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Aymara
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Bill,
it seems, that your tuning C-E-A-D-G-C fit's nearly perfectly into early medieval music, because except the deepest C it's based on the concept of
perfect fifths.
And this was used in Pythagorean Tuning in medieval Europe regarding THIS article, especially look HERE.
But this article reveals much more interesting facts ... one quote from the intro:
| Quote: | | Finally, it may be worth pointing out at the outset that fixed tunings, including Pythagorean intonation, are more strictly applicable to fixed-pitch
instruments such as harps or keyboards than to singers or to other kinds of instruments. It seems safe to assume that medieval performers, like their
modern counterparts, may have varied their tuning of intervals considerably, although we cannot be sure quite how. |
Because both, Europe and the Arabic world, were influenced by ancient Greek music theory, it seems, that all this is even applicable to the medieval
oud.
PS: Maybe it's worth a try to downtune the Deep C to B. BTW ... I had a further look in JDowning's medieval oud project and guess what? He came to the
conclusion, that his oud should have the tuning B e a d' g' 
Greetings from Germany
Chris
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patheslip
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I'm not sure that tuning would have been quite so variable, at least in groups of musicians who shared apprenticeships or worked together. In a world
uncontaminated by continuous background recordings performers would have become attached to a pitch which would feel 'right', because it was all they
had known, and anything else would feel 'wrong', rather than out of tune.
In support of this suggestion here's a anecdote from the distant past: I once spent a couple of weeks walking down the Atlantic coast of France, where
I found lots of washed up bamboo. From some of this I made several flutes. When I got back home I found they were in concert pitch. I've no
pretence of absolute pitch in ordinary life, but in those surroundings, with no sound but the waves, my feet on the sand and the cry of sea birds in
the distance, I was able to access sound memories normally buried in the ubiquitous noise pollution of urban life.
As far as the shedding of microtones in Europe, could this have as much to do with the development of polyphony as with any perceived evil? People
all over the world use pentatonic scales when harmonising. One needs to keep it simple where there's more than one musical line.
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fernandraynaud
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Guido was for some reason very influential, and he had a distaste for "complicated stuff".
It seems polyphony only came later, so it wasn't pressing microtonal scales to "get out of the way".
Besides, polyphony and microtones are only incompatible in SOME of the specific contexts that western harmony created. A Major third was not even
considered harmonious until after the renaissance. Today an ET Major Third sounds OK, even though it's far from a perfect interval, and you can easily
squash a major third up to 25 cents without it sounding bad. I don't think it's accurate that you can't use maqamat with microtonal intervals
polyphonically, it's just that it hasn't been done much.
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Aymara
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Yes and no, because we have to differentiate between chords and ensembles:
When we talk about the Middle Ages, we talk about ca. 500-1400 A.D. and when we talk about medieval music, we talk about 3 eras, the Gregorian period
up to ca. 1100, followed by Ars Antiqua (Minnesang) and at last Ars Nova, which started around 1322.
To make a long story short, I think three things are important:
1. Music theory was only a matter of the clergy and music was considered evil, except when used to praise god. Especially dance music with it's erotic
flair was "written by the devil himself"  This didn't change before Ars Nova as
it seems.
2. The first mentioned music theorist who wrote about polyphony (chords) was Hucbald of Saint-Amand around 840. But something like ensembles came
later, approximately at the end of the 12th century or even later in Ars Nova. And this is the time when notation for rhythm became more and more
important.
3. Instruments were mainly used to accompany singers.
So far for Europe. But especially because of the restrictions by the clergy I would expect, that music developed different (more freely) in other
parts of the world.
So the question is, how developed music in the Arabic world in this era?
Greetings from Germany
Chris
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fernandraynaud
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I suspect our view of the dominance of the clergy is exaggerated. Accounting documents from cathedral building show that medieval workers were not
working very hard, hardly one day out of two, and not much more than 6-7 hours a day, and that the constant church holidays were hardly strict and
somber affairs. Music was logically a big part of these constant holidays, but of course people who could barely write their names were not likely to
be notating or dissecting music, though they might be playing in ensembles with excellent skills, and using all sorts of harmony and polyphony that
develops by trial and error, often error more than anything ;-) Can you imagine a group of people drinking and playing and not stumbling on all sorts
of cool rhythms and chords? If the Libre Vermeil was explicitly written to provide chaste music for pilgrimages, then there MUST have been some very
non-chaste boogie-woogie music going on!
And whenever the shepherds in the south-west of France took their animals up into the mountains, they would run into shepherds doing the same thing
from the other side, from Muslim Spain, and (we know as fact) they would discuss their respective religious beliefs around the camp fire (remember
they would have to be spending months together, and they were working on contract, responsible for their bosses' sheep, so nobody was going to waste
time fighting), and play their respective songs. This area was a cultural bridge, the French side was no more strictly orthodox than the Spanish side
and it is why the south of France was a hot bed of (Cathar) gnostic heresy, along with its troubadour tradition, and why the crusade/inquisition
destroyed Albi (in 1230). In the process they killed several hundred thousand people and thoroughly destroyed all the documents that might have told
us a lot about the real medieval world. The painstakingly detailed records from the trial of the inhabitants of Montaillou at the start of the 14th
century, a village on the French side that had covertly preserved its Cathar beliefs until then, confirm all this.
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Cyberquills
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Hi Bill
I play medieval music on my Iraqi oud tuned: C FF AA dd gg cc ff
Work like a charm. In fact I'll be performing medieval and middle eastern music at the Art gallery of Western Australia this Monday  )
Medieval music on the oud sounds A1
CQ
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patheslip
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Cyberquills : thanks for returning us to our 'moutons', as the french shepherds probably wouldn't have said. (speaking as they did either a farouche
Basque or some impenetrable dialect of Provençal)
Your tuning is the one I use too, excepting your extra f course. Good luck on Monday.
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Aymara
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For shure. In another thread Bill gave us THIS example, which demonstrates that nicely.
Greetings from Germany
Chris
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