Dear Jaroslaw,
I agree with everything you say - but my problem has always been that
(a) I wanted to know how the old guys really did it and (b) I didn't
like any of the options that were available. I admit that (a) is not
necessarily relevant to modern audiences but (b) is a practical matter
which impinges directly on the whole business of making music. Both (a)
and (b) are unresolved, though I find myself moderately convinced by
the loading hypothesis, and simultaneously sceptical about the
practicalities, unless we all want to die from cinnabar poisoning....
Best to All,
Martin
Jarosław Lipski wrote:
Anthony,
I am afraid you over interpreted my statement. Actually I wasn't really 100%
serious writing it - maybe half serious.....or so. But obviously there is
some truth in every joke. How can we say things for 100% if we lack
convincing evidence? As I said we have variety of strings at our disposal,
we have technologies that were unconceivable for the old ones and whether we
use them or not is a matter of taste I suppose. I may like plain gut,
somebody else may prefer loaded strings.....fine! Let's make music! The
public will asses what sounds good. But we should make a living music of our
days (don't get me wrong again - I am not saying that the history doesn't
matter, no, no). This is however not a museum of the dead music - musical
fossils. We use the new historical findings to make us aware of how this
music could really sound some hundreds years ago, but I think this is not a
musical attitude to see somebody's performance only in a historical context.
We have only hypothesis now. So presumably someone believes that the loaded
strings really existed. But what will happen if somebody else proves they
never ever existed? Shall we classify somebody's performance as not HIP and
in consequence not worthy listening? As an example do listen to Magdalena
Kozena singing Haendel aria "Oh! Had I Jubal's Lyre" and then interpretation
of the same piece by Victoria de los Angeles (both on Youtube). One is more
or less historically correct the other not so. But what would you like to
listen to? Probably each one of us would answer differently. And this shows
that historical correctness is not the most important factor in music making
(I stress it - not the MOST important). This is why I said - let's make
music!!!
Now, back to the strings. I really have a big esteem for people that make a
painstaking efforts in order to recreate the facts from the past.
Nevertheless many questions still wait for answering. Meanwhile I wouldn't
hesitate to get the best sounding strings for my lute. And this "BEST
SOUNDING" probably will mean something different for each of us.
Best wishes
Jaroslaw
-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Hind [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2008 3:53 PM
To: damian dlugolecki; lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Net
Subject: [LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading
I can understand some lutists considering the historic question
unimportant. I am thinking of what Jaroslaw said in an earlier message.
Indeed, Charles Besnainou told me he set out simply to improve on
present strings with no care whatsoever about historical correctness.
He found that wirewounds drowned the midrange and impeded the
resonances at the bridge. He found that twisted gut and Pistoys at
equal tension have poor high frequency performance (inharmonicity)
and set out to solve that problem. I saw and heard spectrograms, of
the same diameter string, hightwist plain-gut, Pistoy, and his own
toroidal string, and you can observe and hear the difference in the
high frequency behaviour of these strings. The worst spectrogram is
given by the high twist and the best by his own strings the Pistoy in
between.
It seems that inharmonicity is related to loss of flexibility at the
nut and at the bridge. Briefly the ripples of the sound waves
encounter impedance and some return, out of phase. These out of phase
returning waves, rapidly cancel the high frequency content and damp
the wave (sorry, you will all be able to find fault in my explanation
which is really a metaphor).
I imagine that dropping the tension of the hightwist string is going
to lower that impedance and improve its behaviour (low tension
theory). I do not know whether, Charles made comparisons of the same
string types at varying tensions. This could be very interesting.
Anyway, Charles actually thought he had discovered something
completely new, but then discovered that such ropes had existed, and
had been used on musical instruments. When trying to solve a
particular problem, we are highly likely to find that the ancients
were confronted with the same problems, and came up with similar if
slightly different solutions.
Nevertheless, for Charles the historic question remains quite
secondary, and most of the ropes he now makes are in pure carbon. I
still would prefer the gut ones, but his approach, open to history,
but also applying science to find new solutions, may make it possible
for synthetics users to stop using wirewounds. I for one am not
against that.
I don't see any terrible problem in these different approaches
coexisting, and musicians making the best of the string types that
result from this. Let us not even want to close off some axis of
discussion, because it is different from our own. Now whether, it is
better to pick up one's lute and to play instead of discussing, is
quite another question, and I think that is what I am juts about to do.
regards
Anthony
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG.
Version: 8.0.100 / Virus Database: 270.0.0/1488 - Release Date: 06/06/2008 17:48
