Monica:
Interesting; but wouldn't that throw off the fretting (i.e., the frets
would be placed for the wrong overall length of the string)? It would
sound awful up the neck, unless you began moving all of the frets around
. . .
Gary
Dr. Gary R. Boye
Professor and Music Librarian
Appalachian State University
On 9/25/2013 3:54 PM, Monica Hall wrote:
Yes - now I recall that someone called Frederick Cook wrote quite a few
articles about the vihuela in the 1970s including one "The capo tasto of
the vihuela". His suggestion was that the "panezuela" was some kind of
wooden device. He says the word is derived from the verb "panear" which
means "to run along side". But he thinks it was placed alongside the
bridge rather than the nut and has even included a drawing of how he
thinks it worked. "Pontezuela" is more likely to refer to the bridge
than the nut.
The article was in the periodical "Guitar and Lute", no. 8, Jamuary 1979.
I have never discovered what other people thought of his suggestion.
Monica
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Winheld" <dwinh...@lmi.net>
To: "Lutelist" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2013 8:34 PM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Capo use on early instruments
Monica, Stephen, et al-
I also remember the English (tenative?) translation of the Bermudo
"panezuelo"- seems like it would have to be some sort of
movable/removable nut, stopping the strings from below as opposed to
our modern capos; which presumably would not have worked too well
without being subjected to very fussy construction details, when you
consider the difficulty of such a device- it would have to stop the
thickest gut basses along with their octave strings with equal firmness.
And then, with multi course lutes & cambered fingerboards it would
become truly not worth the effort. And, inasmuch as pitch was so
fluid, unstandard, and musicians- esp. the more highly
trained/educated- could no doubt transpose more skillfully than most
of us can these days, the capo might not even have been a passing
thought.
This panazuelo as a nut business seems more likely (if I'm not
completely off the wall here) in view of the general opinion that open
string sound was the more highly esteemed instrument sound, vs.
fingered notes- indeed, one of the vihuelists considered it "the best
you can get" from the instrument, almost seeming to regard frets and
fingered notes as a necessary evil. Certainly any capo device would be
regarded as something that would "choke" the very essence of
lute/vihuela sound. Polar opposite to Jazz electric guitarists, who
seemed to me to avoid open strings as much as possible.
Dan
On 9/25/2013 11:56 AM, Monica Hall wrote:
There is a passage in Bermudo which seems to refer to the use of some
sort of device to raise the strings of the vihuela a semitone or a
tone. It is in Book 2, Chapter 36 f.30. It is referred to as a
"panezuelo" which literally seems to mean a handkerchief but there is
some doubt as to whether this is really what it means. He says that
experienced players place this under the strings close to the nut
(pontezuela) and this rasies the pitch of the strings.
Maybe someone more of an expert on Bermudo can elucidate.
Monica
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