CHAPTER 3: History to 1800 > Later Renaissance - 16th century
Illustrations - 9 of 10
fig. 51: Musiekinstrument, detail, engraving, Gerhard de Jode (1509-1591) |
The problem comes in interpreting the bridges, for there seem to be four of them, providing five playing portions, or two bridges and two large saddles providing three playing portions: the other instruments include an organ without a keyboard, fretted instruments having equally-spaced frets, and keyboards with only white notes, so perhaps we should not spend too much time trying to work out a four-bridge tuning.
Note that instruments with three bridges are played in China today, and that one Italian salterio of the 1770s had a tuning diagram for an instrument with as many as five bridges, although only two of them spanned the whole soundboard.
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