Indeed. Somehow a modern fallacy is in danger of becoming established:
ie that French theorbos were single strung (and with some other
particular features too). The historical evidence does not support this
modern identification/fad. No doubt some French played single strung
instruments - but so did the Italians and others!
MH
__________________________________________________________________
From: R. Mattes <r...@mh-freiburg.de>
To: Benjamin Narvey <luthi...@gmail.com>
Cc: Andreas Schlegel <lute.cor...@sunrise.ch>; lute list
<lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Thursday, 14 August 2014, 22:29
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Italian Theorbo: 6/8, 7/8, 8/8....
On Thu, 14 Aug 2014 22:26:19 +0200, Benjamin Narvey wrote
> Both. Whike French theorboes tended to be single strung,
This sounds as if we can make sound statements about the the types of
instruments used in France. How large is our sample compared to the
population? (Read: how many surviving instruments/paintings do we have)
30 out of 300? 40 out of 4000? 50 out of 10.000? BTW. this is a serious
question.
So did Visee play a rather unusual instrument in this picture
([1]http://www.hoasm.org/VIIB/Visee.html)?
> only the
> largest Italian ones (stopped string length near 100 cm) were
> single; the vast majority of Italian theorboes (and the ones
> corresponding to the sizes we tend to play, 80 cm and up) almost
> always double.
Poor Castaldi - according to his own engravings he played an instrument
that, according to modern folklore, was a typical french theorbo
(rather
small, single strung with a roundish/deep body).
> This can be seen in both surviving instruments,
> historical sources
What kind of sources besides iconography and surviving instruments?
>and iconography. I refer you to the excellent
> thesis of Lynda Sayce for an in depth review of the material and
> surviving instruments.
No, I think there is a statistical fallacie here: surviving instruments
can not be used to estimate the original theorbo population. To do so
you'd first need to formulate your question(s), then pick a relevant
set
of samples and have them survive (a rather absurd idea). The survival
of
a theorbo might be caused by rather distorting reasons: maybe the
isntrument was especially beatiful, or impressive (if so, you'd expect
larger instruments to survive) or so useless/bad that it wasn't played
until totally broken. Or too big to be reworked into a baroque
lute/gallichon/mandora.
Cheers, RalfD
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References
1. http://www.hoasm.org/VIIB/Visee.html
2. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
