Short answer, Anton: There are plenty of duos for 4th apart. and there are plenty of duos for 5th apart. There has been little to no information about how to pitch the smaller instrument --or even the larger. Specify which and your playing audience will find the instruments. I find 4th apart to be very useful.
In the 1990's there was an American builder who built quite a few Tieffenbrucker descant copies at a 43cm mensur. There don't seem to be any other models to build from. Unfortunately that length is just a little long for a D instrument and although it will reach with a nylon topstring it sounds shrill to my ears. With few people having an F lute this has been the defacto descant in D for the Pacaloni trios. The Vallet quartets demand two instruments an octave apart so the descant must be a D.
When we found a shorter descant (40cm) the shrill factor decreased considerably and we use the "Tieffenbrucker" in C where it is considerably happier. F-tenor and C-descant make a very good 5th apart pair, too.
Ed Martin has a collection of vihuelas including a descant. I'd be curious as to its length, tuning and topstring. Ed?
Best wishes and thanks for all the music! Sean On Jun 2, 2011, at 3:07 AM, Anton Höger wrote: hi, is the tuning for the Sopran lute in "c" or "d"? I mean the open highest string of the sopran lute? Thanks Aton To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
