Dear David, I would also be interested to know more about how capos were used in the past. I have an old English guitar from about 1760, which has four holes in the neck through which one can screw a capo. Capos would have to be curved to match any curve on the fingerboard, and frets would need to be adjusted, if unequal temperaments were in use.
Judging by surviving books of music for the guitar in the 17th century, guitarists were expected to be able to strum in all keys. Their instruments were probably fretted pretty close to equal temperament. The big problem is having a capo which provides enough pressure to hold all the strings down without buzzing. Modern ones use elastic or a kind of spring mechanism, but I don't know how feasible that was in the past. I would guess that my screw-type capo is likely to be the earliest sort. Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. -----Original Message----- From: David Rastall [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 23 March 2008 23:50 To: igor . Cc: Lute Net Subject: [LUTE] Re: Karamazov as a circus musician On Mar 23, 2008, at 6:47 PM, igor . wrote: > no David : check my earlier messsage ! why do i have to remind you > all the time to read and see well ? Okay, okay, I promise to watch everything all the way to the end in future. My bad. But I'm still curious. Perhaps someone else can enlighten me...? Was there never a time when vihuela and archlute existed together? Personally I would have used a Shubb capo: those elastic ones are harmful to the instrument. But more seriously, did they never use capo's in the old days? Assuming they did (and how can anyone prove they didn't?), what difference does it make to the music what kind of capo he used? Renaissance bow? Not entirely unthinkable for a viol player back in the day to use an old-fashioned bow once in a while. Inadvisable, if it really does make a difference to the music perhaps, but not necessarily unHIP. Now if he had been using a modern bow, I would agree that's definitely unHIP. David R [EMAIL PROTECTED] ://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
