Hello Thomas, you wrote:
> Dear Stephan, >the term A-Lute seems to be misleading this time because it suggests a > absolute pitch. Right. > Actually my position is that the common lutes were smaller in the first > half of the 16th century than they were at the end of the 16th century. This may be so. I'm not an expert in lute iconography, but if I look through the images on Antonio Marin's site I see quite a lot of average sized and even bigger lutes on period paintings. > The pitch doesn't play any role regarding the given topic but the size of > the lute (in relation to x,y and at least z - my pertly statement was made > assuming smaller lutes would tend to be in higher pitch). I would suggest > iconographic evidence for smaller lutes at that time and evidences derived > from the repertoire. > By the way: Praetorius is > * much later than FdM and Of course. > * not the only source suggesting A-Lutes. I would be very much interested in other texts describing lutes that we today would call "A-lutes" or at least different lute sizes and their relations. Anybody? > I don't have it at hand at the moment but (for instance) I have italian > song collections (first half of the 16th century) requireing an A-Lute. > This proves nothing except that there must have been A-Lutes ..or lutenists who thought of their instrument as being "in A" sometimes as well as transposing singers. You see, I'm not convinced :-) Nevertheless I would certainly like to own a smaller instrument myself, but not because I think it was "the most common instrument". Who built yours? Regards, Stephan but again I am > hazardous and postulate that it's very likely that no edition would have > been made if there wouldn't be a market. >Best wishes > Thomas > -- Erstellt mit Operas revolution�rem E-Mail-Modul: http://www.opera.com/m2/ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
