Dear Everyone
I think everything which Chris has said in his long message is very helpful
and I agree with what he says.
However I would not start out with the idea that most of the music is
intended to be played with one method of stringing rather than another and
that somehow you can eliminate all the anomalies which Franz has mentioned
in his message with any particular method.
As far as having a high octave string on the 3rd course is concerned - there
is no documentary evidence that this method of tuning was ever used. The
two manuscript sources which some people have claimed do show this method of
stringing are not sufficiently clear to support such an idea. You can see
the relevant pages in the essay about stringing on my webpage -
www.monicahall.co.uk
Although this method of stringing is very popular at the moment IMHO it
creates as many
problems as it solves. And with gut strings you might have a problem.
Aside from that I think you could play all the music in Corbetta's books of
1643 and 1648 and in Bartolotti's 1640 book with a re-entrant tuning. Quite
a lot of Foscarini, Santiago de Murcia, Valdambrini if you can get a copy of
it and can decipher it.
James Tyler's tutor is now available and I guess it has quite a few pieces
from different parts of the repertoire suitable for re-entrant tuning.
I was amused by Chris's comment on Libro de Diferentes Cifras (m/811, 1705),
edited by Francisco Alfonso Valdivia -- Monica is credited as a collaborator
(sounds subversive). Francisco and I are friends but I am not sure that he
would think the re-entrant tuning appropriate for the music in this
manuscript.
The choice is really yours.
Hope that helped.
Monica
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Kooiman
To: Franz Mechsner
Cc: Vihuelalist ; Chris Despopoulos ; Harlan Glotzer ; Monica Hall
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2011 9:55 AM
Subject: Re: [VIHUELA] Re: Baroque guitar, where to start?
Hello Franz,
but some quite odd with melodylines suddenly jumping an octave up or down.
So
I suspected that these were not written for re-entrant tuning, or only the
upper string
being re-entrant, but to take it like this seems also not convincing
either.
I find that many of these jumps would disappear if a high octave string were
used on the third course, as Chris also mentioned. I remember one place in
Sanz (the Españoleta in the "very easy pieces for beginners" in the foirst
book) where both re-entrant and bourdon tuning would create either a seventh
or a ninth jump, whereas re-entrant with upper ocatve g would not.
Sanz however never mentions a high octave on thirds, and if I remember
correctly there has been some discussion in the past as to the feasability
of having a gut string tuned to g' without it breaking.
IIRC Hopkinson Smith recorded his Sanz disc with high octave g, arguing that
the tablature as written by Sanz calls for it.
Regards
Peter
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