On Feb 8, 2011, at 7:12 AM, Roman Turovsky wrote:
>>> And the fretting is equally tempered, just like it was (and should be) in
>>> real life.
I think not. I blew up the picture so that the length of the sixth course
from nut to bridge was 47.72 cm (18 inches) the biggest I could conveniently
measure, since I had a half-yard ruler handy. Then I measured the distance to
the back of each fret (the side closest to the nut) along the nearest edge of
the fingerboard. Here's what I got (left column) compared to the ET
measurements derived from Dan Heiman's fret placement spreadsheet, downloadable
from the LSA at: www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~lsa/download/index.html#frets
Holbein ET
I 26 26.8
II 54 52.1
III 80 75.9
IV 100 98.4
V 122 119.7
VI 142 139.8
I'd think perspective would make the distances seem smaller as we go up the
fingerboard (yes? no?), but the distances don't decrease, and even get bigger,
after the third fret.
I don't think Holbein was concerned with accurately measuring the fret
distances. Even Holbein had his limits.
For the other Holbein
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Hans_Holbein_d._J._072.jpg)
I got these measurements (the actual numbers could be anything; what's
important is that they're in proportion, within a fair margin of error, since
measuring was difficult) :
Holbein
I 15
II 27
III 39
IV 54
V 69
VI 84
VII 100
I didn't try to extrapolate an overall mensur, or what an ET fretting would be,
because the picture doesn't show the whole lute. But after the second fret the
frets are all 15 or 16 units apart, which would give a scale nothing like
anything in Western music.
--
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
