----- Original Message ----- From: "Martyn Hodgson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Cittern NET" <cittern@cs.dartmouth.edu>; "Early Guitar NET" <early-guitar@cs.dartmouth.edu>; "Vihuela Net" <vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 2:48 PM Subject: [VIHUELA] Re: Why re-entrant tuning?
Dear Martyn, Thanks very much for your reply (also privately) and I do apologise for the delay wit my. I'm just a bit hectic at the moment preparing for the Greenwich exhibition starting at 10 November and hence my time in front of computer screen is rather limited. Anyway, perhaps you'd like to come round on one of the days. It would be great to meet you and discuss things in more detail. > I am genuinely open minded about all this and remain to be convinced > either way: clearly, some guitars seem to have been converted to be wire > strung with shorter necks and folded bellies - possibly in the mid 18th C > (but why done not earlier?), however there seem to be examples (eg the > Hill one) where this is not the case and we have an earlier instrument set > up with folded belly, end string fastening and short neck. I think much > more work needs to be done here. I'm as open-minded as it can only be on this subject too! Why the conversion started at appr. mid-18th century onwards and not earlier, because there wasn't any need to do so before. Large size (regarding string length) early - mid 17th century guitars largely became obsolete by the mid-18th century, so they were simply most 'convenient' object for such a conversion. And it was mostly vaulted back ones that were converted, not many flat backs. I'm starting to get a bit confused about the Hill guitar that you mention. Do you mean the guitar with the inscription "Giogio Sellas ... Venetia / 1627 ...", described under No. 39 in Boyden's catalogue? > Also, I'm not so sure about the presumption that the folded mandolin > belly had to be invented before such a constructional technique could be > applied to the guitar. I agree but where are such guitars (surviving instrument, depictions etc)? In my earlier posting I only mentioned of chronological coincidence of folding tops being added (by means of conversion or whatever) to guitars and arising Neapolitan mandoline tradition. In fact the use of such construction may well have already been there in Praetorius' time (re: his illustration of 'Testudo Theorbata') and not obligatory related to the use of metal stings at all. It could simply be re-adopted, as the most convenient one in form of design, for the use of metal stings (or mainly metal strings to be precise) on the Neapolitan mandoline and the contemporary chitarre battente. It is also interesting that in the Portuguese tradition (perhaps not without a good deal of influence from the Italian battente guitar ...?) a somewhat different way of fixation of metal strings to a flat soundboard was adopted: with stings fastened to what appears as a 'conventional' fixed bridge and then passing over a separate movable one, just in vicinity of it. > Battente guitars could make use of Alfabeto which, presumably, pre-dates > the 6 course tablature Ricetti mentions. They could but there is no evidence, unless I've missed something. Again Ricetti's tablature was _supposedly_ for the battente guitar. > Finally, I'm even more unclear about non-folded belly instruments which > have string end fastening - like Coste's Lacote guitar much later, this > could be simply an alternative gut stringing arrangement. Well, Lacote was doing all sorts of experimental designs. We'd better not mix his 19th century 'innovative spirits' to this particular topic. Alexander To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
