On Feb 15, 2009, at 3:22 AM, Andrew Gibbs wrote: > Is there any evidence of what temperament the lutenist and singer - > I'm thinking mainly of late 16th c lute songs - would have agreed > on? Would the lutenist tune to get close to the temperament the > singer had trained to sing in (just intonation?) - or would the > singer helpfully adjust to suit the tending-towards-ET lute > accompaniment? Or does it just work with voice and lute in > different temperaments? I've never been clear about this...
Temperament is mostly the concern of musicians who play fixed-pitch instruments. A singer doesn't have to worry about it, because the singer can adjust as needed. Temperament is just a poor substitute for what a good singer does as a matter of course. In any event, it strikes me as unlikely to the point of absurdity that a singer could remember and reproduce the difference between fifth-comma and sixth-comma meantone, but no singer I've ever worked with has even had occasion to talk about temperament. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
