Did De Visee write that part about the tenth fret?
"J'ay esté obligé de transposer les pieces de musique acause de l'estendüe de la Guitare qui va jusques an D. la. re. en haut, il ne faut pas oublier une octave a la quatrième corde, elle y est tres necessaire." "at the tenth fret" is my clarification - hence the brackets. That would be
strange since that would shurely be a 'd la sol' (note: no re here!).
Yes - but these players don't always get it right themselves And there seem to have been some variations in the way the syllable were used and the order in which they are cited at least by the end of the 17th century.
In "La guitarre royale" (1671) Corbetta refers to two pieces in D minor as "Prelude en d la re sol" in his list of contents and at the beginning of the actual pieces although strictly speaking I think it should be "d la sol re". He has also caused confusion in his prefaces when describing the tuning. In the French preface it is "de.la.re.sol" and in the Italian "D. sol.re." which is correct for the pitch of the low octave string.
Otherwise high might refer to the guitar's lowest note, d (open forth course), but that wouldn't be "high D la re" but a "D sol re". Very strange ...
I don't think there is much doubt that "en haut" means the highest sounding note.
Monica To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
