What are it's musical advantages? It seems to be
creating rather a
problem....Surely it would make more sense from a
musical point of view to
tune the instrument straight down from treble to
bass - like the violin,
harpsichord etc...
There are a number of advantages to having the top two
strings down an octave: the ability to voice chords
very closely; the ability to double notes within a
chord for voice leading and increased volume; the
ability to set up and play suspensions without too
many awkward shapes that are difficult to transition
to and from musically; the ability to play the exact
same note in different places without shifting for
tone color or to take advantage of a particular
temperment; the ability to easily play close melodic
intervals (i.e. thirds, seconds and even unisons) very
smoothly; and of course the cross-string effects.
Of course, many of these things are possible in a
"standard" tuning, too. The re-entrant tuning,
however, gives more practical and easy options. There
are of many solo pieces that are impossible to play in
anything BUT re-entrant tuning. Note that most of the
above things are especially useful for someone
providing an accompaniment. Lots of the solo
repertoire takes advantage of the tuning in a more
subtle way, however.
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!
You can't have your cake and eat it.....
Monica
Chris
>> You seem to be suggesting that instrumental music
was still
>> essentially the same as vocal music in the 17th
century but surely
>> the whole point is that instruments have their
own idioms which
>> reflect what they are capable of. They don't
simple imitate vocal
>> music - even when they are accompanying it.
>
> I hope I'm not suggesting anything other than what
I said -- that the
> sound picture a 17th-century theorbist or
guitarist had in his head
> was a 17th-century sound picture first and a
theorbo or guitar sound
> picture second, and would have been dominated by
the vocal models of
> the day.
Certainly not as far as the guitar is concerned!
Singers can't strum 6/4
chords! The earliest guitar music is very unvocal.
>
> Doesn't it strike you as odd that the only
instruments in which we
> have to discuss whether octaves should be
displaced in melodic
> passages are the instruments about which we're
unsure of the
> stringing? Is it more reasonable to assume that
they're an island in
> the musical landscape, or that we haven't figured
out the stringing
> questions?
I see no reason why they shouldn't have their own
peculiarities. Certainly
other instruments do. Harps weren't always fully
chromatic. Brass
instruments could only play the notes of the
harmonic series and so on.
It would be interesting to know what sort of strings
you are using to put a
high octave string on the second course of your
theorbo. There are people
who argue that you should have a high octave string
on the 3rd course of
guitar - and then they tell you that they use
nylgut.
Monica
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