Dear Howard, Agreed. In a world of unequal temperaments, different keys will show more variety of character, than they would if pitch were the only differing factor. The unsettling character of distant keys may be heard in Dowland's Forlorn Hope Fancy, assuming, of course, the lute is not fretted in equal temperament.
Keyboard instruments offer greater flexibility with regard to unequal temperaments, because each note of the scale has its own string or strings. Keyboard instruments may be tuned to temperaments like Valotti, where the fifths are not all the same size. Fretted instruments are more limited in what they can do, because each fret affects several strings. Unless one resorts to tastini, one is obliged to have temperaments where the fifths are all the same size, i.e. a meantone temperament of some kind. It is rare to find printed books of lute music, where there is a chord chart at the beginning. Robert Dowland's _Varietie_ springs to mind, where Besard's Observations show left-hand fingering for many common chords, but it is the exception to prove the rule. Guitar books, on the other hand, generally have an alfabeto chart at the front or the back of the book. That includes song books as well as books of guitar solos. There are small differences from one source to another, but the system is more or less standard. It is fully chromatic, suggesting that guitarists should be able to play in any key. Colonna's _Intavolatura di Chitarra Spagnola_ (Milan, 1637) has an alfabeto chart preceding the music: + A B C D E F G H -2-|-2-|-3-|-0-|-0-|-0-|-2-|-3-|-1-|- -2-|-0-|-2-|-0-|-2-|-0-|-2-|-3-|-3-|- -0-|-0-|-0-|-2-|-2-|-2-|-1-|-2-|-3-|- -0-|-3-|-1-|-3-|-1-|-3-|-0-|-1-|-3-|- -0-|-3-|-0-|-2-|-0-|-1-|-0-|-1-|-1-|- [Em G C D Am Dm E F Bb] I K L M N O P Q R -0-|-1-|-3-3-|-1-|-3-|-1-|-3-|-4-|-2-|- -2-|-3-|-1-1-|-1-|-1-|-0-|-3-|-4-|-4-|- -2-|-3-|-0-0-|-3-|-1-|-0-|-1-|-3-|-4-|- -2-|-2-|-3-4-|-4-|-1-|-3-|-1-|-2-|-4-|- -0-|-1-|-3-3-|-3-|-4-|-3-|-1-|-2-|-2-|- [A Bbm Cm Eb Ab Gm Fm F# B] S T V X Y Z & ? R, * -2-|-4-|-4-|-2-|-5-|-3-|-4-|-2-|-3-|---|- -2-|-2-|-4-|-4-|-5-|-5-|-3-|-2-|-3-|-3-|- -4-|-2-|-2-|-4-|-4-|-5-|-1-|-4-|-5-|-0-|- -5-|-2-|-2-|-3-|-3-|-5-|-2-|-5-|-6-|-3-|- -4-|-5-|-2-|-2-|-3-|-3-|-1-|-3-|-4-|-3-|- [E A F#m Bm G C C# Em Fm G7] So far we have all twelve possible major chords: Ab Eb Bb F C G D A E B F# C# and nine of the twelve possible minor chords: Bbm Fm Cm Gm Dm Am Em Bm F#m Colonna then goes on to show how the same chord shape may be used at different frets for more chords. The fret position appears above the alfabeto letter: 3 3 3 3 3 3 G H M N K P -5-|-3-|-3-|-5-|-3-|-5-|- -5-|-5-|-3-|-3-|-5-|-5-|- -4-|-5-|-5-|-3-|-5-|-3-|- -3-|-5-|-6-|-3-|-4-|-3-|- -3-|-3-|-5-|-6-|-3-|-3-|- [G C F Bb Cm Gm] Having established how to play any chord, Colonna gives Passacalli on all alfabeto letters apart from his last two. I am surprised that he sticks to the basic chords of the system, and doesn't use the movable shapes where he could. All these Passacalli involve three chords. The first strums its way through alfabeto A B C A [= G major, C major, D major, and back to G major]. The fourth piece is in a minor key, so strums through D E F D [= A minor, D minor, E major, and back to A minor]. Not surprisingly, the dominant is a major chord. The tenth piece is in a minor key, but the subdominant is major, as well as the dominant. The chords are K M G K [= Bb minor, Eb major, F major, Bb minor]. Why didn't he play Eb minor for the subdominant? There is no alfabeto letter specifically for Eb minor, but he could have used a moveable shape like -1- -1- -3- -4- -2- It's all very puzzling. My guess is that he wanted first to confine himself to the basic alfabeto system, without the added complication of moveable chord shapes. Although Colonna's 25 little Passacalli are not quite a full complement of major and minor keys, they are pretty close to being so. They are followed by more Passacalli, where chords involving moveable shapes are used. It would seem that Colonna's aim is not so much to exploit the subtle differences arising from varying degrees of out-of-tune-ness, but rather to get the student guitarist to become familiar with all the alfabeto symbols. With this range of keys, I cannot imagine anything other than equal temperament being appropriate. Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Howard Posner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Lute Net" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu> Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 11:57 PM Subject: [LUTE] Re: Mean tone temperament > Stewart McCoy wrote: > > > I can think of quite a bit of baroque guitar > > music which explores remote keys, and where equal temperament would > > have to be the order of the day. > > But it would not *have* to be anything of the sort, unless you assume > that a composer writing in F-sharp major expected it to sound like C > major a tritone higher. Some 17th-century keyboard pieces wander into > distant keys, and no one who has looked into it suggests that this > meant the keyboard was tempered equally. The natural assumption is > that the explorations into keys outside the normal ones were supposed > to sound weird and outlandish (indeed, "weird" and "outlandish" mean > "beyond familiar territory"), making the return to comfortable C or G > more pronounced and even dramatic. The urge to tame the distant keys > by making the normal keys less in tune has a lot to do with > 20th-century listening habits. > > HP To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
