Howard wrote: > >The original question was ambiguous. Yes it was, because I didn't know of any reasons why re-entrant tuning would be used. I've never played a re-entrantly tunend instrument so don't have the experience that would have obviated the question.
>If the question is "why did >someone come up with a re-entrant theorbo in the first place?" it's not >unreasonable to suppose that physical necessity had something to do >with it. If the question is "why did the re-entrant theorbo become a >standard instrument for 150 years?" the answer has to have more to do >with musical taste. And of course both responses more than adequately answered the ambiguous question and I learned a great deal. For which I am grateful to all who discussed this. Thank you. >Consider that guitars at the same time usually had some sort of >re-entrant tuning, though physical necessity was not an issue. It was >perfectly possible to tune most guitars exactly like the top five >strings of a modern instrument, but you'd miss all the neat campanile >effects. Consider too that d minor tuning also allows for limited harp >effects, and German baroque lute is full of opportunities to let >adjacent notes (of the scale) ring against other. So is this why the gittern is also tuned re-entrantly? For the campanile effects? Given that it's so much smaller than a theorbo, and has wire strings as well, the issue of breakage and tension would be appear to be less of an issue. Regards, Craig ___________________________________________________________ $0 Web Hosting with up to 200MB web space, 1000 MB Transfer 10 Personalized POP and Web E-mail Accounts, and much more. Signup at www.doteasy.com To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
