Dear David, I am sure you are anything but crazy. :-)
The craziness I had in mind, was someone with a modern Neapolitan mandoline tuned in fifths, fixing unmovable metal frets into the fingerboard, unequally spaced, thus limiting the number of notes available for modern music. Your baroque mandolin is presumably tuned in 4ths, with a 3rd between the 5th and 6th courses. That puts it on a par with the theorbo and renaissance lute, which also have four 4ths and a major 3rd, where an approximation to meantone is a workable possibility. Yes, tastini can be a great help, and I have a couple stuck on the fingerboard of my theorbo in A for g# and G#. In his _Compendium_, Christopher Simpson describes the use of an extra first fret on viols and theorboes, so we know that unequal fretting was practised by at least some players in the second half of the 17th century. However, the picture of a viol in his _Division-Viol_, clearly shows equal fretting. My conclusion to this and other evidence, is that some players fretted their instruments equally, and others didn't, depending on what suited them best. For the music I play, I find it convenient to fret my renaissance lutes, viols, and theorbo, unequally, aiming at 6th comma meantone. I fret my 11-course baroque lute and baroque guitar close to equal temperament. Best wishes, Stewart. -----Original Message----- From: David Tayler [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 18 June 2008 03:09 To: lute-cs.dartmouth.edu Subject: [LUTE] Re: New Baroque lute/Meantone I may be crazy, but my baroque mandolin works very well in meantone, owing to the open E string and open B string. On my theorbo and Mandora, a few well placed tastini and everything is good to go, but the six course mandlin tuning works without the tastini, and sounds very nice on theorbo or archlute as well. dt To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
