>Tell me if I am wrong, but I think Vihuela players usually keep to >TO? Would this have something to do with the double top? If there is >a reason for associating these, then we might have a reason for >Dowland's adopting TO, while also using double tops.
That's the best question for starting a brawl down at the vihuela player's pub. One source (Juan Bermudo? Henestrosa?) refers to TO as "Figueta (fingering) Castellano" and TI as "Figueta Extranjera" (Foreign fingering) We have covered this topic at length on the list previously- check the archives (vihuela list archives too, I imagine). Based on the differing forms and functionalities of people's hands, wrists, and fingers, and the different ergonomic issues imposed by differing instrument shapes & sizes I think TO/TI choice is as often a technical decision as purely musical. Personally, double or single first has had zero effect on whether I go TO or TI on a particular instrument. >Yet TO in lute music is often associated with the break from a >certain type of polyphonic music. Indeed, if the reason for the TI >to TO shift should be sought in its musical function, and if that >should be increased "treble bass polarity", as suggested by J. >Edwards, (1997), then this seems to go in the opposite direction of >the polyphonic homogeneity function (seamless transition and even >tone) that the double top would bring. >There is something, here, that escapes me; but I do spend much of my >time in almost total confusion, so there is nothing new there. Monody and the single-string first? I don't know- I've seen pics of archlutes & liuti attorbiato with peg counts limiting one to a single first as well as those allowing the double. Martin Shepherd would have a better handle on that. Certainly increasing numbers of bass courses dictates thumb UP, and finally the complete abandonment of any thumb-index passagi in late Baroque plucked instrument play. I do notice that most modern players have a shallower angle- wrist/hand to the strings than the majority of players in the old pictures. >Oh so I was wrong again. I thought you must have been using a 9c. Well, my very first lute- one of those old guitar-lutes with metal frets and guitar saddle bridge did in fact have 9 courses! -THAT was about a million years ago. >Do you try to keep your TO as a slight shift from your TI, as Jakob >Lindberg declares he does in his interview with Ed Durbrow, or do >you try to maximize the difference. I am not sure which tactic is >easier. >at present I am shifting between the two, as I show in my message to Martin. Picture is worth a bunch of words, as they say. Check my hands at the Vimeo site: http://www.vimeo.com/user814372/videos I've only done one video so far with the 6-course, but that's my typical hand/wrist position for thumb in- and my TO on vihuela, Baroque lute, etc. is radically different from anything I ever did on classical guitar. >I hope you get your 9c in your stocking or for the New Year!! If only Martin Shepherd was Santa Claus! Dan -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
