Dear Collective Wisdom, I was wondering when pitch names began to be associated with the strings on a lute. Nowadays the 'standard' renaissance lute is considered to be in G tuning, with the top string at g.
Published books of lute songs seem, by and large to agree with this, with the vocal part(s) in staff notation agreeing with a lute accompaniment on a G-lute. So was 'g' defined as the pitch at which your top string is about to break? I would guess that with the theorbo (an instrument of which I know very little) the theorbo had to agree with the other instruments in the ensemble and conform to whatever pitch standard was in use at the time - though if the theorbist is playing from a bass line (rather than tablature) it's up to him/her to conform with the pitches of the other instruments, regardless of how the theorbo is tuned. It all seems very confusing - Is there a clear association between pitch names and lute tunings? Bill -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
