Thank you for this. I'm not sure where Andreas gets his information about
Rome pitch - as you'll no doubt know it varied not only between dfifferent
Italian cities but also between usage: opera, church, domestic etc and, of
course, between different periods. In some usages Rome pitch was considerably
higher than current A440. Around A380 was often thought of in Italy as a low
French pitch.
A great deal has been researched and written about pitches in various
scholarly journals and it is by no means a straightforward picture. I don't
think relating a lute size to one particular pitch is, in an historical
perpective, therefore very helpful. Clearly archlutes (ie instruments in the
Old tuning with no courses tuned down the octave) varied in size from the 50s
to low 70s and to play in concert (ie not just solo music or vocal music with
the singer(s) taking the pitch from the lute)) would almost certainly have
often required routine transposition. Hence the idea of the transposing
archlute: there is evidence for archlutes tuned to F (but probably thought of
as G instrument transposing) so why not in effective E?
Eph Segerman at one time suggested that the larger archlutes were 'bass'
archlutes in D, but there is no evidence of such nominal tunings or such
instruments described in any early writings. More on this appears in the
archives of FoMRHI Quarterly.
MH
LGS-Europe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
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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