On Jul 19, 2009, at 9:29 AM, [email protected] wrote: > In Robert Lundberg's book "Historical Lute Construction" there is a > photograph of 5 lutes (pp.8&9); small-octave, descant, alto, > tenor and > bass. He lists the tunings for them as being d", a', g', e' & d' > respectively. > > While I always thought of the g' tuning as being a tenor lute, > apparently it's an alto lute, and (I think?) the most commonly > played.
There's nothing authoritative about that book's terminology, and it's occasionally at odds with what's commonly accepted. For example, it calls the 64cm archlute on page 14 a "theorbo" and apparently reserves the term "archlute" for smaller liuto attiorbato types that have double-strung extension basses. It needs to be taken with a grain of salt because the material for his book was generated over a quarter of a century, during which time knowledge and terminology changed, and Lundberg died leaving a draft instead of a finished book. The editors chose to treat it as a sort of historical document, and not "correct" it. Sometimes the book's terminology is internally inconsistent. Page 2 defines the Transition period (between renaissance and baroque) as 1620-1660, but the term is used on page 10 to mean beginning about 1600 and lasting until nearly 1680, and on page 12 we read that the one lute-family instrument being built during this period is the theorbo, which Lundberg couldnt possibly have meant, no matter how he was using the word "theorbo." Anyway, don't go around calling an A lute a tenor; it will just create misunderstanding. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
