On Jul 19, 2009, at 1:57 PM, Ron Andrico wrote: > To clarify, Bob Lundberg did indeed think of the circa 60 cm > lute as an > 'alto' lute. You are right in pointing out that his book was > not quite > left fully edited as far as consistent terminology, etc. But I > think > he would stand by his classification of lute sizes. When he passed > away, Bob was in the middle of building a 62 cm Maler lute for me, > which he deliberately (and provacatively) called an alto lute.
His book is more deliberate and provocative than that. A caption on page 8 says "Alto lute by Wendelio Venere, 1582...The string length is 66.7 cm.." There might be good reasons for calling an instrument that size an alto (it allowed him to avoid the term "baritone," but I'm not sure that would have been important), just as a "tenor" recorder in C might more accurately be called a "soprano." But someone who uses a word in a different sense from everyone else is going to have talk with footnotes if he wants to avoid confusion. Lundberg's other examples on those pages: his "small octave" is 44cm, "descant" is 58.4cm, the "tenor" is 78cm, the "bass" is 89.5cm. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
