The breaking point of treble strings is easily determined by just
crancking them up to the point where the increase in pitch becomes
very steep as shown by Mimmi Peruffo.
There is a very interresting article on the stringing of lutes to be
read and/or downloaded from his website at www.aquilacorde.com
Cheers!
Lex van Sante
Op 20 feb 2009, om 06:34 heeft howard posner het volgende geschreven:
On Feb 19, 2009, at 2:59 PM, Mark Wheeler wrote:
I accidentally hit the send button before I got round to actually
writing
anything in the last post...
I thought you were just being extremely concise.
As far as cranking the string up, there are historical accounts of
this....
Robinson says so high as you dare venter for breaking.
As far as Dowland goes, I do not see any problem, he meanes not too
stiffe
that it breaks. Dowland and Robinson are not contradictory.
They probably were not disagreeing, but they said different things
that can be construed as disagreement.
Dowland was clear enough: not too stiff and not too slack, so they
can vibrate freely, and don't use strings that are too thin, because
they don't give much sound, have insufficient structural integrity,
and go false. If I told you to put a string on your instrument so as
to comply with Dowland, you wouldn't say, "Right! I'll get a string
and crank it until I'm afraid it will break!" But you might say that
if told you to string your lute according to Robinson's instructions.
Interpreting what Robinson means involves deciding what's reasonable,
remembering that Robinson was a musician, not a literary giant famous
for his precision with words. And consider that Robinson's
instructions appear to be addressed to a beginner who doesn't have a
teacher (so do Dowland's, of course). Neither an experienced player
nor a beginner with a teacher would need them. So the writer is
fishing for words to explain something that the reader has never
experienced. (He would also be addressing someone incapable of
playing the music in the book, but this is a problem with most
historical instructions.) Perhaps Robinson's own experience was that
beginners tended to string their lutes too slack. Who knows?
In any event, "Crank it to just before the breaking point" is not a
reasonable reading: you'd break a lot of strings doing it. "Make it
tight but don't crank it to the point where you're actually worried
that it will break" makes more sense, and also brings it more into
line with the Big D's not-too-stiff-or-slack instruction.
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