Full Description
Written for musicians by a musician, Meantone Temperaments on Lutes and Viols demystifies tuning systems by providing the basic information, historical context, and practical advice necessary to easily achieve more satisfying tuning results on fretted instruments. Despite the overwhelming organological evidence that many of the finest lutenists, vihuelists, and viola da gamba players in the Renaissance and Baroque eras tuned their instruments in one of the meantone temperaments, most modern early instrument players today still tune to equal temperament. In this handbook richly supplemented with figures, diagrams, and music examples, historical performers will discover why temperaments are necessary and how they work, descriptions of a variety of temperaments, and their application on fretted instruments. This technical book provides downloadable audio tracks and other tools for fretted instrument players to achieve more stable consonances, colorful dissonances, and harmonic progressions that vividly propel the music forward.
Contents
List of Diagrams
List of Tables
List of Audio Files
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Precedent
Part One Introduction
1. Historical Performance, Thought, and Perspective
2. Surviving Fixed Metal-Fret Instruments
3. Fretting Pattern Iconography
Part One Conclusion
Part Two: Theory
Part Two Introduction
4. Inside the Numbers: How Tuning Systems Work and Why We Need Them
5. Tour through Tuning Systems
Part Two Conclusion
Part Three: Practice
Part Three Introduction
6. Physical and Environmental Factors
7. The Zen of Tuning
8. Continuo
9. Viols
Conclusion
Appendix 1: Cleartune
Appendix 2: Equal Temperament Offset Charts
Notes
Bibliography
Index
