Re: Temperament ordinaire and Elizabethan music

In rec.music.early <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Stefan Ecke wrote on Sat 22-11-2003 01:41 (+0100):

>thank you very much for your very elaborate comments on possible
>well-temperaments for english key board instruments
>
>> A reading of Morley might suggest a situation in England not unlike
>> that on the Continent in relevant areas: meantone as the general norm,
>> with "chromatic" instruments making available more than 12 notes as a
>> solution for pieces calling for remote accidentals.
>
>One problem that I see with split key instruments is, how the viols
>would adapt to the consort organ. I am not a viol player, but as

>A temperament like the modified meantone temperaments you
>described seems to be more approbriate to play with viols.

All depends on what "fret positions" you plan to use for a particular 
performance. Uneven strings might make things worse or with some luck 
actually help, at least on a viol.

To analyze this based on temperament, fret position usage and string 
behaviour I use my fret calculator at: 

http://atari.mine.nu/programs/fretcalc/fretceng.htm

I wrote it to solve exactly these kind of problems. Unfortunately it is 
not a Win application, but I can easily run it here if provided with the 
indata and mail the results as an image.

-- 
      Kenneth Medin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
    Atari TT at home: http://atari.mine.nu/
  <<Produced with 100% pure Atari equipment>>