Nigel, I wonder about this too based on my own experiences with big and small theorbos. As I stated on a earlier post on a related subject, its probable that Pittoni and Melli (Melli, definately, Pittoni is a little less definative) wrote for an instrument with an octave second course. This meant that they had to have an instrument with a neck short enough for a high (AND low) E, yet long enough to tune in A. (In this case, Pittoni is definately in A because of the part in mensual notation. Melli - presumably in A, but who knows?) At any rate, I've found sections of a lot of Italian solo music to be quite technically challening even on my small theorbo (76cm) which I currently have "inauthentically" tuned in A. And then there's always the tiorbino tuned an octave higher than the regular theorbo...
Only Castaldi published for this, but I suppose it could have been in wider use for solo music in Italy than we now know. (Is that smallish instrument he's holding in the engraving a theorbo or tiorbino?) This is not definative, either, I'm afraid. Castaldi's pieces specifying the tiorbino are all deuts with a full-sized theorbo. Since the part for "standard" theorbo in these duets is of equal difficulty as the part for tiorbino, the big guy has to do all the same acrobatics as the small fry. This doesn't help us much in figuring out which tiorba is the more practical solo instrument. Maybe if David Dolata is lurking out there, he could help us out... Chris --- Nigel Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Just out of interest, what size chitaronne do you > think Piccinini was > playing when he wrote his pieces? I used to have a > 92cm chitaronne and I > can tell you not many of those pieces are playable > on a monster like > that. The theorbo I have now measures 85 cm and even > then a lot of the > pieces are only just playable, particularly the > slurred passages and > leaps from one end of the fingerboard to another. > May be the Italians, > like the French, had two basic sizes of chitaronne: > one for solo pieces > and one for accompanying. I don't know, I'm just > wondering... > > Nigel > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs