Dear Martin, Thanks. That does make sense. This would imply then that gradually in all of Europe this "conversion" had taken place and was finally reaching England. Do we have any other evidence of this from the sources? Robert -- Sent from my Android phone with GMX Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
Martin Shepherd <[email protected]> wrote: 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. > __________________________________________________________________ > > [1][avast-mail-stamp.png] > > Diese E-Mail wurde von Avast Antivirus-Software auf Viren geprueft. > [2][1]www.avast.com > > -- > > References > > 1.[2] http://www.avast.com/ > 2.[3] http://www.avast.com/ > > > To get on or off this list see list information at >[4] http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. [5]http://www.avast.com References 1. http://www.avast.com/ 2. http://www.avast.com/ 3. http://www.avast.com/ 4. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html 5. http://www.avast.com/
