Lots of good questions that obviously haven't been satisfactorily answered. One thing that has bothered me for a while as well is that the paintings often aren't consistent within themselves.
Quite often one finds red-ish strings on non-successive courses, i.e. the 5th course and the 9th course might be red. As an example: the lute player on the cover of Hoppy's 'Vieux Gaultier' CD (who's the artist?) plays an instument with the first and second courses red but also the BASS string only of the 7th course. All the other ones are pale. Why? Chris --- Jaros³aw Lipski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dear All, > > > > Very often when I listen to such a discussion I > think what the old guys > would say about all this string business. In our > century we have very > scientific attitude towards music making. But are we > sure this is all real > science? We base on paintings and treatises, but can > we say loaded strings > are often mentioned in such a writings? Or can we be > sure that this reddish > color indicates copper loading? And then, I wonder > how the artist (not very > scientific minded creature) would paint a demi-file > string with copper wire? > Would he be able to show the whole structure of the > wiring? Or would he mind > showing it? Then, we have to look at the painting > process in general and > put it into the proper context (not so scientific I > am afraid). Is the tone > color absolutely realistic on all paintings from the > period? Very often I > find spectrum shifted towards brown, yellow, or red > side. > > This is not to say I exclude loading, but probably I > would be more careful > on deciding what is historical and what is not. > > > > Best wishes > > > -- > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >
