Dear Mathias,
I agree
Martyn
--- On Sat, 17/3/12, Mathias Roesel mathias.roe...@t-online.de wrote:
From: Mathias Roesel mathias.roe...@t-online.de
Subject: [BAROQUE-LUTE] Re: What lutes for 17th century French music
was: Ne Anthony Bailes CD
To: 'baroque-lute
Dear Anthony,
There's no reason why such bass gut strings shouldn't work almost as
well on a small lute as on a bigger one: simply the overall pitching
will be higher (ie in both cases the highest string will be pulled up
as close as possible to breaking stress).
Martyn
---
Hi Martyn,
I think some underlying assumptions need to be brought out here.
The main difficulty with gut basses is the thickness of the string in
comparison with its length. The thicker the string, other things being
equal, the stiffer it will be and so less able to produce the
Dear Bill,
Ah - but since we generally follow early advice and tune the highest
string as high as it can stand, the pitching of the smaller lute will
be higher than the larger (eg a whole tone between an instrument of 76
and one of 68cm). Also a smaller lute requires thinner
Hi again Martyn,
Yes indeed - The smaller lute will need thinner strings than the larger
one but if you go by the highest string almost breaking, that will lead
to a lower tension as the thickness of the chanterelle doesn't seem to
be related to the pitch at which it breaks.
Dear Bill,
But on the smaller instrument you'll employ lower tensions - not the
same tension as on a larger.
To my knowledge, Dowland in the 'Varietie' gives the clearest advice
about this ('Of setting the right sizes of Strings upon the Lute').
.. Wherefore first
Dear Ed and All,
Yesterday evening I met someone who had played Jakob Lindberg's
Rauwolf, and he told me that it had indeed both wonderful clarity and
sustain (as Jakob says), so that you can hear each voice, and indeed
each course, quite separately.
This could be the sort
