Dear Martyn
Thank you for this. I'm not sure where Andreas gets his information about
Rome pitch
Andreas wrote:
The pitch (chorista si San Pietro) was ca. 380 Hz.
Did churches 'own' large lutes, like baroque opera houses had their own
theorboes? If so, a pair of 70-odd cm archlutes would make sense to match
the pitch of a particular organ. Just a thought.
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?
<<
Agreed.
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.
<<
From a player's point of view, a lute in d' makes sense as it is easy to
play, considering it's not so far removed from g' in terms of what are easy
keys. This is quite apart from the question whether a player would transpose
(think of his lute as if in tuned in g') or actually read and think in d'. I
happen to have a 10-course in d', and switch between both methods, depending
on how complex the music is (I'm not much good at transposing from sight,
but can think more or less in d'). When it's really tricky I write out a
transposed bass, though. Still a lot to learn, then.
David - tired and cold, but happy, after a rehearsal of Bach's Magnificat.
To Andreas: I could play all!
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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