While I think that Howard has made an excellent beginning on a theory of Relativity of Theorbo Toyness, I think it's
incomplete as it stands. To completely specify whether the theorbo is toy or not we need to know if the theorbo is in motion relative to the listener, the speed, whether the theorbo is oriented perpendicular of parallel to the direction of motion (if parallel, the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction will affect the string length) and whether the theorbo is approaching or receding (the Doppler effect will modify the pitch standard). You can have hours of fun by guessing exactly what "relatively small size" makes a theorbo a "toy" under Martin's criteria, then changing the assumed pitch level and doing it again. Martin misses the fun because he doesn't acknowledge that pitch is relevant to the question of instrument size, which spares him a lot of work with the more advanced branches of mathematics, such as multiplication and division. The part about Martyn's view of what size theorbos I "favor" -- as if I actually had theorbo preferences based on size, and there were someone else on the planet who cared what those preferences were -- is new, I think, and is silly without being funny. As far as I can tell, if Martyn thought about such things, he would say my theorbo is a toy at A92, definitely not a toy at AD0, and probably not a toy at AA5, before realizing that there was something wrong with his categorical one-size-fits-all construct. But he doesn't think of such things. Hence the joke. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
