason. What I understand from several players is that a double second on a baroque lute doesn't work very well, although perhaps a lot of hard work as Daniel mentions could help.
By the way, was the conversion of a 10c to 11c only the addition of a bassrider or were there also changes made inside? taco > Hi Taco, > > We have very little evidence for any of this, of course. But it seems > extremely probable that the single 2nd came into being when people > converted 10c lutes into 11c lutes, because it involved only the > addition of a treble rider, a bass extension to the bridge, and an > overhanging nut - no major rebuild of pegbox, no need to open the lute. > There are plenty of 11c lutes with double 2nd in paintings and surviving > lutes, perhaps they were new-built rather than conversions. Unusually, > Thomas Mace seems to have used a double first as well as a double 2nd. > Mary Burwell's author has it that the single 2nd is used because it is > difficult to find two strings "to agree", but I suspect that the real > reason is the ease of conversion from 10c to 11c. > > So I think it is very unlikely that 10c lutes ever had a single 2nd, in > fact one might ask whether or not they had a double 1st, since double > firsts were common in 7 and 8c lutes, and used also by Dowland on 9c > lutes (1610). > > I'm not convinced that playing technique has anything to do with it, > except that to a modern player used to the single strings of the guitar > (and then the usual single top string of the modern lute), double > strings can require some adjustment of technique. > To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
