Dear Stewart
> To this I would ask, why is that guitarists in the 17th century chose to > string their guitars without bourdons? By doing that, they drastically > reduce the overall range of the instrument, and different courses end up > duplicating each other by sounding notes at the same pitch. It seems a > very strange thing to want to do, yet so many guitarists chose to string > their guitars that way. It is indeed an intriguing question. You suppose that many guitarists strung their instruments in that way, but we really don't know much about numbers, do we? > Assuming that to be the case, the guitarist has two ways of avoiding > those low, unwanted notes. Either he avoids playing them, as Lex has > maintained was a possibility, or he gets rid of the bourdons altogether, > so that he can strum to his heart's content without having to worry > about having to miss out the odd unfelicitous low note. Inversion free strumming could indeed have been a reason to prefer re-entrant stringing. Only the idea that a guitarist would have removed the low basses of a guitar in bourdon tuning does not completely convince me. It could well be that re-entrant tuning had spread before the rise of basso continuo, and would initially have little to do with avoiding a conflict with a bass line (or a bass line instrument). We encounter more sources referring to re-entrant in France. Basso continuo seems to have arrived there rather later. best wishes, Lex -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
