On Mar 24, 2010, at 10:36 AM, nedma...@aol.com wrote: > In working my way through David Talyer's graduate thesis on Dowland > (great fun) I came across the statement regarding Dowland's stringing > (p.82): "The very highest string, tuned as high as it could stand > (modern players, incidentally tend to make do with one half to two > thirds this tension), was by far the loudest string, each string below > sounded softer."
And the next sentence reads, "The lowest strings were barely able to sound, until the advent of the lutes with extended necks." This all assumes rather a lot, and I wonder if David would write the same thing now, 18 years later. The "highest tension possible" idea gets my skepticism circuits humming. What Dowland writes in the "Necessarie Observations" section of Varietie of Lute Lessons (it's actually attributed to Besard, though the reference to "here in England," where Besard never set foot, shows that Dowland must have at least adapted it) is: "...first set on your Trebles, which must be strayned neither too stiffe nor too slacke, but of such a reasonable height that they may deliver a pleasant sound, also (as Musitions call it) play too and fro after the strokes thereon. Secondly, set on your Bases, in that place which you call the sixt string, or vi; these Bases must be of one bignes, yet it hath beene a generall custome (although not so much used any where as here in England) to set a small and a great string together, but amongst learned Musitions that custome is left, as irregular to the rules of Musicke. But to our purpose: these double Bases likewise must neither be stretched too hard, nor too weake, but that they according to your feeling striking with your Thombe and finger equally counterpoyse the Trebles, yielding from them a low or deepe sound, distant from the Trebles an Intervall called Disdiapason. Now the Base being ordered, proceede to the Tenor, which strings must be so much smaller than the Base, that they reach a Diatessaron higher, that is, a fourth...Thus as the sounds increase in height, so the strings must decrease in greatnesse." So the Big D/Besard is not talking about cranking the string as high as it will tolerate, but rather a "reasonable height" (is he using "height" to mean both "pitch" and "tension," or perhaps not distinguishing the two?) on the first course, and something similar on the others, depending on how literally you want to take "equally counterpoyse." There is no mention of absolute pitch or string diameter, and he's not sitting there with a tension meter, so we have to interpret what he means. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
