And may I offer one off-the-wall bit of perspective on the matter of 8ve
strings on 6,5, and 4th course?
Tobias Hume, in his Bass Viol/"Leero Viole" book published in 1605,
advises viol players thusly:
"If you will heare the Viol de Gambo in his true Majestie, to play
parts, and singing thereto, then string him with nine strings, your
three Basses double as the Lute, which is to be plaide on with as much
ease as your Violl of sixe stringes."
There we have it- play parts, singing with the instrument. We can
take it for granted he wasn't talking unison pairs on a bowed bass
instrument. And 1605! Granted, Hume was English; but in his professional
military career he was on the continent a lot- but not, of course
playing duets except with martial instruments.
I have NEVER seen or heard of a modern viol specialist playing an
early 17th century English viol set up this way, and viol players are
otherwise doing everything documentable & recoverable from the past
eras. Or have I missed anything? A viol so set up would be something to
hear & play.
Dan
On 1/16/2015 1:02 PM, howard posner wrote:
On Jan 16, 2015, at 12:49 PM, David van Ooijen <[email protected]> wrote:
Dowland could have included the G on the fourth course without
making it difficult to play.A His not doing so means either that he
didn't care that the bass line dropped a seventh for no good reason,
or that he assumed octave stringing on the sixth course, supplying
the middle G.
Or that the printer omitted the middle G. There are more
mistakes/misprints/omissions in the lute parts of Dowland's lute songs.
Perhaps, but how many of those errors are omitted middle Gs in the third
measure of the lute part in the 19th song in the book?
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
