Eh!? Of course pitch is relevant to instrument size: as pointed out
earlier, it's precisely why the top one, or two, courses were obliged
to be lowered an octave. The point, as previously (and tediously)
pointed out, is that historically pitch was such that the highest
course(s) were obliged to be lowered an octave (as the Old Ones tell
us). However, for mysterious reasons, some modern players string small
theorboes with low octaves on the second course even when wholly
unnecessary at the pitch in which they play.
If we have any pretensions to 'Historically Informed Performance' it is
clearly daft to ignore historic precedent and practice.
MH
--- On Mon, 16/2/09, howard posner <howardpos...@ca.rr.com> wrote:
From: howard posner <howardpos...@ca.rr.com>
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Theorbo by Nic. Nic. B. van der Waals for sale
To: "lutelist Net" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Date: Monday, 16 February, 2009, 8:10 PM
Now you know the joke.
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.
The fact is, I was taught in early adolescence that size doesn't matter.
On Feb 16, 2009, at 11:10 AM, Martyn Hodgson wrote:
> A small theorbo is called a 'toy' theorbo when, because of its
> relatively small size which only really requires the first
> course to be
> at the lower octave, the second is also unnecessarily lowered:
> it's
> all down to how the individual player strings it, not some
> inherent
> characteristic of the instrument itself. Why some players do it
> is a
> mystery; although, of course, the use of modern overwpound
> strings (if
> you like them) allows a fairly strong bass even with a small
> fingered
> string length. I believe Howard Posner favours these small
> instruments
> in such a tuning - hence his advocacy of them I presume. There
> is much
> more, with historical evidence etc, in the archives of this list.
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