Thanks, Taco.
Of course conversions sometimes involved other changes. The point
about the 10-11c conversion is that it could be done with the minimum
of changes. Perhaps we make too strong a distinction between
"renaissance" and "baroque" lutes. My guess is (based on my own
experience of many years ago) that when you retuned your 10c in D minor
tuning you felt it suddenly sounded like a different instrument? The
structure of the lute remains the same, but the tuning, and the
different patterns of resonance it produces, transform it into a
"baroque" lute! I felt I suddenly understood why they changed the
tuning - to get a different fundamental "sound". There is a parallel,
of course, in the "open chord" tunings used by folk (and even rock)
guitarists these days....
Best wishes,
Martin
Dear Martin
It just struck me that a phase of intense tuning research
occurred both on the Lute (in France) and the Viol (in England, but
perhaps also in Celtic areas?) around the same period (early 17th
century).
Do you think this research was completely independant or at at least
indirectly related?
Could one have influenced the other, or might there have been a single
independant influence on both, such as a revolution in the knowledge of
soundwaves, or the discovery of some ancient text on classical tunings?
Presumably, in both cases there was interest in developing tunings that
increased sympathetic resonances (open chord types, etc...). Also on
the lyra viol, some additional sympathetic strings, I believe, were
added specifically for increasing sympathetic resonance.
Was there simply a taste for the harmonic structure that such
sympathetic resonance can give, or was this an attempt to increase the
loudness of an instrument that might be beginning to be judged too
subtle?
About the single 2nd course, I noticed that when I first began
playing the 11c lute, I found the rather thin top courses quite
difficult to tame, as the thumb out position also seemed to effect my
finger angle.
The double third course was the most difficult to sound well, so I
imagine a double second course would have been even more difficult.
Julian Bream, I seem to remember had a 9c lute with a single second
string, but even if these may have existed, I suspect it was his
guitarist origins that made him prefer this solution. Might the modern
tendency to make only single second string 11c lutes (even if these
were historically most frequent) be again our inclination to
standardize leading us to caricature historic tendencies ?
Regards
Anthony
Taco Walstra wrote:
On Mon, 2010-01-18 at 14:54 +0000, Martin Shepherd wrote:
Thanks Martin en daniel for the interesting reply!
My feeling is that playing technique <<could>> have been a reason. What
I understand from several players is that a double second on a baroque
lute doesn't work very well, although perhaps a lot of hard work as
Daniel mentions could help.
By the way, was the conversion of a 10c to 11c only the addition of a
bassrider or were there also changes made inside?
taco
Hi Taco,
We have very little evidence for any of this, of course. But it seems
extremely probable that the single 2nd came into being when people
converted 10c lutes into 11c lutes, because it involved only the
addition of a treble rider, a bass extension to the bridge, and an
overhanging nut - no major rebuild of pegbox, no need to open the
lute. There are plenty of 11c lutes with double 2nd in paintings and
surviving lutes, perhaps they were new-built rather than conversions.
Unusually, Thomas Mace seems to have used a double first as well as a
double 2nd. Mary Burwell's author has it that the single 2nd is used
because it is difficult to find two strings "to agree", but I suspect
that the real reason is the ease of conversion from 10c to 11c.
So I think it is very unlikely that 10c lutes ever had a single 2nd, in
fact one might ask whether or not they had a double 1st, since double
firsts were common in 7 and 8c lutes, and used also by Dowland on 9c
lutes (1610).
I'm not convinced that playing technique has anything to do with it,
except that to a modern player used to the single strings of the guitar
(and then the usual single top string of the modern lute), double
strings can require some adjustment of technique.
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References
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