Dear Martyn
If I don't mistake what you're saying, you seem to equate the 'arciliuto
romano' with an instrument pitched in E. I should be grateful if you could
tell me what precisely do you mean by an 'arciliuto romano' and what
evidence have you that it was pitched in E?
<<
No, no, I was merely thinking aloud. The instrument in question was about
70cm, a'=380Hz, tuned in g' without re-entrant strings, so a quick-and-dirty
calculation came to a first gut string of about 0.40. If such instrumetnt
would want to survice in 440 it had to be tuned to something close to e, if
I'm correct. But I was put right by Andreas, who confirmed that period pitch
in Rome was around 380. End of thinking aloud, back to archlute in g'.
My query about this relates to two matters:
- the idea of transposing archlutes various people floated many years
ago (necessary if using gut trebles in an area of relatively high pitch in
the 17/18thC eg Rome) and
Or relatively low, as Andreas told us.
- also to the small 7 course lutes newly made in Italy in the 2nd half of
the 18thC (eg by Radice) which Tyler has suggested were in E but, in my
view, were more likely to have simply continued the old lute tuning in G
or A (as for example Dalla Casa).
In both cases it would be of interest if there were evidence of an
archlute/lute tuning in E in this period.
I'm not copying this to the general list.
But I am, as it is interesting, indeed. Thank you for sharing your points of
view with us. Perhaps other people have other suggestions to contribute.
David
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