I'm not a theorbist, so I can't speak from experience, however could some analogy shed some light on this?
There are extent Italian theorbos, some with string lengths in the mid to late 70s some in the mid 80s and some in the 90s Similarly there are extent Italian 'renaissance' lutes with a range of string lengths which Ray Nurse saw as representing related pitches as per viol consorts - treble, alto, tenor and bass lutes. Though I'm not suggesting the idea of a consort of theorbos playing together! Is it realistic to think that the 70s theorbo found its way to France where it was deemed suitable 'pour les pieces'.perhaps more suitable than an 80s theorbo? Then we have to travel back from Talbot with his Lesser French Theorbo tuned in D and hypothesise that its relative pitch had travelled over to France with the instrument in the first place. Is the solo repertory readily playable on theorbos with a string length in the mid 80s?. Our ancestors were not necessarily giants. Might (amateur) players have chosen an instrument that suited their hand size. And I suspect there must have been at least some amateur theorbo players, judging by the number of late 17th and early 18thc publications where theorbo is cited as a continuo instrument. A theorbo in D strikes me as a useful instrument for continuo in a chamber context with it's lowest course at 'cello C. Best wishes Chris ________________________________________ From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] on behalf of R. Mattes [r...@mh-freiburg.de] Sent: 11 August 2011 16:33 To: Christopher Wilke; Lute Dmth; baroque Lutelist; howard posner Subject: [BAROQUE-LUTE] Re: Lute Strings for theorbo On Thu, 11 Aug 2011 09:28:30 -0700 (PDT), Christopher Wilke wrote > Howard, > > --- On Thu, 8/11/11, howard posner <howardpos...@ca.rr.com> wrote: > > > > BTW, I recently saw "Toy Story 3" with my family, and > > heartily recommend it. > > -- > > I too saw "Toy Story 3" and enjoyed it. There were no theorbos in > the movie, but if there were, only a fool would disagree that they > would certainly have had only the top string reentrant or been > pitched in D. ;-) Not even a "toy theorbo" (i.e. string length < 80 cm)? Cheers RalfD > Chris > > Christopher Wilke > Lutenist, Guitarist and Composer > www.christopherwilke.com > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- R. Mattes - Hochschule fuer Musik Freiburg r...@inm.mh-freiburg.de
