Just for clarity, I am working on the solo music. Once I am comfortable with that I can proceed to continuo.
Thanks for the suggestions! Regards David -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Taco Walstra Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2011 12:57 AM To: Martyn Hodgson; lute net Subject: [LUTE] Re: Lute Strings for theorbo On 08/11/2011 09:30 AM, Martyn Hodgson wrote: Playing close to the bridge is a story in itself. It's not proved that it was common practice on theorbo. It's logical however, but playing with nails was perhaps also used, or both. What you call "historical practice... only lower the first course..." was the tuning used on an english theorbo, not the "standard" theorbo. "Historical practice" was tuning small theorbos in dm, although even this is not very certain (it's mostly based on a few examples, like the pieces by visee which exist in staff notation and theorbo tablature). Even the small tiorbino usied in the italian Castaldi music has the 2 top course reentrant, if I remember well. But what is the problem with the second course? As you can see in the list by David he uses 0.78 mm. that's not 0.36 or whatever. with archlutes in G you encounter such problems, not theorbos. If you use a theorbo only for continuo playing, your advice can be a good idea, but I assume that David Smith will surely like to play Visee and other beautiful solomusic, which is problematic when you do this. Taco > > > Much depends on your technique and whether you play close to the bridge > (as the Old Ones generally seemed to have done) or up to the rose. > However whatever tension you decide upon, with such a small instrument > why don't you follow historical practice and only lower the first > course an octave? The stress of the second course at such a short > string length (at , say, A 415) is well below breaking stress. > > MH To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
