Martyn Hodgson wrote: > I now see from your mention of my guitar stringing email that you > seem to equate 'information' solely with figures whereas I also > include other things such as tunings, examples of solo music, etc > which you do not count as information - we'll bear this in mind.
Actually I was thinking of the Stradivari notes, which contained no figures, but did give clues about stringing. I was not referring to your conclusions about string tensions in the same post; I had either not noticed them or forgotten about them until I reread it just now. So you assumed that by "information" I meant to give the force of historical evidence to your conclusions, which in fact made no impression on me at all. That pretty much tells you what you need to know about this dialogue. Since this thread has exceeded its shelf life, I'll just summarize: There are surviving "small" theorbos. For each of these instruments, we can say with confidence: We don't know how it was strung and tuned historically. We don't know all the 17th and 18th-century players who owned it. We don't know that it was strung/tuned the same way by all the 17th and 18th-century players who played it. We don't know the specific musical purpose for which it was built, or the purposes for which it was actually used. We don't know where it was taken during the 17th or 18th centuries, so even with a lot of resarch, we could do no more than guess about the prevailing pitches at which it might have been played. If it was built to allow double stringing, as several of them were, we don't know whether it was ever played single-strung, or double- strung in octaves. We particularly don't know whether the second course was strung in octaves. Indeed, we can make many of the same statements about bigger theorbos, though, as you repeatedly point out, there are physical limitations that narrow the possibilities. Of course, I am equating "we don't know" with "we have no evidence." I suppose it might not be a valid equation to practitioners of faith- based musicology. So yes, David Tayler can't claim historical support for his remark that "Anything over 82 is a specialty instrument, for people with huge hands, or for people who only play in very high positions," which I assume is based on his own playing experience (I don't know about huge hands, but I'd caution that large theorbos are for people with no history of back, neck or shoulder problems), but is contradicted by other players' experience. Nor can you claim historical support for your sweeping statement that any theorbo smaller than 82 cm, or whatever your cutoff number is, had to be a theorbo in D or tuned with the second course at lute pitch. The statement assumes uniformity of practice over a century and a half, disregards questions of regional practice and pitch, and is grounded on a leap in logic from "Big theorbos had to be tuned double reentrant for physical reasons" to "Small theorbos didn't have to be tuned double reentrant and therefore never were." BTW, you wrote: > I would surprised if Lynda Sayce doesn't tune her 78cm English > theorbo as single reentrant - but you'll need to ask her. In the post to which you were responding, I had written: >> I gather from her web >> site that its fingerboard strings are 80cm (thus scaled up or down >> from the original, depending on your point of view) and she strings >> it single reentrant in G. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
