Hypothetical converstation between the music
director/organist and the lute player:
Dir: Dude, you are way flat!
LP: No way!
Dir: Via!
LP: Don't talk Latin!
Dir: Don't talk back
LP: Why don't you tune those 10,0000 pipes
instead! Tune 'em up as high as they will go before they melt!
Dir: Picci, please pack your guts and go.
dt
At 07:42 PM 2/17/2009, you wrote:
No one seems to object, and the talk continues
as if the very people that gave us all the
amazing instruments we play, were totally
ignorant as far as the oh, so stupid "tune
almost to the breaking point" line goes. The
simple truth of the matter is that any string
made of the same material will break at the same
pitch, no matter its' diameter, as long as the
string length is the same. Some here still remember Eph Segerman?..
"The stress on the string (represented by S) is the tension divided by
the cross-sectional area, so S=T/A. The tensile strength of a material
is defined as the stress at breaking (which we can represent by SB).
Then the breaking frequency, represented by fB becomes: fB =
(1/2L)sqrt(SB/ï²). This demonstrates that the breaking pitch is
inversely proportional to the string stop."
In the formula, (as can not be seen here,
unfortunately) the invert relation is only
between the pitch, length and the breaking point
stress. Diameter plays no role. All this means a
very simple truth - all the instruments of the
same mensura tuned close to the breaking point
of a given material, will have the same pitch,
to the same degree as an organ pipe of the same
length and diameter will produce the same pitch,
be it in France or England. I hazard to say
that, among professionals who used "no rotten
strings" and preferred particular strings made
by the same makers and even at particular time
of the year, the pitch standard was no worse then nowadays.
alexander
On Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:29:32 -0800
howard posner <howardpos...@ca.rr.com> wrote:
> On Feb 17, 2009, at 5:43 PM, chriswi...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > How many of us really follow this "fundamental of lute stringing"
> > today? We tune our instruments to arbitrarily agreed upon pitches
> > like 415, 392, 440 etc because its practical. If we were to do the
> > truly historical thing, Jeff's G lute would be at 449, Joe's at
> > 412, Tina's at 463 and Bill's at 398.
>
> That wouldn't have worked in 1610 either. They all had to use an
> agreed pitch if they were going to play together, unless they were
> into the whole John Cage thing.
>
>
> --
>
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