Dear Jim, This is very true. I have been told by Peter Forrester, who has measured many original citterns, that none of them is in equal temperament. He also makes the point that the later ones had fretting closer to equal, but they never actually made it to equal. Surviving pictures of citterns confirm the unequal spacing of frets. I agree that other instruments playing with citterns would most probably have had similar fretting, for example the fretted instruments of the English consort.
Best wishes, Stewart. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 18 June 2008 16:55 To: Lute Net; Stewart McCoy Subject: Re: [LUTE] Meantone Dear All: Perhaps we should bear in mind that fixed-fret instruments such as citterns and bandoras certainly used meantone temperaments -- just take a look at surviving instruments -- and that any gut-fret instruments that played with them would probably have adjusted to that tuning. Cheers, Jim To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
