Sean Smith wrote: > Dear Ken, > > This is very enlightening. It sounds like some stiffening under the 12 > fret area should be mentioned to one's luthier when having an early > lute made. I've often played the glued frets and winced at the > intonation. Sometimes I wonder about their placement and alternately > wondered if my strings were going false (both nylgut and gut do). This > would disappear when you have a choice where to place your finger. > > On the other hand (ok, same hand ;^), aren't there chord shapes up > there in early books that request L's and K's? For these I wonder if > there were bass or long tenor lutes that had, say, 10 frets on the > neck. The longer string length would give more room for finger > placement as well as more bass notes for general use. Incidently this > would argue for Jon Banks' E lute proposal. > > On yet another hand, if one played a lot in the upper register, would a > guittern or smaller plucked instrument be more feasible? Where do folks > generally tune guitterns, citoles, and the like? > > best regards, > Sean > > > In a message on the medieval lute list, Jean-Paul Bazin suggested that Crawford Young's students tune their gitterns: G,D,G,C so the top string is a fourth above a G lute. That puts the lowest C, often the 'tonic', on the fifth fret, which is a bit strange - but it's useful to be able to go down to the low G. I like this tuning. Almost all the top parts in the pieces in Banks' book would fit this tuning very well.
'The Early Music Show' on BBC's Radio 3 today had a concert and discussion of early viol music. You can listen to it on the website. The sound didn't seem right and it was a bit disappointing. Anyway, Philip Thorby introduced some viol music from 1502 - the same period of the Banks' collection of pieces. So, according to Thorby, viol consorts were around then. The music in Banks' book would sound very different with the veiled, smokey sounds of viols compared to the ethereal plink of lutes. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
