At 07:16 AM 7/26/2007, Martyn Hodgson wrote: >You asked for speculation:
Thanks for your insightful speculation, Martyn. I like the G to g' or A to a' concept with a single diatonic bass...sort of like an archlute light. This is receiving similar discussion on another forum where I posted. It's interesting that these were built with a construction to obviously parallel a soprano instrument with many extant examples, a sizeable repertoire, known tuning with a somewhat different placement of the third (g-b-e'-a'-d"-g"), and semi-standardized naming convention (photo for your amusement, Martyn, knowing it can't go to the list). >Having said this, I would welcome observations on what the instruments >called for by Giuliani and Hoffmann actually were: Hladky (1970s) in his >modern publication of these pieces suggests a sort of bass mandolin (like >the modern Mandolone/Mandocello'?) but tuned as a 5 string cello (ie C G d >a e') but gives no source for this suggestion. Certainly, the 'liuto' >parts in the quartets look more like cello writing than any contemporary >Mandora/Gallichon or Guitar writing (ie with their chords and arpeggios) >and would be perfectly playable with a plectrum. Such tuning (mandoloncello/mando-cello + e') parallels the Neapolitan-type liuto cantabile/liuto moderno that Raffaele Calace (1863-1934) claimed to have invented ca. 1900. He wrote a great deal for virtuosic plectrum technique on such an instrument, but I'm not aware of any physical evidence for something similar a century before. I believe Christian Schneider and his quartet recorded several Hoffmann and Giuliani chamber works with a liuto cantabile. There are occasional very large 4-course things from the mid 1700s that are similar to early Neapolitan mandolins (e.g., the famous Vinaccia dated 1744 or an undated di Maria with a scale length of 776 mm). Given the massive scale, it's often speculated these were tuned in fourths rather than Neapolitan-like fifths in spite of construction (e.g., Morey 1993), but I'm not aware of any period documentation of their tuning either. Best, Eugene -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
