I think it's likely that Dowland was referring only to the 6th course,
courses 4 and 5 having been already "converted" to unisons by that
time. He says specifically, "In that place which we call the sixth
string" - when he could easily have said something like "all the
basses". I suspect even when he had his 6th course in unison, he had
the 7th-9th courses still in octaves (hard to imagine a unison 9th
course in gut).
Martin
On 17/01/2015 01:13, Robert Barto wrote:
Thank you all for this so far.
I just checked out Barley (1596) which is apparently a revision of the
previous English translation of le Roys instructions. It clearly calls
for octaves on 4, 5 and 6. So this tuning seems to have been propagated
in the tutors in late 16th century England. (Matthew Spring in his
"Lute in Britain" suggests that this might not have reflected practice
at this time (1596) as in 1603 Thomas Robinson already calls for
unisons.)
I reread the Dowland comments in the Varietie as well. It sounds to me
as if he is at least saying that he prefers unisons, and that octaves
were being used more in England at than elsewhere. I cannot imagine
that he is only talking about the 6th course. Perhaps the style had
already been changing on the continent.
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