Dear Howard,
You are right to say that there was considerable variety in size, shape and tuning of the theorbo. Bigger instruments tend to be better for playing in consort or accompanying a singer, because the extra size gives a fuller sound. Smaller theorboes are better for tricky solo pieces. However, there is no reason why one shouldn't use a large instrument for solos (if your hands are big enough), or a small theorbo in a consort (as long as it is sufficiently audible). There are various 17^th-century sources which tell us things about theorboes, but it is futile to dismiss them all out of hand, just because they don't happen to have exactly the wording we want, or because what they say doesn't apply to all circumstances. We have to interpret what they say as best we can, and we may sometimes draw different conclusions. Thomas Mace (Musick's Monument, p. 208) explains how the tuning is determined by the size of the instrument. Of the theorbo he writes: "By Reason of the Largeness of It, we are constrain'd to make use of an Octave Treble-String, that is, of a Thick String, which stands Eight Notes Lower, than the String of a Smaller Lute, (for no Strings can be made so Strong, that will stand to the Pitch of Consort, upon such Large Sciz'd Lutes) and for want of a Small Treble-String, the Life and Spruceness of such Ayrey Lessons, is quite lost, and the Ayre much altered. Nay, I have known, (and It cannot be otherwise) that upon some Theorboes, they have been forc'd to put an Octave String in the 2d. String's Place; by reason of the very long Scize of the Theorboe, which would not bear a Small String to Its True pitch; because of Its so great Length, and the Necessity of setting the Lute at such a High Pitch, which must Agree with the rest of the Instruments." This concurs with the points Martyn made earlier, that the tuning of the theorbo is determined by the size of the instrument. The largest theorboes need the first two courses to be tuned an octave lower, because otherwise the strings would break. Smaller instruments may be tuned the same way, of course, but there is not the same need, since the shorter strings will not necessarily break at the higher octave. Some years ago I witnessed the re-invention of the theorbo on an early music course in Latvia. The students had been lent a lute, and one of the strings broke. It was the first course. All they had to hand was a metal guitar string, but they thought that tuning it up to pitch would put too great a strain on the instrument. Nevertheless, they used the guitar string, because that was all they had, but they tuned it an octave lower to be on the safe side. They did so without knowing about theorboes. Fortunately I had some spare lute strings, so the guitar string was taken off, and the theorbo became a lute again. Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. -----Original Message----- From: howard posner [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 17 February 2009 21:54 To: lutelist Net Subject: [LUTE] Re: Non-Toy Theorbo for sale On Feb 17, 2009, at 12:19 PM, Mark Wheeler wrote: > To be fair to Martyn, he is merely using one of the fundamentals of > historical lute stringing, the highest string is tuned to the > highest pitch > that is possible with the thinnest useable string. > * * * > This is what they did back then, before modern stringing > possibilities. I'm very leery of "they" and "then," seeing as we're talking about thousands of players and instruments over a period of 150 years or so. Does some historical source say both "highest pitch possible" and "thinnest useable string" in discussing theorbos? And if so, is there any reason to believe that every theorbist subscribed to it? -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --
