Sometimes I also lowered the 4th course a little bit, what works pretty
well and sounds very good in F maj, d min etc.
Unfortunately we don't have any historical evidence about tuning
temperaments, as far as I know.
But I'm pretty sure that the lutenists then tuned the lute in a tempered
way.
Sometimes I'm wondering, if the Weiss anecdote by Reichardt on tuning
the lute could be meant in such a way.
The content in short:
Weiss, who was then 50, was asked by someone, how long he played the
lute. Weiss answered: "20 years". A friend of him, who knew that he
played the lute already with 10 wanted to contradict. But Weiss said
immediately: "That's true, but 20 years I tuned" (The German text is below).
I know, there are many possibilities to get the deeper meaning of this.
It could be owed to the Mattheson quote that a lutenist tunes half of
his life. But it ! could ! also be a hint, that Weiss sought for the
ideal temperament for a long time.
We should not forget that the lute was beloved especially for her
excellent sound - and our instrument sounds better tempered with no
doubt (my personal opinion).
Best regards
Markus
P.S.: The German
Der große Lautenist Weiße antwortete im fünfzigsten Jahre seines Alters
auf die Frage, wie lange er die Laute spiele? „zwanzig Jahr.“ Einer
seiner Freunde, der gewiß wußte, daß Weiße schon im zehnten Jahre seines
Alters die Laute spielte, wollte ihm widersprechen, er fiel ihm aber ins
Wort und sagte: „schon recht; allein zwanzig Jahr stimmte ich.“ So
stimmt der Mann von Komplimente unaufhörlich an seinem Leben und kommt
eben so selten zum Genüßen, wie der Lautenspieler zum spielen. Nein, daß
menschliche Leben ist zu kurz um Komplimente zu machen und die Laute zu
spielen.
(Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Musikalisches Kunstmagazin, vol. 1, Stück
3. Berlin, 1782, p. 158.)
chriswi...@yahoo.com schrieb:
I've found that Kirnberger III works pretty well. I used it for a while
although I'm back to ET nowadays.
Chris
--- On Fri, 12/11/09, Edward Martin <e...@gamutstrings.com> wrote:
From: Edward Martin <e...@gamutstrings.com>
Subject: [BAROQUE-LUTE] Re: D-minor tuning and ET? Remedy?
To: ""Mathias Rösel"" <mathias.roe...@t-online.de>,
baroque-lute@cs.dartmouth.edu
Date: Friday, December 11, 2009, 8:36 PM
I agree with Mathias. ET works
best for d minor tuned lutes.
ed
At 05:16 PM 12/11/2009, Mathias Rösel wrote:
I never tried to get MT on the 11c lute. Taking the a's
and fourth frets
a bit down seems about all you can do if you absolutely
want to. I don't
because IMHO 11c lutes in D minor tuning were invented,
so to say, for
ET. The same applies to the predecessors and company of
the D minor
tuning, i. e. so-called transitional tunings.
Mathias
"wikla" <wi...@cs.helsinki.fi>
schrieb:
Dear baroque lutenists,
getting into the d-minor tuned lute's secrets
seems to be an interesting
task! Among the many first impressions - partly
good, partly not so good -
was one of the latter: it looked like you really
should get used to the
equal temperament - to me quite heavy a
sacrifice. Anyhow, after asking my
former lute teacher and taking a look to his
11-courser, I got the idea
that at least you can make your F-major and some
other keys better by
tuning the a's a little bit lower and taking the
4th fret a little lower;
then there you have the a(low), f# and c#. All of
them good to be low in
many important keys.
Anyhow g-minor seems to be problematic: eb's and
f#'s seem always want to
be on the same fret in the neigboring strings.
And I guess there will be no
good D-major unless you tune the 1st and 4th to
f#. They also used that
scordatura in the 17th anf 18th centuries.
Any comments, experiences or hints in getting
better intonation than the ET
in d-minor tuned lutes?
Best,
Arto
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