Oh dear - not again. This is,of course, very speculative and the weight of evidence is against a high octave on the second course (mainly because it'd break on anything approaching a decent sized continuo theorbo). As explained ad nauseum elsewhere, the 'Old ones'clearly explain that the reason for the theorbo was greater 'power'; the ability to play close seconds and 65 chords very easily is somewhat outweighed by the limited range of the instrument. Hence the rise of the archlute later in the 17th century. MH
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Monica, --- Monica Hall wrote: > > Well - like baroque guitarists - perhaps > theorbo-players were willing to > tollerate the displaced notes in order to enjoy all > the other benefits which > re-entrant tunings conferred upon them! > I doubt it. Many of the benefits of re-entrant tuning I mentioned in the last post were useful in making proper voice leading more feasible without having to go a lot of awkward technical trouble. Frequent displaced octaves do not fall into the catagory of "proper voice leading." > You can't have your cake and eat it..... > Quite right. The theorbo with double re-entrant tuning sacrificed its upper tonal range in exchange for having more adjacent notes under the fingers. But Pittoni and Melli seem to have wanted at least a taste of that cake and so added the high octave to their second course so as to "fake" having more notes. Chris ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --------------------------------- Sent from Yahoo! - a smarter inbox. --
