Dear Martin, > > 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. 2mm is enough to accomodate a gimped string or a loaded string on 7c. Perhaps the gimped strings are not historical but they obtain the result of having a more dense string without the sound of a piano. The loaded strings would be ok too if they just had a consistent intonation. It doesn't seem to me improbable that some sort of analogue technique of weighting the basses, that perhaps we still don't know, was developed before the introduction of the 7th course.
> 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? Hm... I guess that the percentage of 7c and 8c with a double chanterelle is very low, if I'm wrong please correct me. I've not the exact measures of the Venere lute but I've seen that it's normally reproduced with a 59cm diapason which gives a tension for the chanterelle of 36N tuned in g at a'=440Hz, still high but not extremely high as 40N. Then who knows if it was actually played with both chanterelles. Baroque guitars have normally a single chanterelle and an unused peg... > 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. Sure. If the string is roped the fibers are able to move and the friction amongst them dissipates energy and dumpes the vibration. Another good reason for not using them. > 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! Yes, but Dowland actually didn't spoke so much of Basses. He says only from where one can purchase the better ones. When he speaks about clear strings and coloured ones he's speaking about chanterelles and "small and great Means" strings while he calls Basses the bass strings. I've just checked. So he's speaking of the middle and high registries which are clear of course and could be coloured. > We have no evidence (apart from the dubious Mest example) > that wound strings were ever used on lutes. Actually the Mest strings are demi-filee. Mimmo has sent me a close photo that shows this clearly. I would attach it but the list would cut the attachment. It's a rather thin gut core with a quite thick wire of what seems copper, more or less regularly wound over the gut core. Each spire is spaced at least 4-5 time the thicknes of the wire. > 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. Exactly. I think the swan neck was introduced because they didn't used full wound string. Perhaps they didn't like the tone of them or perhaps they sustained too much the sound to play succesfully music with fast bass passages. I haven't a swan neck so I cannot try but I suppose that with such an instrument demi-filee or gimped would sound very well. Best wishes, Francesco To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
