Hi! Big stan but I must admit I'm not much into renfairing (mostly bc university) BUT! I started building a lute for a DnD session and, since your bio says we can ask, I was wondering what your thoughts are on tuning systems for lutes etc (I built it with five strings bc the board was too narrow :/ )
I’m so glad you asked!!! This is a special interest of mine, so I started infodumping and now this post is huge so I’ll put the details under a cut ^-^
Short answer: if you’re willing to dive deep, you should take a look at the instructions John Dowland wrote in the 1600s. If you just want my recommendation, this site seems like a good resource to know what notes to tune the strings to, and if you’re asking about temperament, I’d recommend somewhere around A=415 meantone.
So the tuning system that is used in western arts music today is a relatively new invention. From a physics standpoint, there is such a thing as an objectively “perfect” interval - like, a perfect octave refers to a specific relationship of frequencies, and if the interval isn’t quite perfect, the waves interfere with each other and cause “beats” (which you can actually hear if you pay attention!). BUT an octave doesn’t perfectly divide into the twelve-note scale we use in western music. Like, if you start at A and tune your piano such that B is a perfect second, C is a perfect third, D is a perfect fourth, etc. - by the time you get to G, the interval between G and the next A will be so big it’ll sound wonky.
The solution people came up with around the 18th century is to just make every note equally out of tune, so that everything’s just slightly off but nothing sounds too awful. It started to become a necessity because what with keyboard instruments (where you could play practically every note in the scale at once if you want to), larger orchestras (where everyone needs to be tuned the same), and more experimental music (i.e. composers started getting bored of the same intervals and started using more dissonance), people really needed a standardized tuning system. It’s called equal temperament, and that’s what we use today.
But before all that - well, there *was* no standard. Generally, musicians would pick the intervals they used the most, tune those perfectly, and then sorta fill out the rest from there. Usually they would prioritize thirds, fifths, and octaves. It meant that there would inevitably be a couple intervals that sounded terrible (called “wolf” chords), and the rest would sound awesome. Seriously, you should read some of the 17th century musicians complaining about how bad equal temperament sounds (our major thirds are particularly awful).
Now, my specialty is keyboard instruments, where all this is super relevant (I usually tune my clavichord to quarter comma meantone). My dad plays lute, and he says it turns out John Dowland (probably the most famous Renaissance lute composer) wrote a set of instructions on tuning the lute in his son’s book Varietie of LVTE Lessons. You can find a scanned copy of the original manuscript for free here - I think you'll end up with a modified Pythagorean tuning system by following those instructions, but I’m not 100% sure.
On the other hand, if you don't want to get into that much detail, you can probably just find a tuning app that supports different tuning systems and tune it to like, A=415 meantone and you should be good :D
If you're interested in tuning systems and the shift to equal temperament, "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony" by Ross Duffin is very good, and "Tuning The Historical Temperaments By Ear" by Owen Jorgensen is a fantastic guide to historical temperaments.
