Monica Hall wrote: > This is what puzzles me a bit as I can't see the advantage of having a > long > string length for accompanying.
Interesting that you're saying this a few days after Benjamin Narvey posted Linda Sayce's article arguing, in essence, that theorbos with short string lengths are musically inferior anachronisms. I'm skeptical about her conclusions, but I'm not sure what puzzles you, since you certainly know that (all other things being equal) the greater the string mass, the greater the volume of sound, and (whether all other things are equal or not) the greater the string mass, the longer the decay. An instrument capable of greater volume and greater sustain may not strike you as presenting advantages in accompaniment, but someone must have thought so in the years around 1600. I can assure you that the theorbo was not invented for convenience. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
