Meantone Temperaments on Lutes and Viols
- Author: Dolata, David
[This book] handles a difficult subject with clarity and vigor, and I imagine it will find a welcome place on the bookshelf of the serious student interested in exploring the unique soundscape...
Meantone Temperaments on Lutes and Viols
- Author: Dolata, David
Purchase product
[This book] handles a difficult subject with clarity and vigor, and I imagine it will find a welcome place on the bookshelf of the serious student interested in exploring the unique soundscape...
About
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
Awards and reviews
Notes: Journal of the Music Library Association
[This book] handles a difficult subject with clarity and vigor, and I imagine it will find a welcome place on the bookshelf of the serious student interested in exploring the unique soundscape attainable only through meantone temperament
