Hello Martyn Without much hope of convincing you, I'd argue that this is a question of tolerance - I mean tolerance as in the gap between the perfect ideal and what is realised.
If I attempt to set up a lute in some chosen shade of meantone, I know it can only be an approximation because the frets won't allow me to get every note in every position 'right'. In description it sounds poor, in practice I've heard it work wonderfully - which is why I'm trying it myself (so far with mixed results but it's early days). A nice quote from August Magnan (the entomologist who calculated that bumble bees are incapable of flight): 'One shouldn't be surprised that the results of the calculations don't square with reality.' Andrew Currently grappling with a lovely Diomedes Fuga (from the latest UK Lute Society music supplement) in glorious, historically-informed ET On 8 Nov 2008, at 09:48, Martyn Hodgson wrote: > >> From: Martyn Hodgson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: Temperaments, the second night >> To: "Andrew Gibbs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Date: Saturday, 8 November, 2008, 9:44 AM > >> It only very roughly looks like 1/6 comma if you take a >> single string in isolation. If you carry out the >> calculations for each fret across ALL the strings no such >> pattern emerges which is possible with a straight fret...... -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
