I've been reading about the history of temperaments, and ran across something interesting. It's always been a mystery to me why modern guitars are based around the note E and there's one quote, by Christian Schubart, that may have something to do with it. He actually described the qualities of each major and minor key, and says this about E major - "E major. Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E major."

Since guitars are often used to obtain these emotions, I'm wondering if this might be an explanation why this note was choosen. Could be. Maybe. Although I have a feeling that it has more to do with the fact that the low E was the lowest pitch possible before producing excessive buzzing, the above quote has me thinking.

Found two more quotes:

E major:
"Uplifting" (Junker, 1777)
"Bright" (Gretry, 1797)

Reading more about temperaments, and also refreshing my memory on the history of scales, and it's pretty amazing. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, it brings life to the notes. I've always played and composed based on instinct and feeling, rarely math, but it's good to know the science behind it all.

Maybe you were hoping I'd jump in on this one.

The lowest note of E was not chosen but, like practically everything else in the history of music, evolved. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the ancestor to our modern guitar (or, I should say, an ancestor) was a four- or five-course instrument ("course" means a pair of strings, like a modern 12-string). There were many different tunings in use, but one of the most common was A-D-G-B-E. The basis is not E or even A, but really G (notice the D-G-B chord located at the center of the open strings). Why G? Simply put, there weren't as many chromatic notes (sharps and flats) in general use back then, and temperament systems obliged composers to stay close to a tonic of C, G, F, or D (there were some guitar tunings that favored C or F, but they fell out of use). The outer notes of the five-course guitar, A and E, were there to extend the overall range of the instrument, tuned a fourth below and above their neighboring notes as a continuation of the fourth-based tuning of the central G triad (the G to B major third is, as we all know, the exception to the tuning in fourths, needed to construct the G triad).

In the 18th century, the guitar was slowly converting from five courses to single six strings. Conceived primarily as a solo instrument or one used to accompany solo singing, builders apparently felt that the additional string should be on the low end rather than high end, to give the overall sound of the guitar a more solid bass, harmonically. Improvements in design and construction were also making lower-pitched strings a real possibility, since the new designs could handle the extra stress. Extending down another fourth below A, you arrive at E, which conveniently reproduced the topmost note down two octaves.

I hope you all took good notes, because this material will be included on the final exam.

Good stuff, but what's this "16th Century" you speak of, never heard of it, it must be a small town near Austin, right?

Doc - I wasn't sure if you'd hop in or not, but I figured you'd know the answer if you did.

Interesting stuff, indeed. I didn't know these things about lineage of the modern guitar.

I think Doc's answer begs the larger question, "what influenced the choice of the G-major embedded triad over the C-major or F-major triad?" Some lute tunings included an embedded minor triad rather than a major triad. Ultimately, these choices were all considered unacceptable at some period in the history of the development of the guitar. Any ideas why?

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Originally posted by bishopdm:
I think Doc's answer begs the larger question, "what influenced the choice of the G-major embedded triad over the C-major or F-major triad?" Some lute tunings included an embedded minor triad rather than a major triad. Ultimately, these choices were all considered unacceptable at some period in the history of the development of the guitar. Any ideas why?

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It was great foresight in preparation for all those country songs.

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Originally posted by Robert Forman:
Good stuff, but what's this "16th Century" you speak of, never heard of it, it must be a small town near Austin, right?

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By "16th century," I mean "pre-war" (the 30 years war, of course).

quote:

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Originally posted by bishopdm:
"what influenced the choice of the G-major embedded triad over the C-major or F-major triad?" Some lute tunings included an embedded minor triad rather than a major triad. Ultimately, these choices were all considered unacceptable at some period in the history of the development of the guitar. Any ideas why?

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Good question. I certainly don't have an answer, nor am I aware of anyone who does (off the top of my head). Pure speculation: it could have had something to do with the scale and overall design of these early instruments, which may have simply sounded better tuned to these pitches.

Another idea is that the triad's presence was itself a kind of by-product, rather than a primary purpose, of the tuning. Going back to the five-course guitar (I'm always quite full after one of these ), if you start at A and go up consistently in fourths, you get A-D-G-C-F. Looks OK at first, but it leaves you with a minor 6th between the outer strings, considered a dissonant sound around that time. By throwing in the major third (B instead of C) you land on E, a nice stable perfect 5th for your outer notes. Could have something to do with it.

Hi Doc:

I think you're right on when you mention the scale and overall design as possibly reasons leading to the pitch level of the present tuning: there was probably a very practical reason for the choice. But don't forget that the perfect fourth was still considered a dissonance long after the minor sixth was accepted as a consonance (as early as the 14th century, depending on which theorist you read), so I wonder if dissonance between open strings was really a concern.

I'll bet it was because 16th century banjos could only play in G, much like today.

The more I think about it, the more I tend to agree with bishopdm. Perceived dissonances between open strings probably weren't an explicit concern. That's what I get for hypothesizing off the cuff.

As to the other point made by bishopdm (realizing that we are getting further off topic, but that's half the fun), I don't think it's quite true that fourths were considered dissonances long after minor sixths became theoretical consonances. Perfect fourths are called "perfect" precisely because they had been considered consonant from ancient Greece all the way through the middle ages. They were one of the original Pythagorean consonances, produced by ratios between the integers 1-4 (2:1 perfect octave, 3:2 perfect 5th, 3:1 compound perfect fifth, 4:1 compound octave, and 4:3 perfect fourth). The first theorists to admit the minor 6th as a consonance (in the 14th century, as bishopdm pointed out), were the very same ones that first considered the perfect fourth a dissonance. The inclusion of one and the exclusion of the other overlapped, in other words. As late as the 16th and 17th centuries, plenty of theorists maintained the older view that the P4 is consonant, and were having to fudge their math a little bit in order to admit 3ds and 6ths.

Of course, there were routinely big differences between theoretical systems and actual musical practice, so the theorists' positions might not have always had an overriding impact on guitar tunings.

Can someone please remind me what this has to do with Collings?

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