Dear Howard, Thank you very much for passing on those very interesting passages, which show that Weiss played continuo on his D minor lute, and that the practice was widespread. Yes, there was certainly a lot of ensemble music involving lutes in 18th-century Germany.
You put your finger on the nub of the issue: did lutenists keep their instruments in equal temperament, and put up with differences of intonation with other instruments, or did they try to fret their instruments to bring them closer to the temperament(s?) of the other instruments? What was their tolerance to the inevitable discrepancies in tuning? Unfortunately there are no easy answers, and I suspect we will never know for sure. There may be many different answers, with some musicians doing one thing, and others preferring to do another, much as we do today. Throughout the present discussion I have tried to use the words equal and unequal when referring to fret spacing, rather than keep talking about meantone. All fretting systems on the lute, apart from equal, can only be approximations to keyboard temperaments, and equal temperament was not an option for keyboard instruments until more recent times. What we mean by meantone fretting on a lute is not quite the same as meantone temperament on a keyboard, because there are some unwanted enharmonics. It is impossible to fret the lute exactly to a keyboard temperament, because each fret has to serve many strings. For the same reason it is also impossible for a lute to be fretted in 18th-century temperaments like Vallotti or Werckmeister, because those temperaments involve different sizes of 5th. Best wishes, Stewart. -----Original Message----- From: howard posner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 18 June 2008 18:04 To: Lute Net Subject: [LUTE] Re: Meantone On Jun 18, 2008, at 5:33 AM, Stewart McCoy wrote: > In this context, I continue my speculation that baroque lutes (in > all their various tunings) were not played with keyboard > instruments, because there were too many problems getting the > instruments in tune with each other. I am aware that Weiss and > Baron composed music for flute and lute, but they are very much the > exception. A baroque flute is not in equal temperament, but a good > player can bend notes a little to alter the pitch, something a > keyboard player cannot do. The notion that D minor lutes were not played with other instruments because of tuning problems -- or for any other reason -- runs afoul of the evidence. In addition to duets and concertos by Weiss and Baron, there is a substantial body of ensemble works by Kohaut, Kropfgans, Meusel and Hagen. And it seems that most German theorbos were in D minor tuning. Evidence, from Tim Burris' dissertation by way of Rob McKillop's web site: > 1. A Letter from Weiss to Mattheson, 21st March, 1723: > > Sonsten habe nun, im Orchestre und Kirche zu accompaniren, ein > eigenes Instrument accommodirt. Es hat doe Gr=F6sse, Lange, Starcke > und resonance von der veritablen Tiorba; thut eben den effect; > ausser dass die Stimmung differiret. > > I have adapted one of my instruments for accompanying in the > orchestra and in church; it has the size, length, power and > resonance of the 'true' theorbo, and has the same effect, just that > the tuning is different. > > 2. Ernst Gottlieb Baron, Untersuchung des Instruments der Lauten > (Nurnberg: Johann Friederich Rudiger, 1727, 131) > > Heute zu Tage aber haben sie [i.e. theorbos] gemeiniglich die neue > Lauten-Stimmung, die unsre jetzige Laute noch hat, weilen es einem > Lautenisten zu sauer werden wolte, wenn er auf die alte Theorbe > [i.e. in the old tuning] kame, alles auf einmahl gantz anders sich > einzubilden. > > These days, however, [theorbos] generally are in the d-minor > tuning, which the present-day lute still has, since it would make > things too inconvenient if a lutenist had to mentally switch to the > old theorbo tuning whenever he played on that instrument. > > 3. [The most important evidence] Ernst Gottlieb Baron, in Herr > Barons Abhandlung von dem Notensystem der Laute und der Theorbe, > published in F.W. Marpurg's Historisch-kritische Beytrage zur > Aufnahme der Musik 2 (1756, 119-23): > > So ist zu merken, dass sie [Laute und Theorbe] sehr von einander > unterschieden sind. Denn auf der Laute ist ein Gesangsaite n=F6thig; > auf der Theorbe aber, die eine Terzie tiefer, von der ersten Saite > angerechnet, anfangt, und wo der Bass eine oder auch zwey Saiten > mehr hat, fallt die Gesangsaite ganzlich weg: weil sie wegen der > Lange nicht halten will. > > So one can see that the lute and theorbo differ considerably from > one another. For the lute requires a chanterelle; but on the > theorbo, which begins a third lower (calculated from the first > string) and has one or even two more bass strings, the chanterelle > is omitted because it would break due to the long mensure. > > So in the 18th century, D minor theorbos were playing with keyboards and other instruments that played in some sort of unequal temperament (hardly "meantone" as such, I'd think). Did they fret their instruments in ET and not worry about the differences? Or did they fret them as close to Werckmeister or whatever as they could to match the keyboard? And if they used unequal fret spacing in ensemble playing, it makes little sense to think they fretted equally for solo music. I think it also makes little sense to draw a hard line between "meantone" and "equal" and suggest that fretting had to be one or the other, particularly in the 18th century. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
