Well, this has really opened something up for me. I've just been
reading Carol McClintock's translation of Galilei's Fronimo, and amongst
the many fascinating things he says (of which more anon) is that there's
no point having all those extra bass courses on the lute because they
sound too weak and in any case you can do everything you want on a 6c
lute. That much is fairly widely known. But he goes on to say that if
you really want to intabulate pieces which go slightly outside the range
you should do it by adding an extra course in the treble, tuned a fourth
higher than the original top string, which now becomes the second course
(so we now have a high "c" string). I don't know exactly how he
physically managed this, but he talks about adding an extra little
bridge so the new top string is a bit shorter than the others. I'm just
about go on a trip so don't have the time to explore all this right now,
but I'm intrigued that it seems the vihuelistas may actually have done this.
Best wishes,
Martin
On 19/08/2011 06:06, dwinh...@comcast.net wrote:
Quite right, Ed, about the 7 course vihuela and how it is misunderstood
today. I plead guilty to tuning- and using- my own 7 course Chambure
copy as a part-time stealth 7 course "lute". What I understand from
reading Ward& Bermudo is that the 7th course is considered to be a
nominal high "c" string, (for a g vihuela) in order to make the higher
voices of motets, masses, etc. playable within reasonable areas of the
fingerboard- just like a having a 5 string cello for Bach's 6th cello
suite. In practical terms, of course, (the laws of physics being what
they are, despite what Republican's would like them to be) a 7 course
vihuela of say 59 cm. sl would actually be set up as a small "D"
instrument, whose scale allows the high "g" string- but it would be
nominally a "G" instrument with a high "c" string. All I would have to
do on mine would be to lower the 4th course from f to e to come up with
the correct intervals- then I would be good to go, playing all the
voices from the vocal scores. The other tuning in Bermudo is a
theoretical proposal of 4ths and 5ths that sounds cool but, like other
things, would be thankless wishful thinking; what with the laws of
physics being what they are; vis-a-vis the breaking point of gut and
the integrity of bridges to soundboard connections.
Dedillo? Tried it, don't like it; I'm with Fuenllana on that one. I
still await a convincing performance.
Dan
__________________________________________________________________
From: "Edward Martin"<e...@gamutstrings.com>
To: "Martin Shepherd"<mar...@luteshop.co.uk>, "Lute List"
<lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2011 9:30:30 PM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: [Le_luth] Dedillo
Thanks for posting this, Martin! Ralph Maier certainly gives us
something to contemplate.
Many of us play the vihuela, but very few, if any, play the dedillo
stroke. I have dabbled a bit with it, but not made a serious study
of it, and Maier makes a great case for making another attempt. He
is obviously using bright synthetic strings, and if he used gut, I
am certain that the tone emitted from the back side nail would be
sweeter; it seems too harsh on synthetics, in my opinion. But, he
wrote a great paper, and provides us with incentive to do better.
That is one thing that in our modern times, we have almost ignored:
dedillo.
There is another thing we have ignored, which is the 7-course
vihuela. Ward and Bermudo discuss this at length, and they make the
case for there having been the"ordinary" vihuela in 6 courses, with
our standard renaissance tuning; the other is the 7-course vihuela,
in which entirely different tuning systems were employed. Ward
provides us with many names of vihuelistas who performed 7-course
vihuela, but other than Bermudo's examples, there is no existing
music for those tunings. Bermudo states that all the great
vihuelistas also played 7-course vihuela.
In particular, Bermudo states this instrument was used primarily for
doing intabulations. Yes, some modern players in our times do have
7-course vihuelas, but I have thus far found nobody in our times
using the 7-course vihuela as an instrument which utilizes it's
initial purpose, which is to use various tunings to devise
intabulations. All the ones, to my knowledge, use it as having an
extra bass course, similar to the lute. This was not the intent of
such an instrument.
We have come a long way in our understanding of the vihuela, but we
have a long journey ahead of us......
ed
At 02:50 PM 8/18/2011, Martin Shepherd wrote:
> I can't resist passing this on - fascinating stuff.
> M
> -------- Original Message --------
>
> Subject: [Le_luth] Dedillo
> Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:08:41 +0200
> From: Sauvage Valery [1]<sauvag...@orange.fr>
> Reply-To: [2]le_l...@yahoogroupes.fr
> To: [3]<le_l...@yahoogroupes.fr>
>
>
> Bonjour,
> Un ami m'a fait part de cette page `a propos de technique de main
> droite
> concernant la vihuela, que certains pourraient trouver
interessante...
> [4]http://www.ralphmaier.com/index_files/Page318.htm
> (en faisant defiler il y a quelques videos de demonstrations)
> Bonne rentree `a tous...
> Val.
> __._,_.___
> [5]Repondre `a expediteur | [6]Repondre `a groupe | [7]Repondre en
mode
> Web | [8]Nouvelle discussion
> [9]Toute la discussion (1)
> Activites recentes:
>
> [10]Aller sur votre groupe
> [11]Yahoo! Groupes
> Passer A : [12]Texte seulement, [13]RA(c)sumA(c) du jour o
> [14]Desinscription o [15]Conditions d'utilisation
> .
>
> [stime=1313669394]
>
> __,_._,___
>
> --
>
>References
>
> 1. mailto:sauvag...@orange.fr
> 2. mailto:le_l...@yahoogroupes.fr
> 3. mailto:le_l...@yahoogroupes.fr
> 4. http://www.ralphmaier.com/index_files/Page318.htm
> 5. mailto:sauvag...@orange.fr?subject=Re%A0%3A%20Dedillo
> 6. mailto:le_l...@yahoogroupes.fr?subject=Re%A0%3A%20Dedillo
> 7.
>
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Le_luth/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJyb2Qwajd1BF9T
Azk3NDkwNDY4BGdycElkAzE2MTg5MzE0BGdycHNwSWQDMjEyMzgwMTYxNARtc2dJZAMxMzM
1MgRzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNycGx5BHN0aW1lAzEzMTM2NjkzOTQ-?act=reply&messageNum=
13352
> 8.
>
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Le_luth/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJmZTg1MWoyBF9T
Azk3NDkwNDY4BGdycElkAzE2MTg5MzE0BGdycHNwSWQDMjEyMzgwMTYxNARzZWMDZnRyBHN
sawNudHBjBHN0aW1lAzEzMTM2NjkzOTQ-
> 9.
>
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Le_luth/message/13352;_ylc=X3oDMTM3aGJ
tZjBqBF9TAzk3NDkwNDY4BGdycElkAzE2MTg5MzE0BGdycHNwSWQDMjEyMzgwMTYxNARtc2
dJZAMxMzM1MgRzZWMDZnRyBHNsawN2dHBjBHN0aW1lAzEzMTM2NjkzOTQEdHBjSWQDMTMzN
TI-
> 10.
>
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Le_luth;_ylc=X3oDMTJmM2VoNG03BF9TAzk3N
DkwNDY4BGdycElkAzE2MTg5MzE0BGdycHNwSWQDMjEyMzgwMTYxNARzZWMDdnRsBHNsawN2
Z2hwBHN0aW1lAzEzMTM2NjkzOTQ-
> 11.
>
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTJlaWZmczVhBF9TAzk3NDkwNDY4BGdycE
lkAzE2MTg5MzE0BGdycHNwSWQDMjEyMzgwMTYxNARzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNnZnAEc3RpbWUDM
TMxMzY2OTM5NA--
> 12.
>
mailto:le_luth-traditio...@yahoogroupes.fr?subject=Changer%20le%20forma
t%20:%20Traditionnel
> 13.
>
mailto:le_luth-dig...@yahoogroupes.fr?subject=Messages%20du%20groupe%20
:+R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9
> 14.
mailto:le_luth-desabonnem...@yahoogroupes.fr?subject=D%E9sinscription
> 15. http://fr.docs.yahoo.com/info/utos.html
>
>
>To get on or off this list see list information at
>http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Edward Martin
2817 East 2nd Street
Duluth, Minnesota 55812
e-mail: e...@gamutstrings.com
voice: (218) 728-1202
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