All good stuff Stewart, but does it apply to the 'baroque' guitar? As has already been pointed out, the use of 'alfabeto' moveable chord shapes impies equal temperament (or near). In particular, the M, N and H chords frequently occur in Italian printed collections using all frets from 1 to 5; even in the same piece it's not uncommon to find the same shape used on two or three adjacent frets eg Asioli 1674, Bottazzari 1663, Bartolotti 1640. rgds Martyn Stewart McCoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Dear Monica,
There is plenty of evidence that players of fretted instruments had different ideas of where to tie the frets. For example, 1) Certain vihuelists wrote about moving the 4th fret towards the bridge for pieces in very flat keys, which means that at least some of them played in some form of meantone; 2) Galilei devised a fretting system which was more or less in equal temperament, and he wrote music for the lute in all keys. 3) Christopher Simpson wrote in his _Compendium_ about some viol players and theorbo players having an extra first fret on their instrument, to enable them to play in a meantone temperament and avoid bad notes at the first fret. The implication is that Simpson didn't have an extra fret and preferred equal temperament, which is confirmed by the picture of a viol being played in his book on playing divisions, but he accepts that others did. We have our own preferences today, just as players did in the past. We may opt for equal or unequal systems out of ignorance (the frets were like that when I bought the instrument, guv), or by studying what people wrote in the past (Galilei, Simpson, et al), or by examining old instruments (all citterns were fretted in various kinds of meantone close to 6th-comma meantone), or by playing the music to see what works. Although the same problems of temperament are faced by players of all fretted instruments, the music which survives pushes us in different directions. I have come to the conclusion that, apart from people like Galilei, the lute and vihuela in the 16th century were usually fretted in some form of meantone temperament, whereas the baroque guitar was usually fretted at or close to equal temperament. I am sure Howard is right to say that chords of E minor were more often played on the guitar than chords of E flat minor, but I think he is wrong to conclude from this that guitars were not fretted in equal temperament. I can think of quite a bit of baroque guitar music which explores remote keys, and where equal temperament would have to be the order of the day. I would be very interested to know statistically how many books of baroque guitar music there are, where distant keys are explored. I have one small observation to make with regard to 16th-century lutes and 17th-century guitars. Both instruments have similar tunings: 4ths with a 3rd bunged in the middle. It is the string which supplies the lower note of that major 3rd, where the biggest problem lies. Guitarists will know only too well the difficulty of tuning the 3rd course, tuning it very slightly flat for G major _d_ _d_ _a_ _a_ _c_ so that the G# isn't too sharp for E major: _a_ _a_ _b_ _c_ _c_ The same problem is faced by the renaissance lutenist, except the problem occurs at the 4th course. If you tune it to a nice f natural for F major, _c_ _d_ _d_ _a_ ___ ___ the f# at the 1st fret is likely to be too sharp for D major: _c_ _a_ _a_ _b_ _c_ ___ There are three solutions to the problem: 1) Tie on an extra fret (like Simpson's theorbo friends), or a tastino (as some players do today). 2) Go for equal temperament, which I believe is the baroque guitarist's solution. 3) Avoid the 1st fret of the 4th course, which is the lutenist's solution. Why else do they so often go for awkward D major chords like ___ _e_ _f_ _e_ _c_ ___ instead of the much easier ___ _a_ _a_ _b_ _c_ ___ ? Albert da Rippe avoided that last chord, preferring to end his pieces with ___ _a_ _a_ ___ _g_ _h_ instead, presumably because his lute was fretted in a meantone system. Thomas Campion, on the other hand, is more likely to have fretted his lute towards equal temperament, because he so often uses the easy D chord. Best wishes, Stewart McCoy. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Monica Hall" To: "vihuela" Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2006 6:00 PM Subject: [VIHUELA] Mean tone temperament > I don't know whether there is still anyone on this list - but if there is perhaps they can tell me what they know about Mean Tone Temperament on plucked stringed instruments, especially the baroque guitar. > > I have got these two CDs of baroque guitar music to review. One of them says that the instrument is tuned to A=415 in mean-tone temperament; the other to A = 440 in mean tone temperament. No more information than that is given in the notes, but one of the CDs has 2 photos of the artists and it seems that this refinement is achieved by putting strips of something - cardboard? plastic?! partly under sections of some of the frets. The frets themselves look very thick and as if they were of a single thick strand of whatever - gut? nylon? rather than tied in a loop like I do mine. > > As far as I'm aware the guitar was usually tuned to a sort of equal temperament - at least that is what Doisi de Velasco says and how else would they have been able to play in the 12 different major and minor keys - as they were wont to do? But I do vaguely remember also reading somewhere that lutenists sometimes did something like this and even that there was a name for the practice. > > So if anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear from them. > > Monica To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --------------------------------- Yahoo! Messenger NEW - crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail --
