Thank you all for your comments. As a musicologist, I don't always agree with my colleagues, but of course I respect their work. The partial list I mentioned in my original post
Snip Atton, Ecco, Hoess, Kaiser, Aman, Koch, Langenwalder, Attore, Mascotto, Stehelin, Greiff, Hoffmann,Tieffenbrucker, and a big bunch of later ones. They can't all be fakes. Snip is not only a significant historical record, but reflects what the iconography clearly shows. They came in all sizes. The "uniformity" rule is clearly in play here, and any statement that "theorbos were all larger, mostly larger" etc, has to deal with the uniformity rule, which is almost always accurate in that the past is simply not uniform, but diverse, just like the lute list. Even if only one instrument from one of the makers listed above survived, if it were a great instrument (and the lesser Tieffenbrucker, C47, is a great instrument), that would be enough, because of course there would have been more: surviving instruments are just placeholders; but there are more anyway. Assuming that there was no "one size fits all", there must have been solo size, chord size, and one-line size instruments, to do just that. Plus smaller instruments for higher pitches and larger instruments for lower pitches. Conflating the sizes does not reveal the difference; rather it conceals the variety of form and function. And that is exactly what the historical record shows. The smaller and medium sized instruments in musea cannot be ignored, they should be enjoyed Conflation is the biggest problem. The historical record shows approximately twelve types of extended lutes, in various sizes and dispositions. Conflating all these into one "ubertheorbo", however large, consigns the historical record to insignificance, rather than elevating it to illumination. We all have different perspectives; mine is to get more people to play, and play better. Most theorbos are too heavy and have playing problems--that's important as well. Did they have overweight theorbos back then? Absolutely. And after 40 years of playing, you might go for a lighter one. Would an older historical player have felt the same? I think if one wants to help promote the theorbo, a website is great. Maybe start with a list of all the different sizes, Pohlmann could use an update. The list will be large, and diverse, or it will be incomplete. Of what use is a preselected list for study? As for whether I can handle a larger instrument, well, I await the "Lauten Werfen" in the next Olympics, or perhaps I should say "ge yo swo chang" since it will be on the mainland. dt >At 12:39 AM 1/28/2008, you wrote: > >Would you kindly tell me the precise evidence you have for > >suggesting such small instruments (ie 77-82cm)? The overwhelming > >historical evidence (iconography, extant instruments, written > >descriptions) is that theorboes with both the first and second > >course lowered the octave had string lengths in the high 80s to low 90s. > > > >Clearly, with modern overwound strings, 'toy' theorboes are possible > >but that is insufficient reason for suggesting them as the first choice > > > >MH > > > >To get on or off this list see list information at >http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
