No need to apologize Anthony, we are in "disparate" straits indeed as any single factor affects all other factors; and we are processing & correlating many disparate bits of wreckage- tantalizing clues, contradictory artifacts, and the opinionated opinions of long dead musicians, string makers, & luthiers who were as cantankerously human as we are. (And let's remember the sheep; whose 16th century guts were genetically the same as now, but is the breaking point really unaffected by diet & processing?)
I suspect at bottom they had the same love-hate relationship to the troublesome trebles as we do- are they worth the double expense, the double trouble with tuning & need for absolute concordant trueness from open to 12 fret? For some music a singing, single treble string really is the best, while for polyphonic music and some accompanying tasks the even tone color, seamless transition, and perfect blending favor the doubled treble. My own attempts to get a handle on the doubled first go back to 1986, when I commissioned a multi-rib 8 course lute from Richard Fletcher; beautiful instrument that I now wish I had kept, but a number of personal difficulties forced me to part with it. Since then I learned historic thumb-out RH technique for playing 10 course, archlute, and 13 course lutes (Nicolas Vallet's vitriolic remarks about thumb-in-under frying my tender ears) and did not address the double-first problem successfully until I got my Chambure copy vihuela from Barber & Harris- the instrument you can see & hear me play on the Vimeo site. This instrument seems to "want" slightly higher tension than lutes, the Universale double chanterelle is .42 mm on a 64.5 SL, pitched as a nominal g, but A=392 (alright, "f" damn it) for an approximate tension of 35 N. With a single first it can sound good at 415, but is a little strained. I have decided on TO for this instrument, as much for arm-wrist ergonomic reasons as being in accord with "Figueta Castellano". Getting good tone on any course, double or single, was initially much easier for me with thumb-under- but now that TO is comfortable the archlute & d-minor lute sound clearer & cleaner played TO. The 6-course lute- single first- (one Marco recercar on Vimeo) will always be a thumb-under instrument. I do not now own a nine-course lute, that is number one on my cosmic wish-list. >I appologize for the disparate nature of my remarks. >Best wishes >Anthony -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
