On 2015-06-07 4:14 AM, David van Ooijen wrote:
Adriaensen (1584)
has two pieces for the same combination.
Actually Adriansen's two quartets are for a _different_ combination:
lutes in a', g, e', and d', not d", a', g', and d'. The earliest modern
performances of these by Anthony Rooley were on g', f', d', and c'
lutes, a second lower. As someone else said, it's the intervals that
are made clear by the tablature, not the actual pitches.
I've played in quartets at both sets of intervals, and both are
effective. The a'g'e'd' combination is often harder to play, because of
the extreme chords on one or two of the lutes, but gives a richer sound
because of all those sympathetic strings at so many pitches. I'm
convinced that there was no "standard" set of lutes in the 16th century,
but that composers wrote for a particular set of lutes to which they had
access. Sets of three seem to have been much more common than sets of
four, but these too varied in their intervals. To play all the quartets
and trios (plus the many duets at unequal intervals) you actually need a
set of FIVE lutes, pitched at d", a', g', e' and d'.
When Richard Kolb was teaching lute at the Royal Conservatory in
Toronto, he had Mike Schreiner build lutes in a', e', and d', and
persuaded three of us students to buy them in addition to our g' lutes.
I ended up with the e' lute, based on a Hans Frei body, and it is a
magnificent instrument. I used it most when I accompanied a
countertenor in lute songs. Nowadays I mostly keep it tuned in d', as
that is more useful in ensembles.
Geoff
--
Geoff Gaherty
Foxmead Observatory
Coldwater, Ontario, Canada
http://www.gaherty.ca
http://starrynightskyevents.blogspot.com/
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
