Hi all, I have always wondered the following explation for re-entrantness: "They wanted to have a big lute in a but could not tune the first or two first strings to the right pitch. That is why they lowered those an octave."
If that had been the reason, why didn't they just tune the lute to d or some other suitable low key? I think the explanation is artistic: they wished to have the chords compound of notes near each other (with low bass). And they wished not to go above the tessitura of tenor singer, as Caccini explains the usefulness of theorbo. All the best, Arto To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
