Dear Chris, Indeed, the damping technique was notated by some early players and, as said earlier, Von Radolt (1701) gives good instructions of where and how to damp the upper strings (tho' no damping mark is found on basses of his music even where fugal entries with upper passages damped are evident). As you say, how widespread the practice of damping basses was is questionable - and especially since gut basses don't generally ring on so long so, as pointed out by others, not so necessary as with modern would.
regards Martyn --- On Sun, 24/2/13, Christopher Wilke <[email protected]> wrote: From: Christopher Wilke <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: Damping overspun strings. To: "Sam Chapman" <[email protected]>, "Martyn Hodgson" <[email protected]> Cc: "[email protected] Net" <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, 24 February, 2013, 14:47 All, There is period evidence for the employment of bass damping technique. A staccato symbol (a dash above the notes) is found in later ornament tables, specifically the "Falckenhagen" Nuremberg table and the very similar Manieren chart from Johann Christian Beyer's collection of "Herrn Professor Gellerts Lieder..." In the Falckenhagen example, only fretted notes on the fingerboard are shown, but Beyer includes an open bass. An example of its use is in Straube's G Major Sonata at the end of opening gesture, were the staccato symbol is used with a 12th course bass and again with an 8th course bass. Very short articulation is further underscored by the symbol being followed by a rest. Sometimes, the actual word "staccato" is written in, as in the Polaca movement of the anonymous D-minor sonata in the Rosani lute book. There, a series of fairly quick chords with both stepwise and leaping open basses is marked "stacc." The passage is repeated at different pitch levels with other open basses. The physical distance between the basses and treble courses makes it impossible to damp the low courses with anything other than the right hand (for example, there's not enough time to place the left hand across all 13 courses and get back in position to fret the next chord). Not stopping these low notes would result in a muddy campanella mess beneath crisply articulated sonorities in the treble: hardly likely, even with "self-articulating" gut. While this does not prove how regularly bass damping was employed, it does demonstrate that right hand damping was within the conception of players and that some technique for it existed. In the tables, there is no explanation of how to actually execute this damping, which implies that players would be expected to know how to do it because it was already part of the standard technique. Chris Dr. Christopher Wilke D.M.A. Lutenist, Guitarist and Composer www.christopherwilke.com -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
