Stuart Walsh wrote: > The lower strings of lutes, Renaissance and Baroque, are doubled!
They are on the renaissance lute and the "regular" baroque lute. But there are also theorbo style instruments and I believe those are the ones David had in mind as the inspiration for the English guittar's single bass strings. It is a very plausible theory. There is another possibility though: I understand the English guittar is believed to have been based on some German cittern. Unless I'm mistaken, German renaissance citterns weren't different from renaissance citterns elsewhere in Europe in that they generally had nine strings in four courses (2-3-2-2). Later German citterns still have nine strings but instead of that triple course in the middle there's an extra single bass string. Could this simply have started as a quick-and-dirty modification of old instruments to suit new tastes? Of course, once the combination of single and double courses was established adding one more sinle string wasn't such a big step. With two very plausible explanations to choose from we may never know exactly how things happened but at least it's no wonder *that* it happened. Frank Nordberg http://www.musicaviva.com To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
