On Oct 7, 2010, at 2:37 PM, Martin Shepherd wrote: > The issue about "archlutes" with shorter string lengths is muddying the > waters a bit - I was assuming that everyone accepted a differentiation > (dating right back to Robert Spencer's paper in 1976) between "liuti > attiorbati" (surviving examples from Venice c.1630s and 40s with string > lengths as short as 58cm and presumably intended for solo music) and > "continuo archlutes" (dates variable but somewhat later and tending to Roman > origin like the Harz, and presumably the continuo instrument specified by > Corelli and Handel) which I took to be the focus of discussion.
I was thinking about instruments in the 63-64 cm range, but I'll point out that if pitch in Rome was around A=390 and pitch in Venice or Mantua was around 465, a 56cm string length in the north would have roughly the same relationship of length to pitch as a 67cm instrument in Rome, so your view of what instruments are "continuo instruments" and what instruments are "presumablly intended for solo music" may be too narrow. Who knows? To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
