Dear Francesco, I agree completely that the sources suggest even "feel" across the strings, and 13N or whatever is implausibly low. I don't know how to resolve the apparently impossible combination of clear, stiff, non-roped, non-loaded strings thin enough to go through bridge holes, and reasonable working tension. One suggestion is obviously that the bridges with small holes are not original! The biggest hole in the 1592 Venere lute is about 2mm, I think.
Also you're absolutely right that our speculations are limited by the thinnest string that they could have made (presumably two guts laid end to end) which was probably around .40mm. This has implications for the pitch at which renaissance lutes might have been played - taking the 1592 Venere as an example, we have a double top string, with a tension on each string of about 40N if it's a "G lute" at a'=440. That seems rather high, so was the pitch lower? When I said the roped strings sounded dull, I was comparing them with a solid gut string of the same mass per unit length, not a wound string. There seems to be something in the roped string which makes it dull - I suggest some sort of internal damping or friction. We have a little iconographic evidence for coloured strings (mentioned by Dowland, who advised us to use the lightest colours) but no direct evidence for loaded strings. And the really difficult thing is that Dowland was talking about the lute with the biggest open-string range (9c lute in the old tuning) and therefore the biggest problem with getting basses to work. Yet they commonly tuned the bottom course down a tone! We have no evidence (apart from the dubious Mest example) that wound strings were ever used on lutes. Mimmo Peruffo's iconographic studies suggest that wound strings were adopted on bowed instruments but not on lutes. And why else does a "swan-neck" 13c lute have long basses? With modern wound strings they sound like a grand piano. Remember also that both Thomas Mace and the author of the Burwell tutor, writing some time after the invention of wound strings, describe strings in some detail but never mention wound strings. So we are left with some very difficult problems. I'm glad that more people are now taking the debate seriously - who knows, we might end up with some decent (and historically plausible) lute strings... Best wishes, Martin P.S. But I'd settle for just "decent". ----- Original Message ----- From: "Francesco Tribioli" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'Edward Martin'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "'Martin Shepherd'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "'Lute Net'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, November 27, 2004 11:14 PM Subject: R: thoughts on low tension on Baroque lutes > Dear Martin and Ed, >> >> historical fact. I have found the same results with roping, >> that it gives a rather dull sound. The lower tension >> solution seems to be logical. > Do you really think that one could play with basses with a 1N or more less > tended than the other strings? It contrasts with all historical tutorials > we > have. They all say that the tactile sensation must be the same on all the > courses and I wholeheartedly agree with them. If there was a problem with > the basses' tension surely they would have talked about this but actually > they said to keep the tension costant more or less. > I think that for 6c a regular gut string particularly twisted as > could be Gamut Pystoys or Aquila Venice is OK. They are not roped but are > like 3-4 thin regular twisted strings twisted again together, when the gut > is still wet, and then polished to the right gauge. This kind of strings > works very well for the V and VI courses of my Renaissance lute but of > course one should not expect a very brilliant tone, like a wound string of > course, and there is no reason to think that a so much brighter bass is > actually better and that it was actually historical. I never had problem > in > stopping them together with the plain gut octaves as someone said to have, > it's just a matter of developing a habit. > For deeper strings the only solution is to found a working > technology to load a gut string. Perhaps we haven't found the right one > and > I agree that the Aquila loaded strings were almost unusable due to the > problems of intonation but I think in the past they did in some way. For > Baroque lute there are some remnants of original strings (ask Mimmo > Peruffo > for this) that show they used demi-filee strings. For the transitional > period when wound string were still not used who knows. There is need for > more experiments, but I would surely draw out any hypothesis of different > tensions amongst courses, just for musical reason. > > Francesco > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >
