For the recent arrivals to our list and the inexplicably curious, a little
more on the 19th-c. guitars to which Martyn refers:
Panormo achieved his with segmented frets like little staples that set into
holes in the fingerboard. Lacote, with frets mounted to sliding blocks in
little tracks. Panormo's was also very big for its date of 1829, and its
profile bears a striking resemblance to modem, post-Torres guitars. Both
are pictured and described in a somewhat less scholarly but still useful
and entertaining text:
Evans & Evans. 1977. Guitars: Music, History, Construction and Players from
the Renaissance to Rock. Paddington Press, NY.
The Panormo at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum der Universität Leipzig, No. 566:
<http://www.studia-instrumentorum.de/MUSEUM/GITARREN/0566.htm>
Frankly, resetting so many tiny fret segments--while much more like tuning
each note of a keyboard than adjusting any non-segmented frets--seems to me
like way more effort than it's worth for a change of key.
Best,
Eugene
At 03:35 AM 11/11/2008, Martyn Hodgson wrote:
Anthony,
I'm afraid sloping frets won't do either: for a particular key and tuning
the frets need to be staggered to get a 'meantone' setting.
___
___
___ ___ ___
___
Hence why both Panormo and Lacote both introduced their special
guitars in the early 19thC which allowed frets to be set for each
individual string.
Much of this has been discussed pretty fully on at least two previous
ocassions and the archives will contain a great deal of further
information. However to recapitulate a few salient features:
Panormo's instrument seems to have been based on the work by General
Thomas Thompson who called it the 'Enharmonic guitar' and an illustration
of the staggered fingerboard setting for just one key is shown in Fig 13
in Lindley's book ' Lutes, viols and temperaments' (CUP 1984). This is
still the only scholarly book on lute (and viol) fretting available tho,
of course, there are a number of articles in various scholarly journals
(like Catch's I mentioned earlier - concluding equal temperament
with possible small adjustments for a few of the lowest frets). Lindley
includes most of the historic fretting information/evidence and also
concludes equal temperament for the lute in most cases.
Lindley's principal lacuna is lack of reference to the Dm 17thC lute
repertoire where, since there were only three different notes across the
main 6 fingered strings and most of the music does not modulate
significantly, there is more potential for setting a true meantone (or
reasonably close) fretting accross the entire fingerboard, especially if
easily fingered alternatives possible and often used in this tuning are
employed (eg first course fret 1/ second course fret 4). A further
characteristic of this repertoire is the ubiqitous unisons on adjacent
courses (eg open first/ second fret 3) which requires good(ish)
major/minor thirds on the relevant adjacent courses. Of course, later in
the century and especially by the 18th, more extreme modulations and use
of cross fingerboard fingerings in the higher positions requires equal
temperament (or close).
On the Enharmonic guitar there was a seperate fret for each fret position
on each string. Clearly the practical problem was the old one: when
modulating it was necessary to 'reset' the fingerboard
board.....................
Martyn
--- On Mon, 10/11/08, Anthony Hind <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> From: Anthony Hind <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [LUTE] Re: Temperaments, the second night
> To: "David van Ooijen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: "lute List" <[email protected]>
> Date: Monday, 10 November, 2008, 1:28 PM
> Le 10 nov. 08 à 12:18, David van Ooijen a écrit :
>
> > On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 12:04 PM, Andrew Gibbs
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> 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.'
> >
> > The other day the cartoon in my news paper showed two
> scientists. One
> > congratulates the other with his succesful experiment:
> > 'Congratulations! Bbut is it possible according to
> the theory?' This
> > also reminded me of our mean tone discussions.
> >
> > On a side note, thick gut strings and thin gut strings
> are impossible
> > to get in tune with straight frets anyway, whatever
> temperament.
> > Perhaps some tolerance in our ears is needed, too. ;-)
>
> Your side note is very true, David, and it gets worse the
> more the diapasons (as Rob testified on his 11c Maler lute),
> unless one adopts the Dutch lute. I feel sure that is why
> this lute type is receiving renewed interest among gut users
> : Satoh, Beier, and possibly Bailes. The very long basses,
> mean that the thickness is not much increased from 6c
> onwards, they just get longer..
> It is also why the loaded strings on a Baroque lute sound
> so good. Again, the thickness of the Venice core is not much
> greater than that of the 6c. This, in my experience, largely
> removes the problem you are describing, and it is the
> overall intuneness that benefits, as much as any intrinsic
> quality of the string.
>
> I am sure there are ways around the issue, even with thick
> gut diapasons, perhaps by compromising slightly on the
> relative tuning of the bass and its octave, or somehow
> fretting on one side of the diapason.
>
> Nevertheless, one way round the problem described by
> Martyn, could be using sloping frets, as Charles Besnainou
> does. I have no idea how he gets them to stay in place,
> however. They do have a very noticeable slope.
>
> Another mystery concerns the fact that my 11c Dm Baroque
> lute in 6th comma, sounded much more acceptable than
> Benjamin Narvey's did with the same fret positioning.
> Neither of us could see any reason why that should be, The
> theory would surely predict the same result whatever the
> lute size or string types.
> Regards
> Anthony
>
>
>
> >
> > David
> >
> > --*******************************
> > David van Ooijen
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > www.davidvanooijen.nl
> > *******************************
> >
> >
> >
> > To get on or off this list see list information at
> > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Eugene C. Braig IV
Assistant Director
Ohio Sea Grant College Program,
F.T. Stone Laboratory, CLEAR, and GLAERC
The Ohio State University
Area 100 Research Center
1314 Kinnear Rd.
Columbus, OH 43212
Phone: 614-292-8949
FAX: 614-292-4364
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ohioseagrant.osu.edu/
http://stonelab.osu.edu/
http://snr.osu.edu/myhome/braig.1
