Re: [tuning] Re: A missed opportunity (for Margo Schulter)

mschulter wrote:

> Hello, there, Alison.
>
> If you're playing lute music from the approximate time of the reign of
> Queen Mary of Scots (1561-1567), then I have curious news for you: the
> leading historical _lute_ tuning of the later 16th century -- and please
> note that I said _lute_, not keyboards -- turns out to be 12-note equal
> temperament.

Hmm - I thought that might turn out to be the case. I'd be interested though in what happened
tuning wise as the Moorish oud became the lute.

> Various theorists discuss this, starting by around 1545, for example
> Vicentino, Zarlino, and Vincenzo Galilei. In 1567, the year of Queen
> Mary's forced abdication while in captivity at Lochleven (24 July), an
> Italian composer named Gorzanis published a collection of 48 dances, two
> with each of the 12 notes of the chromatic lute gamut as a modal final.

Are these pieces online anywhere? I remember downloading some very good tablatures from
medieval.org

> Writing around 1600, Giovanni Maria Artusi takes this equivalence as
> natural on the lute, and considers it "older than the cuckoo
> birds," although Mark Lindley concludes that the widespread
> "standardization" of 12-tET may have occurred around 1550, during Mary's
> childhood in France in terms of your performance situation.
>
> Your mention of Milan, however, is an illustration of another of Lindley's
> points -- that 12-tET was not a _universal_ standard throughout the 16th
> century, especially the earlier part. Specifically, he recommends a
> meantone interpretation for some compositions by Milan dating to around
> the 1530's. He _likes_ the beating of meantone fifths, and finds that it
> gives the music a "warm" quality.
>
> This is discussed in his book, entitled something like _Lutes, Viols, and
> Temperaments_.

Yes, thanks Margo. I asked about this before. It's about time I actually read it because the
largest part of my repertoire is of the Spanish "vihuelistas".

> Thus judging by what Zarlino and Vicentino say in the 1550's, I might
> guess that David Rizzio, at least, might have used equal semitones (or a
> close approximation) on his lute.
>
> Since so much of Queen Mary's cultural background was shaped in France,
> one might want to investigate the literature there, to see if lute
> intonation was discussed.
>
> Anyway, while as people have mentioned, there were various tuning schemes
> for lute, 12-tET seems to be the "standard" lute temperament of the later
> 16th century.
>
> I might add that there were "alternative fretters" back then, too: Galilei
> describes how they would add _tastini_ or extra "little frets" for purer
> thirds, and complains that this is outside the proper diatonic and
> chromatic genera, and also that in practice the sensitivity of these
> people's ears can be judged by the number of "imperfect" (i.e. Wolf)
> fifths they play in navigating those extra frets.

That's a possibility - gluing small body frets for purer (or further out) thirds.

>
> Anyway, this is a quick summary. One reason that 12-tET may have been not
> to hard to approximate is that the "18 rule" -- fretting with semitones of
> 18:17 -- happens to get an assist from the physics of the actual fretting
> so that it can be more accurate than the "correct" logarithmic fretting.
>
> Most appreciatively,
>
> Margo Schulter
> mschulter@value.net

Excellent information. Many thanks for your time and effort.

Regards.