A lute ( or ) is any plucked
string instrument
String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the ...
with a
neck
The neck is the part of the body on many vertebrates that connects the head with the torso. The neck supports the weight of the head and protects the nerves that carry sensory and motor information from the brain down to the rest of the body. In ...
and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either
fret
A fret is any of the thin strips of material, usually metal wire, inserted laterally at specific positions along the neck or fretboard of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck. On some historical instrume ...
ted or unfretted.
More specifically, the term "lute" can refer to an instrument from the
family
Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...
of
European lutes. The term also refers generally to any string instrument having the strings running in a plane parallel to the
sound table (in the
Hornbostel–Sachs
Hornbostel–Sachs or Sachs–Hornbostel is a system of musical instrument classification devised by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs, and first published in the in 1914. An English translation was published in the '' Galpin Society Jo ...
system).
The strings are attached to pegs or posts at the end of the neck, which have some type of turning mechanism to enable the player to tighten the tension on the string or loosen the tension before playing (which respectively raise or lower the pitch of a string), so that each string is tuned to a specific pitch (or note). The lute is plucked or strummed with one hand while the other hand "frets" (presses down) the strings on the neck's fingerboard. By pressing the strings on different places of the fingerboard, the player can shorten or lengthen the part of the string that is vibrating, thus producing higher or lower pitches (notes).
The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern ''
oud
, image=File:oud2.jpg
, image_capt=Syrian oud made by Abdo Nahat in 1921
, background=
, classification=
* String instruments
*Necked bowl lutes
, hornbostel_sachs=321.321-6
, hornbostel_sachs_desc=Composite chordophone sounded with a plectrum
, ...
'' descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. The lute is used in a great variety of instrumental music from the
Medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...
to the late
Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
eras and was the most important instrument for secular music in the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
. During the
Baroque music
Baroque music ( or ) refers to the period or dominant style of Western classical music composed from about 1600 to 1750. The Baroque style followed the Renaissance period, and was followed in turn by the Classical period after a short transiti ...
era, the lute was used as one of the instruments which played the ''
basso continuo
Basso continuo parts, almost universal in the Baroque era (1600–1750), provided the harmonic structure of the music by supplying a bassline and a chord progression. The phrase is often shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing th ...
''
accompaniment
Accompaniment is the musical part which provides the rhythmic and/or harmonic support for the melody or main themes of a song or instrumental piece. There are many different styles and types of accompaniment in different genres and styles ...
parts. It is also an accompanying instrument in vocal works. The lute player either improvises ("realizes") a chordal accompaniment based on the
figured bass
Figured bass is musical notation in which numerals and symbols appear above or below (or next to) a bass note. The numerals and symbols (often accidentals) indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones that a musician playing piano, harpsic ...
part, or plays a written-out accompaniment (both
music notation
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
and
tablature
Tablature (or tabulature, or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches.
Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuela, as well as many fr ...
("tab") are used for lute). As a small instrument, the lute produces a relatively quiet sound. The player of a lute is called a ''lutenist'', ''lutanist'' or ''lutist'', and a maker of lutes (or any similar string instrument, or
violin family
The violin family of musical instruments was developed in Italy in the 16th century. At the time the name of this family of instruments was viole da braccio which was used to distinguish them from the viol family (viole ''da gamba''). The standa ...
instruments) is referred to as a ''
luthier
A luthier ( ; AmE also ) is a craftsperson who builds or repairs string instruments that have a neck and a sound box. The word "luthier" is originally French and comes from the French word for lute. The term was originally used for makers o ...
''.
History and evolution of the lute
First lutes
Curt Sachs defined ''lute'' in the terminology section of ''The History of Musical Instruments'' as "composed of a body, and of a neck which serves both as a handle and as a means of stretching the strings beyond the body".
His definition focused on body and neck characteristics and not on the way the strings were sounded, so the fiddle counted as a "bowed lute".
[ Sachs also distinguished between the "long-necked lute" and the short-necked variety.][ The short-necked variety contained most of our modern instruments, "lutes, ]guitars
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...
, hurdy-gurdies
The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound by a hand-crank-turned, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to those of a vio ...
and the entire family of viol
The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitc ...
s and violins".[
The long lutes were the more ancient lutes; the "]Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
tanbūr ... faithfully preserved the outer appearance of the ancient lutes of Babylonia
Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state c. ...
and Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
". He further categorized long lutes with a "pierced lute" and "long neck lute". The ''pierced lute'' had a neck made from a stick that pierced the body (as in the ancient Egyptian long-neck lutes, and the modern African gunbrī).
The ''long lute'' had an attached neck, and included the sitar
The sitar ( or ; ) is a plucked stringed instrument, originating from the Indian subcontinent, used in Hindustani classical music. The instrument was invented in medieval India, flourished in the 18th century, and arrived at its present form in ...
, tanbur
The term ''Tanbur'' ( fa, تنبور, ) can refer to various long-necked string instruments originating in Mesopotamia, Southern or Central Asia. According to the ''New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', "terminology presents a compli ...
and tar
Tar is a dark brown or black viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon, obtained from a wide variety of organic materials through destructive distillation. Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat. "a dark brown or black bit ...
: the dutār had 2 strings, setār 3 strings, čārtār 4 strings, pančtār 5 strings.
Sachs's book is from 1941, and the archaeological
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
evidence available to him placed the early lutes at about 2000 BC. Discoveries since then have pushed the existence of the lute back to c. 3100 BC.
Musicologist
Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some mu ...
Richard Dumbrill today uses the word lute more categorically to discuss instruments that existed millennia before the term "lute" was coined.[. "The long-necked lute would have stemmed from the bow-harp and eventually became the tunbur; and the fat-bodied smaller lute would have evolved into the modern Oud ... the lute pre-dated the lyre which can therefore be considered as a development of the lute, rather than the contrary, as had been thought until quite recently ... Thus the lute not only dates but also locates the transition from musical protoliteracy to musical literacy ..."] Dumbrill documented more than 3,000 years of iconographic
Iconology is a method of interpretation in cultural history and the history of the visual arts used by Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky and their followers that uncovers the cultural, social, and historical background of themes and subjects in the visu ...
evidence of the lutes in Mesopotamia, in his book ''The Archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East''. According to Dumbrill, the lute family included instruments in Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
before 3000 BC.[ He points to a ]cylinder seal
A cylinder seal is a small round cylinder, typically about one inch (2 to 3 cm) in length, engraved with written characters or figurative scenes or both, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally ...
as evidence; dating from about 3100 BC or earlier and now in the possession of the British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
, the seal depicts on one side what is thought to be a woman playing a stick "lute".[ Culture/period Uruk, Date c. 3100 BC, Museum number 41632.] Like Sachs, Dumbrill saw length as distinguishing lutes, dividing the Mesopotamian lutes into a long variety and a short. His book does not cover the shorter instruments that became the European lute, beyond showing examples of shorter lutes in the ancient world. He focuses on the longer lutes of Mesopotamia, various types of necked chordophones that developed throughout the ancient world: Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, Egyptian
Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt.
Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to:
Nations and ethnic groups
* Egyptians, a national group in North Africa
** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...
(in the Middle Kingdom), Iranian
Iranian may refer to:
* Iran, a sovereign state
* Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran
* Iranian lan ...
(Elamite
Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was used in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite works disappear from the archeological record ...
and others), Jewish/Israelite, Hittite, Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
, Bulgar
Bulgar may refer to:
*Bulgars, extinct people of Central Asia
*Bulgar language, the extinct language of the Bulgars
* Oghur languages
Bulgar may also refer to:
*Bolghar, the capital city of Volga Bulgaria
*Bulgur, a wheat product
* Bulgar, an Ash ...
, Turkic, India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n, Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
, Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
/Cilician
Cilicia (); el, Κιλικία, ''Kilikía''; Middle Persian: ''klkyʾy'' (''Klikiyā''); Parthian: ''kylkyʾ'' (''Kilikiyā''); tr, Kilikya). is a geographical region in southern Anatolia in Turkey, extending inland from the northeastern coa ...
cultures. He names among the long lutes, the pandura
The pandura ( grc, πανδοῦρα, ''pandoura'') or pandore, an ancient string instrument, belonged in the broad class of the lute and guitar instruments. Akkadians played similar instruments from the 3rd millennium BC. Ancient Greek artwork d ...
and the tanbur
The term ''Tanbur'' ( fa, تنبور, ) can refer to various long-necked string instruments originating in Mesopotamia, Southern or Central Asia. According to the ''New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', "terminology presents a compli ...
The line of short-necked lutes was further developed to the east of Mesopotamia, in Bactria
Bactria (; Bactrian: , ), or Bactriana, was an ancient region in Central Asia in Amu Darya's middle stream, stretching north of the Hindu Kush, west of the Pamirs and south of the Gissar range, covering the northern part of Afghanistan, southwe ...
and Gandhara
Gandhāra is the name of an ancient region located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, more precisely in present-day north-west Pakistan and parts of south-east Afghanistan. The region centered around the Peshawar Vall ...
, into a short, almond-shaped lute.[ Curt Sachs talked about the depictions of Gandharan lutes in art, where they are presented in a mix of "Northwest Indian art" under "strong Greek influences".] The short-necked lutes in these Gandhara artworks
A work of art, artwork, art piece, piece of art or art object is an artistic creation of aesthetics, aesthetic value. Except for "work of art", which may be used of any work regarded as art in its widest sense, including works from ...
were "the venerable ancestor of the Islamic
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the mai ...
, the Sino-Japanese and the European
European, or Europeans, or Europeneans, may refer to:
In general
* ''European'', an adjective referring to something of, from, or related to Europe
** Ethnic groups in Europe
** Demographics of Europe
** European cuisine, the cuisines of Europe ...
lute families".[ He described the Gandhara lutes as having a "pear-shaped body tapering towards the short neck, a frontal stringholder, lateral pegs, and either four or five strings".][
]
Persian barbat, Arab oud
Bactria and Gandhara became part of the Sasanian Empire
The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the History of Iran, last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th cen ...
(224–651). Under the Sasanians, a short almond-shaped lute from Bactria came to be called the barbat or barbud, which was developed into the later Islamic world's ''oud
, image=File:oud2.jpg
, image_capt=Syrian oud made by Abdo Nahat in 1921
, background=
, classification=
* String instruments
*Necked bowl lutes
, hornbostel_sachs=321.321-6
, hornbostel_sachs_desc=Composite chordophone sounded with a plectrum
, ...
'' or ''ud''.[ When the ]Moors
The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages.
Moors are not a distinct or ...
conquered Andalusia
Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a ...
in 711, they brought their ud or quitra
The kwitra (also '' quwaytara'', ''kouitra'' and ''quitra''); Arabic الكوترة or عود أندلسي (literally Andalusian oud); is an Algerian stringed instrument, sometimes referred to as the Algerian lute. The instrument is tied to And ...
along, into a country that had already known a lute tradition under the Romans, the pandura
The pandura ( grc, πανδοῦρα, ''pandoura'') or pandore, an ancient string instrument, belonged in the broad class of the lute and guitar instruments. Akkadians played similar instruments from the 3rd millennium BC. Ancient Greek artwork d ...
.
During the 8th and 9th centuries, many musicians and artists from across the Islamic world flocked to Iberia. Among them was Abu l-Hasan 'Ali Ibn Nafi' (789–857), a prominent musician, who had trained under Ishaq al-Mawsili
Ishaq al-Mawsili ( ar, إسحاق الموصلي; 767/772 – March 850) was an Arab musician of Persian origin active as a composer, singer, music theorist and writer on music. The leading musician of his time in the Abbasid Caliphate, he served ...
(d. 850) in Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...
and was exiled to Andalusia before 833. He taught and has been credited with adding a fifth string to his oud[ and with establishing one of the first schools of ]music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
in Córdoba.
By the 11th century, Muslim Iberia had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually to Provence
Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bor ...
, influencing French troubadour
A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a ''trobairit ...
s and trouvères and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. While Europe developed the lute, the ''oud'' remained a central part of Arab music, and broader Ottoman music, undergoing a range of transformations.
Beside the introduction of the lute to Spain (Andalusia
Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a ...
) by the Moors, another important point of transfer of the lute from Arabian to European culture was Sicily
(man) it, Siciliana (woman)
, population_note =
, population_blank1_title =
, population_blank1 =
, demographics_type1 = Ethnicity
, demographics1_footnotes =
, demographi ...
, where it was brought either by Byzantine or later by Muslim musicians.[Colin Lawson and Robin Stowell]
''The Cambridge History of Musical Performance''
Cambridge University Press, February 16, 2012 There were singer-lutenists at the court in Palermo
Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan ...
after the Norman conquest of the island from the Muslims, and the lute is depicted extensively in the ceiling paintings in the Palermo's royal Cappella Palatina
The Palatine Chapel ( it, Cappella Palatina) is the royal chapel of the Norman Palace in Palermo, Sicily. This building is a mixture of Byzantine, Norman and Fatimid architectural styles, showing the tricultural state of Sicily during the 12t ...
, dedicated by the Norman King Roger II of Sicily
Roger II ( it, Ruggero II; 22 December 1095 – 26 February 1154) was King of Sicily and Africa, son of Roger I of Sicily
Roger I ( it, Ruggero I, Arabic: ''رُجار'', ''Rujār''; Maltese: ''Ruġġieru'', – 22 June 1101), nicknamed Rog ...
in 1140.[ His ]Hohenstaufen
The Hohenstaufen dynasty (, , ), also known as the Staufer, was a noble family of unclear origin that rose to rule the Duchy of Swabia from 1079, and to royal rule in the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages from 1138 until 1254. The dynasty ...
grandson Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick II (German language, German: ''Friedrich''; Italian language, Italian: ''Federico''; Latin: ''Federicus''; 26 December 1194 – 13 December 1250) was King of Sicily from 1198, King of Germany from 1212, King of Italy and Holy Roman Em ...
(1194–1250) continued integrating Muslims into his court, including Moorish musicians.[Roger Boase]
''The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love: A Critical Study of European Scholarship''
Manchester University Press, 1977, pp. 70–71. Frederick II made visits to the Lech valley
The Lechtal is an alpine valley in Austria, the greater part of which belongs to the state of Tyrol and the smaller part to Vorarlberg. The Lech river flows through the valley.
Location
The valley is bounded geographically by the Lechtal Alps ...
and Bavaria between 1218 and 1237 with a "Moorish Sicilian retinue". By the 14th century, lutes had spread throughout Italy and, probably because of the cultural influence of the Hohenstaufen kings and emperor, based in Palermo
Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan ...
, the lute had also made significant inroads into the German-speaking lands. By 1500, the valley and Füssen
Füssen is a town in Bavaria, Germany, in the district of Ostallgäu, situated one kilometre from the Austrian border. The town is known for violin manufacturing and as the closest transportation hub for the Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau cast ...
had several lute-making families, and in the next two centuries the area hosted "famous names of 16th and 17th century lutemaking".
Although the major entry of the short lute was in Western Europe
Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context.
The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
, leading to a variety of lute styles, the short lute entered Europe in the East as well; as early as the sixth century, the Bulgars brought the short-necked variety of the instrument called komuz
The komuz or qomuz ( ky, комуз , az, Qopuz, tr, Kopuz) is an ancient fretless string instrument used in Central Asian music, related to certain other Turkic string instruments, the Mongolian tovshuur, and the lute. The instrument can be f ...
to the Balkans.
From Middle Ages to Baroque
Medieval lutes were four- and five- course instruments, plucked with a quill as a plectrum
A plectrum is a small flat tool used for plucking or strumming of a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick and is held as a separate tool in the player's hand. In harpsic ...
. There were several sizes and, by the end of the Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
, seven sizes (up to the great octave bass) are documented. Song accompaniment was probably the lute's primary function in the Middle Ages, but very little music securely attributable to the lute survives from before 1500. Medieval and early-Renaissance song accompaniments were probably mostly improvised, hence the lack of written records.
In the last few decades of the fifteenth century, to play Renaissance polyphony on a single instrument, lutenists gradually abandoned the quill in favor of plucking the instrument with the fingers. The number of courses grew to six and beyond. The lute was the premier solo instrument of the sixteenth century, but continued to accompany singers as well.
About 1500, many Iberia
The Iberian Peninsula (),
**
* Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica''
**
**
* french: Péninsule Ibérique
* mwl, Península Eibérica
* eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...
n lutenists adopted vihuela de mano
The vihuela () is a 15th-century fretted plucked Spanish string instrument, shaped like a guitar (figure-of-eight form offering strength and portability) but tuned like a lute. It was used in 15th- and 16th-century Spain as the equivalent of ...
, a viol
The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitc ...
-shaped instrument tuned like the lute; both instruments continued in coexistence. This instrument also found its way to parts of Italy that were under Spanish domination (especially Sicily and the papal states under the Borgia pope Alexander VI who brought many Catalan musicians to Italy), where it was known as the viola da mano.
By the end of the Renaissance, the number of courses had grown to ten, and during the Baroque era the number continued to grow until it reached 14 (and occasionally as many as 19). These instruments, with up to 35 strings, required innovations in the structure of the lute. At the end of the lute's evolution the archlute
The archlute ( es, archilaúd, it, arciliuto, german: Erzlaute) is a European plucked string instrument developed around 1600 as a compromise between the very large theorbo, the size and re-entrant tuning of which made for difficulties in the p ...
, theorbo
The theorbo is a plucked string instrument of the lute family, with an extended neck and a second pegbox. Like a lute, a theorbo has a curved-back sound box (a hollow box) with a wooden top, typically with a sound hole, and a neck extending ou ...
and torban
The torban ( ua, Торбан, also ''teorban'' or ''Ukrainian theorbo'') is a Ukrainian musical instrument that combines the features of the Baroque lute with those of the psaltery. The Тorban differs from the more common European bass lute kno ...
had long extensions attached to the main tuning head to provide a greater resonating length for the bass strings, and since human fingers are not long enough to stop strings across a neck wide enough to hold 14 courses, the bass strings were placed outside the fretboard, and were played ''open'', i.e., without pressing them against the fingerboard with the left hand. "The lute is a very fragile instrument and so, although there are many surviving old lutes, very few with their original soundboards are in playable condition," which makes the Rauwolf Lute so notable.
Over the course of the Baroque era, the lute was increasingly relegated to the continuo accompaniment, and was eventually superseded in that role by keyboard instruments. The lute almost fell out of use after 1800. Some sorts of lute were still used for some time in Germany, Sweden, and Ukraine.
Etymology
The words ''lute'' and ''oud'' possibly derive from Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
''al-ʿoud'' (- literally means "the wood"). It may refer to the wooden plectrum
A plectrum is a small flat tool used for plucking or strumming of a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick and is held as a separate tool in the player's hand. In harpsic ...
traditionally used for playing the oud, to the thin strips of wood used for the back, or to the wooden soundboard that distinguished it from similar instruments with skin-faced bodies.
Many theories have been proposed for the origin of the Arabic name. Music scholar Eckhard Neubauer suggested that ''oud'' may be an Arabic borrowing from the Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
word ''rōd'' or ''rūd'', which meant string. Another researcher, archaeomusicologist Richard J. Dumbrill, suggests that ''rud'' came from the Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
''rudrī'' (रुद्री, meaning "string instrument") and transferred to Arabic and European languages by way of a Semitic language
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant a ...
.[. "'rud' comes from the Sanskrit 'rudrī' which means 'stringed instrument' ..The word spreads on the one hand via the Indo-European medium into the Spanish 'rota'; French 'rotte'; Welsh 'crwth', etc, and on the other, via the Semitic medium, into Arabic 'ud; Ugaritic 'd; Spanish 'laúd'; German 'Laute'; French 'luth'"] However, another theory according to Semitic language scholars, is that the Arabic ''ʿoud'' is derived from Syriac Syriac may refer to:
*Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic
*Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region
* Syriac alphabet
** Syriac (Unicode block)
** Syriac Supplement
* Neo-Aramaic languages a ...
''ʿoud-a'', meaning "wooden stick" and "burning wood"—cognate to Biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of ...
ūḏ'', referring to a stick used to stir logs in a fire. Henry George Farmer
Henry George Farmer (17 January 1882 – 20 December 1965) was a British musicologist and Arabist. He studied under Thomas Hunter Weir, Professor of Oriental Languages at University of Glasgow. He wrote extensively about Arab musical influen ...
notes the similarity between '' ''and ''al-ʿawda'' ("the return" – of bliss).
Construction
Soundboard
Lutes are made almost entirely of wood. The soundboard is a teardrop-shaped thin flat plate of resonant wood (typically spruce
A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' (), a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the Earth. ''Picea'' is the sole genus in the subfami ...
). In all lutes the soundboard has a single (sometimes triple) decorated sound hole under the strings called the ''rose''. The sound hole is not open, but rather covered with a grille in the form of an intertwining vine or a decorative knot, carved directly out of the wood of the soundboard.
The geometry of the lute soundboard is relatively complex, involving a system of barring that places braces perpendicular to the strings at specific lengths along the overall length of the belly, the ends of which are angled to abut the ribs on either side for structural reasons. Robert Lundberg, in his book ''Historical Lute Construction'', suggests ancient builders placed bars according to whole-number ratios of the scale length and belly length. He further suggests the inward bend of the soundboard (the "belly scoop") is a deliberate adaptation by ancient builders to afford the lutenist's right hand more space between the strings and soundboard.
Soundboard thickness varies, but generally hovers between . Some luthiers tune the belly as they build, removing mass and adapting bracing to produce desirable sonic results. The lute belly is almost never finished, but in some cases the luthier may size the top with a very thin coat of shellac
Shellac () is a resin secreted by the female lac bug on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is processed and sold as dry flakes and dissolved in alcohol to make liquid shellac, which is used as a brush-on colorant, food glaze and ...
or glair to help keep it clean. The belly joins directly to the rib, without a lining glued to the sides, and a cap and counter cap are glued to the inside and outside of the bottom end of the bowl to provide rigidity and increased gluing surface.
After joining the top to the sides, a half-binding is usually installed around the edge of the soundboard. The half-binding is approximately half the thickness of the soundboard and is usually made of a contrasting color wood. The rebate for the half-binding must be extremely precise to avoid compromising structural integrity.
Back
The ''back'' or the shell is assembled from thin strips of hardwood (maple, cherry, ebony, rosewood, gran, wood and/or other tonewoods) called ''ribs'', joined (with glue) edge to edge to form a deep rounded body for the instrument. There are braces inside on the soundboard to give it strength.
Neck
The ''neck
The neck is the part of the body on many vertebrates that connects the head with the torso. The neck supports the weight of the head and protects the nerves that carry sensory and motor information from the brain down to the rest of the body. In ...
'' is made of light wood, with a veneer of hardwood (usually ebony) to provide durability for the ''fretboard
The fingerboard (also known as a fretboard on fretted instruments) is an important component of most stringed instrument
String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating s ...
'' beneath the strings. Unlike most modern stringed instruments, the lute's fretboard is mounted flush with the top. The ''pegbox
A variety of methods are used to tune different stringed instruments. Most change the pitch produced when the string is played by adjusting the tension of the strings.
A tuning peg in a pegbox is perhaps the most common system. A peg has a g ...
'' for lutes before the Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
era was angled back from the neck at almost 90° (see image), presumably to help hold the low-tension strings firmly against the ''nut'' which, traditionally, is not glued in place but is held in place by string pressure only. The ''tuning peg
A variety of methods are used to tune different stringed instruments. Most change the pitch produced when the string is played by adjusting the tension of the strings.
A tuning peg in a pegbox is perhaps the most common system. A peg has a g ...
s'' are simple pegs of hardwood, somewhat tapered, that are held in place by friction in holes drilled through the pegbox.
As with other instruments that use friction pegs, the wood for the pegs is crucial. As the wood suffers dimensional changes through age and loss of humidity, it must retain a reasonably circular cross-section to function properly—as there are no gears or other mechanical aids for tuning
Tuning can refer to:
Common uses
* Tuning, the process of tuning a tuned amplifier or other electronic component
* Musical tuning, musical systems of tuning, and the act of tuning an instrument or voice
** Guitar tunings
** Piano tuning, adjusti ...
the instrument. Often pegs were made from suitable fruitwoods such as European pearwood, or equally dimensionally stable analogues. Matheson, 1720, said, "If a lute-player has lived eighty years, he has surely spent sixty years tuning."
Bridge
The bridge, sometimes made of a fruitwood, is attached to the soundboard typically between a fifth and a seventh of the belly length. It does not have a separate saddle but has holes bored into it to which the strings attach directly. The bridge is made so that it tapers in height and length, with the small end holding the trebles and the higher and wider end carrying the basses. Bridges are often colored black with carbon black in a binder, often shellac and often have inscribed decoration. The scrolls or other decoration on the ends of lute bridges are integral to the bridge, and are not added afterwards as on some Renaissance guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...
s (cf Joachim Tielke
Joachim Tielke (14 October 1641 – 19 January 1719) was a German maker of musical instruments. He was born in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), Duchy of Prussia a fief of Kingdom of Poland, and died in Hamburg.
A publication was dedicated to him b ...
's guitars).
Frets
The fret
A fret is any of the thin strips of material, usually metal wire, inserted laterally at specific positions along the neck or fretboard of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck. On some historical instrume ...
s are made of loops of gut tied around the neck. They fray with use, and must be replaced from time to time. A few additional partial frets of wood are usually glued to the body of the instrument, to allow stopping the highest-pitched courses up to a full octave higher than the open string, though these are considered anachronistic by some (though John Dowland and Thomas Robinson describe the practice of gluing wooden frets onto the soundboard). Given the choice between nylon and gut, many luthiers prefer to use gut, as it conforms more readily to the sharp angle at the edge of the fingerboard.
Strings
Strings were historically made of animal gut, usually from the small intestine of sheep (sometimes in combination with metal) and are still made of gut or a synthetic substitute, with metal windings on the lower-pitched strings. Modern manufacturers make both gut and nylon strings, and both are in common use. Gut is more authentic for playing period pieces, though unfortunately it is also more susceptible to irregularity and pitch instability owing to changes in humidity. Nylon offers greater tuning stability, but is seen as anachronistic by purists, as its timbre differs from the sound of earlier gut strings. Such concerns are moot when more recent compositions for the lute are performed.
Of note are the ''catlines'' used as basses on historical instruments. Catlines are several gut strings wound together and soaked in heavy metal solutions to increase the string mass. Catlines can be quite large in diameter compared to wound nylon strings of the same pitch. They produce a bass that differs somewhat in timbre from nylon basses.
The lute's strings are arranged in '' courses'', of two strings each, though the highest-pitched course usually consists of only a single string, called the ''chanterelle''. In later Baroque lutes two upper courses are single. The courses are numbered sequentially, counting from the highest pitched, so that the ''chanterelle'' is the ''first course'', the next pair of strings is the ''second course'', etc. Thus an 8-course Renaissance lute usually has 15 strings, and a 13-course Baroque lute has 25.
The courses are tuned in unison for high and intermediate pitches, but for lower pitches one of the two strings is tuned an octave higher (the course where this split starts changed over the history of the lute). The two strings of a course are virtually always stopped and plucked together, as if a single string—but in rare cases, a piece requires that the two strings of a course be stopped or plucked separately. The tuning of a lute is a complicated issue, described in a section of its own below
Below may refer to:
*Earth
*Ground (disambiguation)
*Soil
*Floor
*Bottom (disambiguation)
Bottom may refer to:
Anatomy and sex
* Bottom (BDSM), the partner in a BDSM who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role, to that of the top or ...
. The lute's design makes it extremely light for its size.
Lute in the modern world
The lute enjoyed a revival with the awakening of interest in historical music around 1900 and throughout the century. That revival was further boosted by the early music
Early music generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1750). Originating in Europe, early music is a broad musical era for the beginning of Western classical m ...
movement in the twentieth century. Important pioneers in lute revival were Julian Bream
Julian Alexander Bream (15 July 193314 August 2020) was an English classical guitarist and lutenist. Regarded as one of the most distinguished classical guitarists of the 20th century, he played a significant role in improving the public per ...
, Hans Neemann, Walter Gerwig, Suzanne Bloch and Diana Poulton
Diana Poulton, also known as Edith Eleanor Diana Chloe Poulton née Kibblewhite (18 April 1903, Storington – 15 December 1995, Heyshott) was an English lutenist and musicologist.
From 1919 through 1923 she studied at the Slade School of Fine Ar ...
. Lute performances are now not uncommon; there are many professional lutenists, especially in Europe where the most employment is found, and new compositions for the instrument are being produced by composers.
During the early days of the early music movement, many lutes were constructed by available luthiers, whose specialty was often classical guitars. Such lutes were heavily built with construction similar to classical guitars', with fan bracing, heavy tops, fixed frets, and lined sides, all of which are anachronistic to historical lutes. As lutherie scholarship increased, makers began constructing instruments based on historical models, which have proven lighter and more responsive instruments.
Lutes built at present are invariably replicas or near copies of those surviving historical instruments that are in museums or private collections. Many are custom-built, but there is a growing number of luthiers who build lutes for general sale, and there is a fairly strong, if small, second-hand market. Because of this fairly limited market, lutes are generally more expensive than mass-produced modern instruments: factory-made guitars and violins, for example, can be purchased more cheaply than low-end lutes, but at the highest level of modern instruments, guitars and violins tend to command higher prices than lutes.
Unlike in the past, there are many types of lutes encountered today: 5-course medieval lutes, renaissance lutes of 6 to 10 courses in many pitches for solo and ensemble performance of Renaissance works, the archlute of Baroque works, 11-course lutes in d-minor tuning for 17th-century French, German and Czech music, 13/14-course d-minor tuned German Baroque Lutes for later High Baroque and Classical music, theorbo
The theorbo is a plucked string instrument of the lute family, with an extended neck and a second pegbox. Like a lute, a theorbo has a curved-back sound box (a hollow box) with a wooden top, typically with a sound hole, and a neck extending ou ...
for basso continuo parts in Baroque ensembles, gallichons/mandora
File:Mandora MET DP168838.jpg, 6~9 courses lute (Calchedon, Calichon) (1726)Georg Kinsky: Musikhistorisches Museum von Wilhelm Heyer in Cöln, Bd. 2, Köln 1912, S. 98.
File:Gallichon, Muzeum Instrumentów Muzycznych w Pradze.jpg, Gallichon
The ...
s, bandoras, orpharion
The orpharion ( or ) or opherion is a plucked stringed instrument from the Renaissance, a member of the cittern family. Its construction is similar to the larger bandora and an ancestor of the guitar. The metal strings are tuned like a lute and ...
s and others.
Lutenistic practice has reached considerable heights in recent years, thanks to a growing number of world-class lutenists: Rolf Lislevand
Rolf Lislevand (30 December 1961 in Oslo, Norway), is a Norwegian performer of Early music specialising on lute, vihuela, baroque guitar and theorbo.
Biography
From 1980 to 1984, Lislevand studied classical guitar at the Norwegian Academy of Mu ...
, Hopkinson Smith
Hopkinson Smith (born December 7, 1946) is an American lutenist and pedagogue, longtime resident in Basel, Switzerland.
Smith was born in New York City, the son of architectural writer and photographer G. E. Kidder Smith. He graduated from Har ...
, Paul O'Dette
Paul Raymond O'Dette (born February 2, 1954) is an American lutenist, conductor, and musicologist specializing in early music.
Biography
O'Dette, who was born in Pittsburgh, began playing the electric guitar in a rock band in Columbus, Ohio, w ...
, Christopher Wilke
Christopher Wilke (born 1973) is an American composer, lutenist, guitarist, recording artist, and teacher.
Biography
Born in Cincinnati, Wilke studied guitar and composition at the College of Mount St. Joseph, and took his master's degree in g ...
, Andreas Martin, Robert Barto
Robert Barto (born 1950's in San Diego) is an American lutenist specializing in the music of the Baroque and Empfindsamkeit periods, in particular the ''oeuvres'' of Sylvius Leopold Weiss and Bernhard Joachim Hagen.
Biography
He is a graduate ...
, Eduardo Egüez Eduardo Egüez (born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1959) is a lutenist, theorbist, and guitarist acclaimed for his interpretations of music by J.S.Bach.
Egüez began by first studying guitar with Miguel Angel Girollet and Eduardo Fernández (guitar ...
, Edin Karamazov Edin Karamazov (born 1965) is a Bosnian musician, lutenist and guitarist.
Biography
Karamazov studied lute with Hopkinson Smith at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. He has worked with such ensembles as Hesperion XX, L'Arpeggiata, Hilliard Ensemble ...
, Nigel North
Nigel North (born 5 June 1954) is an English lutenist, musicologist, and pedagogue.
Student days
He studied guitar on a scholarship to the junior department of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (1964–70), taking up the lute in 1969, at ...
, Christopher Wilson, Luca Pianca
Luca Pianca (born 1958) is a Swiss musician-lutenist whose specialty is archlute. In 1985 he co - founded ''Il Giardino Armonico''., a pioneering Italian early-music ensemble based in Milan. He has premiered works by the contemporary lutenist ...
, Yasunori Imamura
is a Japanese lutenist.
Imamura has appeared on more than 150 CDs, both as a soloist and as a member of ensembles. His solo recordings include the complete lute works by Johann Sebastian Bach (two versions : for Naxos in 2018 and for Etcetera ...
, Anthony Bailes
Anthony Bailes is a British lutenist.
Anthony Bailes initially played the classical guitar, and after meeting Diana Poulton began to study the lute with her. He was awarded a grant by the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1971, and subsequently s ...
, Peter Croton
Peter Croton (born 1957, in New York City) is a Swiss-American lutenist and guitarist. He has attained prominence in his field through his numerous recordings, performances, publications, and teaching engagements. His recorded repertoire includes m ...
, Xavier Diaz-Latorre
Xavier Díaz Latorre is a Spanish musician. Born in Barcelona in 1968, he studied at advanced level with Oscar Ghiglia at the Musikhochschule, Basel, graduating in 1993. His subsequent interest in early music led him to study the lute with Hopkin ...
, Evangelina Mascardi
Maria Evangelina Mascardi is an Argentinian lutenist, guitarist, and theorbist, known for her concert performances. She is currently a university professor residing in Orte, and teaches Lute at the Conservatorio Antonio Vivaldi in Alessandria, ...
and Jakob Lindberg Jakob Lindberg (born 16 October 1952) is a Sweden, Swedish lutenist, performing solo, in small and large ensembles, and also directing operas, using instruments of the lute and guitar families. He is known for the first ever recording of the Complet ...
. Singer-songwriter Sting
Sting may refer to:
* Stinger or sting, a structure of an animal to inject venom, or the injury produced by a stinger
* Irritating hairs or prickles of a stinging plant, or the plant itself
Fictional characters and entities
* Sting (Middle-eart ...
has also played lute and archlute, in and out of his collaborations with Edin Karamazov Edin Karamazov (born 1965) is a Bosnian musician, lutenist and guitarist.
Biography
Karamazov studied lute with Hopkinson Smith at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. He has worked with such ensembles as Hesperion XX, L'Arpeggiata, Hilliard Ensemble ...
, and Jan Akkerman
Jan Akkerman (born 24 December 1946) is a Dutch guitarist. He first found international commercial success with the band Focus (band), Focus, which he co-founded with Thijs van Leer. After leaving Focus, he continued as a solo musician, adding ja ...
released two albums of lute music in the 1970s while he was a guitarist in the Dutch rock band
A rock band or pop band is a small musical ensemble that performs rock music, pop music, or a related genre. A four-piece band is the most common configuration in rock and pop music. In the early years, the configuration was typically two guita ...
Focus
Focus, or its plural form foci may refer to:
Arts
* Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in South Australia Film
*''Focus'', a 1962 TV film starring James Whitmore
* ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based ...
. Lutenist/Composer Jozef van Wissem
Jozef van Wissem (born 22 November 1962) is a Dutch minimalist composer and lute player based in Brooklyn. In 2013 Van Wissem won the Cannes Soundtrack Award for the score of ''Only Lovers Left Alive'' at the Cannes Film Festival.
Career
Jozef v ...
composed the soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch
James Robert Jarmusch (; born January 22, 1953) is an American film director and screenwriter. He has been a major proponent of independent cinema since the 1980s, directing films including '' Stranger Than Paradise'' (1984), '' Down by Law'' ( ...
film ''Only Lovers Left Alive
''Only Lovers Left Alive'' is a 2013 fantasy comedy-drama film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, starring Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, Anton Yelchin, Jeffrey Wright, Slimane Dazi and John Hurt. An international co-producti ...
''.
Repertoire
Lutes were in widespread use in Europe at least since the 13th century, and documents mention numerous early performers and composers. However, the earliest surviving lute music dates from the late 15th century. Lute music flourished during the 16th and 17th centuries: numerous composers published collections of their music, and modern scholars have uncovered a vast number of manuscripts from the era—however, much of the music is still lost. In the second half of the 17th century lutes, vihuelas and similar instruments started losing popularity, and little music was written for the instrument after 1750. The interest in lute music was revived only in the second half of the 20th century.
Improvisation (making up music on the spot) was, apparently, an important aspect of lute performance, so much of the repertoire was probably never written down. Furthermore, it was only around 1500 that lute players began to transition from plectrum
A plectrum is a small flat tool used for plucking or strumming of a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick and is held as a separate tool in the player's hand. In harpsic ...
to plucking. That change facilitated complex polyphony, which required that they develop notation. In the next hundred years, three schools of tablature
Tablature (or tabulature, or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches.
Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuela, as well as many fr ...
notation gradually developed: Italian (also used in Spain), German, and French. Only the last survived into the late 17th century. The earliest known tablatures are for a six-stringed instrument, though evidence of earlier four- and five-stringed lutes exists. Tablature notation depends on the actual instrument the music is written for. To read it, a musician must know the instrument's tuning, number of strings, etc.
Renaissance and Baroque forms of lute music are similar to keyboard music of the periods. Intabulation Intabulation, from the Italian word ''intavolatura'', refers to an arrangement of a vocal or ensemble piece for keyboard, lute, or other plucked string instrument, written in tablature.
History
Intabulation was a common practice in 14th–16th c ...
s of vocal works were very common, as well as various dances, some of which disappeared during the 17th century, such as the piva
Piva may refer to:
* Piva (river), a river in Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina
* Piva, Montenegro, a region in Montenegro and tribe
* Piva River, Bougainville, Papua New Guinea
* Piva Trail, Bougainville, Papua New Guinea
** Battle for Piva Tr ...
and the saltarello
The ''saltarello'' is a musical dance originally from Italy. The first mention of it is in Add MS 29987, a late-fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century manuscript of Tuscan origin, now in the British Library. It was usually played in a fast tr ...
. The advent of polyphony brought about ''fantasias'': complex, intricate pieces with much use of imitative counterpoint. The improvisatory element, present to some degree in most lute pieces, is particularly evident in the early ricercares (not imitative as their later namesakes, but completely free), as well as in numerous preludial forms: preludes, tastar de corde ("testing the strings"), etc. During the 17th century keyboard and lute music went hand in hand, and by 1700 lutenists were writing suites of dances quite akin to those of keyboard composers. The lute was also used throughout its history as an ensemble instrument—most frequently in songs for voice and lute, which were particularly popular in Italy (see frottola
The frottola (; plural frottole) was the predominant type of Italian popular secular song of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. It was the most important and widespread predecessor to the madrigal. The peak of activity in composition ...
) and England.
The earliest surviving lute music is Italian, from a late 15th-century manuscript. The early 16th century saw Petrucci's publications
To publish is to make content available to the general public.[Berne Conve ...](_blank)
of lute music by Francesco Spinacino
Francesco Spinacino ( fl. 1507) was an Italian lutenist and composer. His surviving output comprises the first two volumes of Ottaviano Petrucci's influential series of lute music publications: ''Intabolatura de lauto libro primo'' and ''Intabolat ...
( 1507) and Joan Ambrosio Dalza Joan Ambrosio Dalza ( fl. 1508) was a Milanese lutenist and composer. His surviving works comprise the fourth volume of Ottaviano Petrucci's influential series of lute music publications, ''Intabolatura de lauto libro quarto'' (Venice, 1508). Dalza ...
( 1508); together with the so-called Capirola Lutebook, these represent the earliest stage of written lute music in Italy. The leader of the next generation of Italian lutenists, Francesco Canova da Milano
Francesco Canova da Milano (Francesco da Milano, also known as ''Il divino'', ''Francesco da Parigi'', etc.) (18 August 1497 – 2 January 1543) was an Italian lutenist and composer. He was born in Monza, near Milan, and worked for the papal cou ...
(1497–1543), is now acknowledged as one of the most famous lute composers in history. The bigger part of his output consists of pieces called fantasias or ricercares, in which he makes extensive use of imitation and sequence, expanding the scope of lute polyphony. In the early 17th century Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger
Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger (also: ''Johann(es) Hieronymus Kapsberger'' or ''Giovanni Geronimo Kapsperger''; c. 1580 – 17 January 1651) was an Austrian-Italy, Italian virtuoso performer and composer of the early Baroque period. A prolific and h ...
( 1580–1651) and Alessandro Piccinini
Alessandro Piccinini (1566 – 1638), was an Italian lutenist and composer.
Piccinini was born in Bologna into a musical family: his father Leonardo Maria Piccinini taught lute playing to Alessandro as well as his brothers Girolamo (d. 1615) and ...
(1566–1638) revolutionized the instrument's technique and Kapsberger, possibly, influenced the keyboard music of Girolamo Frescobaldi
Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi (; also Gerolamo, Girolimo, and Geronimo Alissandro; September 15831 March 1643) was an Italian composer and virtuoso keyboard player. Born in the Duchy of Ferrara, he was one of the most important composers of k ...
.
French written lute music began, as far as we know, with Pierre Attaingnant
Pierre Attaingnant (or Attaignant) (c. 1494 – late 1551 or 1552) was a French Music publisher (sheet music), music publisher, active in Paris.
Life
Attaingnant is considered to be first large-scale publisher of single-impression movable type for ...
's ( 1494 – 1551) prints, which comprised preludes, dances and intabulations. Particularly important was the Italian composer Albert de Rippe Albert de Rippe (''Alberto da Ripa da Mantova'') (c. 1500–1551) was an Italian lutenist and composer. He was born in Mantua and worked there before 1528, when he left for France. There, he joined the court of Francis I. De Rippe was evidently held ...
(1500–1551), who worked in France and composed polyphonic fantasias of considerable complexity. His work was published posthumously by his pupil, Guillaume de Morlaye Guillaume de Morlaye (c.1510–c.1558) was a French Renaissance era lutenist, composer and music publisher. He was a pupil of Albert de Rippe and lived and worked in Paris. In 1552 he received a ten-year license to publish music from Henry II, and ...
(born 1510), who, however, did not pick up the complex polyphony of de Rippe. French lute music declined during the second part of the 16th century; however, various changes to the instrument (the increase of diapason strings, new tunings, etc.) prompted an important change in style that led, during the early Baroque, to the celebrated style brisé ''Style brisé'' (French: "broken style") is a general term for irregular arpeggiated texture in instrumental music of the Baroque period. It is commonly used in discussion of music for lute, keyboard instruments, or the viol.
The original French ...
: broken, arpeggiated textures that influenced Johann Jakob Froberger
Johann Jakob Froberger ( baptized 19 May 1616 – 7 May 1667) was a German Baroque composer, keyboard virtuoso, and organist. Among the most famous composers of the era, he was influential in developing the musical form of the suite of dances in h ...
's suites. The French Baroque school is exemplified by composers such as Ennemond Gaultier
Ennemond Gaultier (Gaultier le Vieux, Gaultier de Lyon; also spelled ''Gautier'' or ''Gauthier'')
(c. 157517 December 1651) was a French lutenist and composer. He was one of the masters of the 17th century French lute school.
Gaultier was born i ...
(1575–1651), Denis Gaultier
Denis Gaultier (''Gautier'', ''Gaulthier''; also known as Gaultier le jeune and Gaultier de Paris) (1597 or 1602/3 – 1672) was a French lutenist and composer. He was a cousin of Ennemond Gaultier.
Life
Gaultier was born in Paris; two conflict ...
(1597/1603–1672), François Dufaut (before 1604 – before 1672) and many others. The last stage of French lute music is exemplified by Robert de Visée
Robert de Visée (c. 1655 – 1732/1733) was a French lutenist, guitarist, theorbist and viol player at the court of the kings Louis XIV and Louis XV, as well as a singer and composer for lute, theorbo and guitar.
Biography
Robert de Visée's pl ...
( 1655–1732/3), whose suites exploit the instrument's possibilities to the fullest.
The history of German written lute music started with Arnolt Schlick
Arnolt Schlick (July 18?,Keyl 1989, 110–11. c. 1455–1460 – after 1521) was a German organist, lutenist and composer of the Renaissance. He is grouped among the composers known as the Colorists. He was most probably born in Heidelberg and ...
( 1460–after 1521), who, in 1513, published a collection of pieces that included 14 voice and lute songs, and three solo lute pieces, alongside organ works. He was not the first important German lutenist, because contemporaries credited Conrad Paumann
Conrad Paumann (c. 1410January 24, 1473) was a German organist, lutenist and composer of the early Renaissance. A blind musician, he was one of the most talented musicians of the 15th century, and his performances created a sensation wherever he ...
( 1410–1473) with the invention of German lute tablature, though this claim remains unproven, and no lute works by Paumann survive. After Schlick, a string of composers developed German lute music: Hans Judenkünig
Hans may refer to:
__NOTOC__ People
* Hans (name), a masculine given name
* Hans Raj Hans, Indian singer and politician
** Navraj Hans, Indian singer, actor, entrepreneur, cricket player and performer, son of Hans Raj Hans
** Yuvraj Hans, Punjabi a ...
( 1445/50 – 1526), the Neusidler family (particularly Hans Neusidler
Hans Neusidler (also Neusiedler, Newsidler) (c.1508 – 2 February 1563), was a German composer and lutenist of the Renaissance.
Life
Neusidler was born in Pressburg (today Bratislava, Slovakia) and first enters the historical record in 1530, whe ...
( 1508/09 – 1563)) and others. During the second half of the 16th century, German tablature and German repertoire were gradually replaced by Italian and French tablature and international repertoire, respectively, and the Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (80 ...
(1618–1648) effectively stopped publications for half a century. German lute music was revived much later by composers such as Esaias Reusner
Esaias Reusner (the Younger) (29 April 1636 – 1 May 1679) was a German lutenist and composer.
Reusner was born in Löwenberg in Silesia, now Lwówek Śląski, Poland. His first lute teacher was his father Esaias (lutenist to the Prince of ...
( 1670), however, a distinctly German style came only after 1700 in the works of Silvius Leopold Weiss
Sylvius Leopold Weiss (12 October 168716 October 1750) was a German composer and lutenist.
Born in Grottkau near Breslau, the son of Johann Jacob Weiss, also a lutenist, he served at courts in Breslau, Rome, and Dresden, where he died. Until re ...
(1686–1750), one of the greatest lute composers, some of whose works were transcribed for keyboard by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard w ...
(1685–1750), who composed a few pieces for the lute himself (though it is unclear whether they were really intended for the lute, rather than another plucked string instrument or the lautenwerk
The lautenwerck (also spelled lautenwerk), alternatively called lute-harpsichord (lute-clavier) or keyboard lute, is a European keyboard instrument of the Baroque period. It is similar to a harpsichord, but with gut (sometimes Nylon) rather than ...
).
Of other European countries, particularly important are England and Spain. English-written lute music began only around 1540; however, the country produced numerous lutenists, of which John Dowland
John Dowland (c. 1563 – buried 20 February 1626) was an English Renaissance composer, lutenist, and singer. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep", " Come again", "Flow my tears", " I saw my Lady weepe", ...
(1563–1626) is perhaps the most famous. His influence spread very far: variations on his themes were written by keyboard composers in Germany decades after his death. Dowland's predecessors and colleagues, such as Anthony Holborne
Anthony ''AntonyHolborne ''Holburne(c. 1545 – 29 November 1602) was a composer of music for lute, cittern, and instrumental consort during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.
Life
An "Anthony Holburne" entered Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1562, ...
( 1545–1602) and Daniel Bacheler
Daniel Bacheler, also variously spelt Bachiler, Batchiler or Batchelar, (baptized 16 March 1572 – buried 29 January 1619) was an English lutenist and composer. Of all the English lutenist-composers, he is now credited as probably being th ...
(1572–1619), were less known. Spanish composers wrote mostly for the vihuela
The vihuela () is a 15th-century fretted plucked Spanish string instrument, shaped like a guitar (figure-of-eight form offering strength and portability) but tuned like a lute. It was used in 15th- and 16th-century Spain as the equivalent of t ...
; their main genres were polyphonic fantasias and (variations). Luys Milan (c. 1500 – after 1560) and Luys de Narváez ( 1526–1549) were particularly important for their contributions to the development of lute polyphony in Spain.
Finally, perhaps the most influential European lute composer was the Hungarian Bálint Bakfark
Bálint Bakfark (; in contemporary sources Valentin Bakfark or (from 1565 onward) Valentin Greff alias Bakfark, his name is variously spelled as ''Bacfarc'', ''Bakfarc'', ''Bakfarkh'', ''Bakffark'', ''Backuart'') (1526–30 – 15 or 22 August 1 ...
( 1526/30–1576), whose contrapuntal fantasias were much more difficult and tighter than those of his Western European contemporaries.
Ottorino Respighi
Ottorino Respighi ( , , ; 9 July 187918 April 1936) was an Italian composer, violinist, teacher, and musicologist and one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century. List of compositions by Ottorino Respighi, His compositions r ...
's famous orchestral suites called ''Ancient Airs and Dances'' are drawn from various books and articles on 16th- and 17th-century lute music transcribed by the musicologist Oscar Chilesotti, including eight pieces from a German manuscript ''Da un Codice Lauten-Buch'', now in a private library in northern Italy.
20th century revival and composers
The revival of lute-playing in the 20th century has its roots in the pioneering work of Arnold Dolmetsch
Eugène Arnold Dolmetsch (24 February 1858 – 28 February 1940), was a French-born musician and instrument maker who spent much of his working life in England and established an instrument-making workshop in Haslemere, Surrey. He was a leading f ...
(1858–1940); whose research into early music
Early music generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1750). Originating in Europe, early music is a broad musical era for the beginning of Western classical m ...
and instruments started the movement for authenticity. The revival of the lute gave composers an opportunity to create new works for it.
One of the first such composers was Johann Nepomuk David
Johann Nepomuk David (30 November 1895 – 22 December 1977) was an Austrian composer.
Life and career
David was born in Eferding. He was a choirboy in the monastery of Sankt Florian and studied at an episcopal teacher training college in Linz, ...
in Germany. Composer Vladimir Vavilov was a pioneer of the lute revival in the USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
, he was also the author of numerous musical hoax
A musical hoax (also musical forgery and musical mystification) is a piece of music composed by an individual who intentionally misattributes it to someone else.
Ascribed to historical figures
* Henri Casadesus
** Viola Concerto in B minor by " ...
es. Sandor Kallos and Toyohiko Satoh
is a Japanese lutenist and composer.
Life and career
At Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Satoh studied music history with Tatsuo Minagawa and guitar with Kazuhito Ohosawa. He gave his first guitar recital in the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan concert hall in 1965 ...
applied modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
idiom to the lute, Elena Kats-Chernin
Elena Davidovna Kats-Chernin (born 4 November 1957) is a Soviet-born Australian pianist and composer, best known for her ballet ''Wild Swans''.
Early life and career
Elena Kats-Chernin was born in Tashkent (now the capital of independent Uzbek ...
, Jozef van Wissem
Jozef van Wissem (born 22 November 1962) is a Dutch minimalist composer and lute player based in Brooklyn. In 2013 Van Wissem won the Cannes Soundtrack Award for the score of ''Only Lovers Left Alive'' at the Cannes Film Festival.
Career
Jozef v ...
and Alexandre Danilevsky
Alexandre Danilevski (russian: Александр Данилевский; born in 1957 in Saint Petersburg) is a Russian-born French composer, lutenist, vielle player, active in Metz, France. He is the artistic director of Syntagma, an early m ...
minimalist and post-minimalist idiom, Roman Turovsky-Savchuk
Roman Turovsky-Savchuk (Ukrainian: Роман Туровський-Савчук) is an American artist-painter, photographer and videoinstallation artist, as well as a lutenist-composer, , Paulo Galvão Paulo Galvão (born 1967 in Portimão, Algarve, Portugal) is a composer, lutenist, theorbist and guitarist. According to Dan Hill, Galvão has published "Musical hoax, musical forgeries" for baroque guitar under the name "Antonio da Costa". Galvão' ...
, Robert MacKillop
Rob MacKillop (born 1959) is a Scottish composer and multi-instrumentalist, specializing in lute, theorbo, vihuela, banjo, ukulele and both classical and Russian guitar. He is an important performer of Early Music in Scotland. He is also a phot ...
historicist idiom, and Ronn McFarlane
Ronn McFarlane (born 1953) is an American lutenist and composer, most notable as an interpreter of Renaissance music. He formerly taught lute at the Peabody Conservatory, and has recorded many albums as a solo performer and in collaboration with ...
New Age. This active movement by early music specialists has inspired composers in different fields; for example, in 1980, Akira Ifukube
was a Japanese classical and film music composer, best known for his works on the ''Godzilla'' franchise.
Biography Early years in Hokkaido
Akira Ifukube was born on 31 May 1914 in Kushiro, Japan as the third son of a police officer Toshimi ...
, a classical and film composer best known for the Godzilla
is a fictional monster, or '' kaiju'', originating from a series of Japanese films. The character first appeared in the 1954 film ''Godzilla'' and became a worldwide pop culture icon, appearing in various media, including 32 films produc ...
's theme, wrote the Fantasia for Baroque Lute with the historical tablature notation, rather than the modern staff one.
Tuning conventions
Lutes were made in a large variety of sizes, with varying numbers of strings/courses, and with no permanent standard for tuning. However, the following seems to have been ''generally'' true of the Renaissance lute.
A 6-course Renaissance tenor lute would be tuned to the same intervals as a tenor viol, with intervals of a ''perfect fourth'' between all the courses except the third and fourth, which differed only by a ''major third''. The tenor lute was usually tuned nominally "in G" (there was no pitch standard before the 20th century), named after the pitch of the highest course, yielding the pattern from the lowest course to the highest. (Much renaissance lute music can be played on a guitar by tuning the guitar's third string down by a half tone.)
For lutes with more than six courses, the extra courses would be added on the low end. Because of the large number of strings, lutes have very wide necks, and it is difficult to stop strings beyond the sixth course, so additional courses were usually tuned to pitches useful as bass notes rather than continuing the regular pattern of fourths, and these lower courses are most often played without stopping. Thus an 8-course tenor Renaissance lute would be tuned to , and a 10-course to .
However, none of these patterns were ''de rigueur'', and a modern lutenist occasionally retunes one or more courses between pieces. Manuscripts bear instructions for the player, e.g., ''7e chœur en fa'' = "seventh course in ''fa''" (= F in the standard C scale).
The first part of the seventeenth century was a period of considerable diversity in the tuning of the lute, particularly in France. However, by around 1670 the scheme known today as the "Baroque" or "D minor" tuning became the norm, at least in France and in northern and central Europe. In this case, the first six courses outline a d-minor triad, and an additional five to seven courses are tuned generally scalewise below them. Thus the 13-course lute played by composer Sylvius Leopold Weiss
Sylvius Leopold Weiss (12 October 168716 October 1750) was a German composer and lutenist.
Born in Grottkau near Breslau, the son of Johann Jacob Weiss, also a lutenist, he served at courts in Breslau, Rome, and Dresden, where he died. Until ...
would have been tuned or with sharps or flats on the lower 7 courses appropriate to the key of the piece.
Modern lutenists tune to a variety of pitch standards, ranging from A = 392 to 470 Hz, depending on the type of instrument they are playing, the repertory, the pitch of other instruments in an ensemble and other performing expediencies. No attempt at a universal pitch standard existed during the period of the lute's historical popularity. The standards varied over time and from place to place.
See also
* String instrument
String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the ...
s
* Stringed instrument tunings This is a chart of stringed instrument tunings. Instruments are listed alphabetically by their most commonly known name.
Terminology
A Course (music), course may consist of one or more Strings (music), strings.
Courses are listed reading from ...
* Turkish music
The music of Turkey includes mainly Turkic and Byzantine elements as well as partial influences ranging from Ottoman music, Middle Eastern music and Music of Southeastern Europe, as well as references to more modern European and American popular ...
* Greek music
The music of Greece is as diverse and celebrated as its History of Greece, history. Greek music separates into two parts: Greek folk music, Greek traditional music and Byzantine music. These compositions have existed for millennia: they originat ...
* Cretan music
The music of Crete ( el, Κρητική μουσική), also called kritika ( el, κρητικά), refers to traditional forms of Greek folk music prevalent on the island of Crete in Greece. Cretan traditional music includes instrumental musi ...
* Early music
Early music generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1750). Originating in Europe, early music is a broad musical era for the beginning of Western classical m ...
** Medieval music
Medieval music encompasses the sacred and secular music of Western Europe during the Middle Ages, from approximately the 6th to 15th centuries. It is the first and longest major era of Western classical music and followed by the Renaissance ...
*** Tablature
Tablature (or tabulature, or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches.
Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuela, as well as many fr ...
** Renaissance music
Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century '' ars nova'', the Tr ...
** Baroque music
Baroque music ( or ) refers to the period or dominant style of Western classical music composed from about 1600 to 1750. The Baroque style followed the Renaissance period, and was followed in turn by the Classical period after a short transiti ...
** Classical music
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...
Instruments
European Lutes:
* Angélique
* Archlute
The archlute ( es, archilaúd, it, arciliuto, german: Erzlaute) is a European plucked string instrument developed around 1600 as a compromise between the very large theorbo, the size and re-entrant tuning of which made for difficulties in the p ...
* Bouzouki
The bouzouki (, also ; el, μπουζούκι ; alt. pl. ''bouzoukia'', from Greek ), also spelled buzuki or buzuci, is a musical instrument popular in Greece. It is a member of the long-necked lute family, with a round body with a flat top and ...
* Cobza
The ''cobza'' (also ''cobsa'', ''cobuz'', ''koboz'') is a multi-stringed instrument of the lute family of folk origin popular in the Romanian folklore from both Romania and Republic of Moldova (it is considered the oldest accompaniment instrumen ...
* Kobza
The kobza ( uk , кобза), also called bandurka ( uk , бандурка) is a Ukrainian folk music instrument of the lute family ( Hornbostel-Sachs classification number 321.321-5+6), a relative of the Central European mandora. The term ''kobz ...
* Laouto
The laouto ( el, λαούτο, pl. laouta ) is a long-neck fretted instrument of the lute family, found in Greece and Cyprus, and similar in appearance to the oud. It has four double-strings. It is played in most respects like the oud (plucked w ...
* Mandola
The mandola (US and Canada) or tenor mandola (Ireland and UK) is a fretted, stringed musical instrument. It is to the mandolin what the viola is to the violin: the four double courses of strings tuned in fifths to the same pitches as the viola ...
* Mandolin
A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...
* Mandore
Mandore is a suburb Historical town located 9 km north of Jodhpur city, in the Indian state of Rajasthan.
History
Mandore is an ancient town, and was the seat of the Pratiharas of Mandavyapura, who ruled the region in the 6th century CE ...
* Mandora
File:Mandora MET DP168838.jpg, 6~9 courses lute (Calchedon, Calichon) (1726)Georg Kinsky: Musikhistorisches Museum von Wilhelm Heyer in Cöln, Bd. 2, Köln 1912, S. 98.
File:Gallichon, Muzeum Instrumentów Muzycznych w Pradze.jpg, Gallichon
The ...
or Gallichon
* Oúti
* Swedish lute
* Torban
The torban ( ua, Торбан, also ''teorban'' or ''Ukrainian theorbo'') is a Ukrainian musical instrument that combines the features of the Baroque lute with those of the psaltery. The Тorban differs from the more common European bass lute kno ...
* Theorbo
The theorbo is a plucked string instrument of the lute family, with an extended neck and a second pegbox. Like a lute, a theorbo has a curved-back sound box (a hollow box) with a wooden top, typically with a sound hole, and a neck extending ou ...
* Vihuela
The vihuela () is a 15th-century fretted plucked Spanish string instrument, shaped like a guitar (figure-of-eight form offering strength and portability) but tuned like a lute. It was used in 15th- and 16th-century Spain as the equivalent of t ...
African Lutes:
* Kwitra
The kwitra (also '' quwaytara'', ''kouitra'' and ''quitra''); Arabic الكوترة or عود أندلسي (literally Andalusian oud); is an Algerian stringed instrument, sometimes referred to as the Algerian lute. The instrument is tied to And ...
* Masenqo
The
Masenqo ( am, ማሲንቆ; Tigrinya: ጭራ-ዋጣ (ዋጣ) is a single-stringed bowed lute commonly found in the musical traditions of Ethiopia. As with the krar, this instrument is used by Ethiopian minstrels called ''azmaris'' ("singer" ...
* Ngoni
* Xalam
Xalam (in Serer, or khalam in Wolof) is a traditional stringed musical instrument from West Africa with 1-5 strings.
The xalam is commonly played in Mali, Gambia, Senegal, Niger, Northern Nigeria, Northern Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and ...
* Akonting
The ''akonting'' (, or ''ekonting'' in French transliteration) is the folk lute of the Jola people, found in Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. It is a banjo-like instrument with a skin-headed gourd body, two long melody strings ...
Asian Lutes:
* Barbat
* Bipa
The ''bipa'' is a pear-shaped lute that is a traditional Korean musical instrument. It is derived from Chinese ''pipa'' and was introduced through the Silk Road to Goguryeo and Silla. There are two major types of ''bipa'': the four stringed ''da ...
* Biwa
The is a Japanese short-necked wooden lute traditionally used in narrative storytelling. The is a plucked string instrument that first gained popularity in China before spreading throughout East Asia, eventually reaching Japan sometime duri ...
* Dombra
The ''dombra'', also known as ''dombyra'' ( kz, домбыра, uz, dombira, ba, думбыра) is a long-necked Kazakh, Uzbek and Bashkir lute and a musical string instrument. The dombyra shares certain characteristics with the komuz a ...
* Dutar
The ''dutar'' (also ''Dotara, dotar''; fa, دوتار, dutâr; russian: Дутар; tg, дутор; ug, دۇتار, ucy=Дутар, Dutar; uz, dutor; ; dng, Дутар) is a traditional Iranian long-necked two-stringed lute found in Iran and ...
* Dramyin
The dramyin or dranyen (; dz, dramnyen; ) is a traditional Himalayan folk music lute with six strings, used primarily as an accompaniment to singing in the Drukpa Buddhist culture and society in Bhutan, as well as in Tibet, Ladakh, Sikkim and ...
* Komuz
The komuz or qomuz ( ky, комуз , az, Qopuz, tr, Kopuz) is an ancient fretless string instrument used in Central Asian music, related to certain other Turkic string instruments, the Mongolian tovshuur, and the lute. The instrument can be f ...
* Kutiyapi
The kutiyapi, or kudyapi, is a Philippine two-stringed, fretted boat-lute. It is four to six feet long with nine frets made of hardened beeswax. The instrument is carved out of solid soft wood such as that from the jackfruit tree.
Common to all ...
* Oud
, image=File:oud2.jpg
, image_capt=Syrian oud made by Abdo Nahat in 1921
, background=
, classification=
* String instruments
*Necked bowl lutes
, hornbostel_sachs=321.321-6
, hornbostel_sachs_desc=Composite chordophone sounded with a plectrum
, ...
* Panduri
The panduri ( ka, ფანდური) is a
traditional Georgian three-string plucked instrument common in all regions of Eastern Georgia: such as Pshav-Khevsureti, Tusheti, Kakheti and Kartli. The panduri is generally used to accompany solo ...
* Pipa
The pipa, pípá, or p'i-p'a () is a traditional Chinese musical instrument, belonging to the plucked category of instruments. Sometimes called the "Chinese lute", the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets rang ...
* Qinqin
The qinqin (wiktionary:秦, 秦wiktionary:琴, 琴; pinyin: qínqín; Vietnamese: Đàn sến) is a plucked China, Chinese lute. It was originally manufactured with a wooden body, a slender fretted neck, and three strings. photo 2Its body can ...
* Rubab
* Sanshin
The is an Okinawan and Amami Islands musical instrument and precursor of the mainland Japanese (). Often likened to a banjo, it consists of a snakeskin-covered body, neck and three strings.
Origins
Its close resemblance in both appearance a ...
* Sanxian
The (, literally "three strings") is a three-stringed traditional Chinese lute. It has a long fretless fingerboard, and the body is traditionally made from snake skin stretched over a rounded rectangular resonator. It is made in several sizes ...
* Sapeh
The sape' (sampek, sambe', sapek) is a traditional lute of the Kenyah and Kayan community who live in the longhouses that line the rivers of East Kalimantan and North Kalimantan, Indonesia and Northern part of Sarawak, Malaysia. Sape' are carv ...
* Setar
A setar ( fa, سهتار, ) is a stringed instrument, a type of lute used in Persian traditional music, played solo or accompanying voice. It is a member of the tanbur family of long-necked lutes with a range of more than two and a half octa ...
* Shamisen
The , also known as the or
(all meaning "three strings"), is a three-stringed traditional Japanese musical instrument derived from the Chinese instrument . It is played with a plectrum called a bachi.
The Japanese pronunciation is usual ...
* Sitar
The sitar ( or ; ) is a plucked stringed instrument, originating from the Indian subcontinent, used in Hindustani classical music. The instrument was invented in medieval India, flourished in the 18th century, and arrived at its present form in ...
* Sueng
The ''sueng'' ( th, wikt:ซึง, ซึง, Burmese language, Burmese: ၄ကြိုးထပ်ပို (ဆီုင်), , also spelled ''seung'' or ''süng'') is a plucked fretted lute from the Northern Thailand, northern (Lanna) region ...
* Swarabat
The Swarabat, Swarbat or Swaragat is a rare plucked string instrument of the classical Carnatic music genre of South India. It belongs to the chordophone, lute family of musical instruments, and is closely related to the ''veena'' and ''yazh'' i ...
* Tanbur
The term ''Tanbur'' ( fa, تنبور, ) can refer to various long-necked string instruments originating in Mesopotamia, Southern or Central Asia. According to the ''New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', "terminology presents a compli ...
* Tar
Tar is a dark brown or black viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon, obtained from a wide variety of organic materials through destructive distillation. Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat. "a dark brown or black bit ...
* Veena
The ''veena'', also spelled ''vina'' ( sa, वीणा IAST: vīṇā), comprises various chordophone instruments from the Indian subcontinent. Ancient musical instruments evolved into many variations, such as lutes, zithers and arched harps.< ...
* Yueqin
The ''yueqin'' (; ja, 月琴, Gekkin; ko, 월금/月琴, Wolgeum; vi, Nguyệt cầm), also called a moon lute or moon guitar, is a traditional Chinese string instrument. It is a lute with a round, hollow soundboard, a short fretted neck, a ...
Players
* Robert Barto
Robert Barto (born 1950's in San Diego) is an American lutenist specializing in the music of the Baroque and Empfindsamkeit periods, in particular the ''oeuvres'' of Sylvius Leopold Weiss and Bernhard Joachim Hagen.
Biography
He is a graduate ...
* Timothy Burris Timothy Allen Burris is an American lutenist.
He studied under Toyohiko Satoh at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, graduating in 1988. From 1990 to 1996, Timothy Burris was lute instructor at thRoyal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp, Belgium
...
* François de Chancy
* Xavier Díaz-Latorre
* Thomas Dunford
Thomas Dunford (born 1988) is a French lutenist. He is the son of American Viol, viola da gambist Jonathan Dunford and viola da gambist Sylvia Abramowicz.
He completed his musical studies in 2006 at the Conservatoire de Paris, and earned his bache ...
* Eduardo Eguez
Eduardo is the Spanish and Portuguese form of the male given name Edward. Another version is Duarte. It may refer to:
Association football
* Eduardo Bonvallet, Chilean football player and sports commentator
* Eduardo Carvalho, Portuguese football ...
* Johann Georg Hamann
Johann Georg Hamann (; ; 27 August 1730 – 21 June 1788) was a German Lutheran philosopher from Königsberg known as "the Wizard of the North" who was one of the leader figures of post-Kantian philosophy. His work was used by his student J. G. ...
* Lutz Kirchhof
Lutz Kirchhof (born 1953, Frankfurt am Main) is a German lutenist. He often performs with his wife Marina as the Kirchhof duo.
In 1996 he founded the Deutsche Lautengesellschaft (German Association for Lute). He performs in festivals all over the ...
* Rolf Lislevand
Rolf Lislevand (30 December 1961 in Oslo, Norway), is a Norwegian performer of Early music specialising on lute, vihuela, baroque guitar and theorbo.
Biography
From 1980 to 1984, Lislevand studied classical guitar at the Norwegian Academy of Mu ...
* Nigel North
Nigel North (born 5 June 1954) is an English lutenist, musicologist, and pedagogue.
Student days
He studied guitar on a scholarship to the junior department of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (1964–70), taking up the lute in 1969, at ...
* Paul O'Dette
Paul Raymond O'Dette (born February 2, 1954) is an American lutenist, conductor, and musicologist specializing in early music.
Biography
O'Dette, who was born in Pittsburgh, began playing the electric guitar in a rock band in Columbus, Ohio, w ...
* Hopkinson Smith
Hopkinson Smith (born December 7, 1946) is an American lutenist and pedagogue, longtime resident in Basel, Switzerland.
Smith was born in New York City, the son of architectural writer and photographer G. E. Kidder Smith. He graduated from Har ...
* Christopher Wilke
Christopher Wilke (born 1973) is an American composer, lutenist, guitarist, recording artist, and teacher.
Biography
Born in Cincinnati, Wilke studied guitar and composition at the College of Mount St. Joseph, and took his master's degree in g ...
* Jozef van Wissem
Jozef van Wissem (born 22 November 1962) is a Dutch minimalist composer and lute player based in Brooklyn. In 2013 Van Wissem won the Cannes Soundtrack Award for the score of ''Only Lovers Left Alive'' at the Cannes Film Festival.
Career
Jozef v ...
* Evangelina Mascardi
Maria Evangelina Mascardi is an Argentinian lutenist, guitarist, and theorbist, known for her concert performances. She is currently a university professor residing in Orte, and teaches Lute at the Conservatorio Antonio Vivaldi in Alessandria, ...
Makers
* Cezar Mateus Cezar Mateus (born 1961 in Bucharest, Romania) is an American luthier working in Princeton, New Jersey. He specializes in lutes, archlutes, theorbos and other related instruments. His instruments have been played by Sting, Edin Karamazov, Yasu ...
* Stephen Murphy
* David Rubio
David Rubio (born David Joseph Spinks; 17 September 1934 – 21 October 2000) was an English maker of stringed musical instruments.
Biography
David Rubio was born on 17 September 1934 in London, England. He acquired his new surname in his t ...
* Andrew Rutherford
* Antonio Stradivari
Antonio Stradivari (, also , ; – 18 December 1737) was an Italian luthier and a craftsman of string instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars, violas and harps. The Latinized form of his surname, ''Stradivarius'', as well as the colloq ...
* Tieffenbrucker Tieffenbrucker is a large multigenerational family of luthiers, originally from Bavaria, active in Venice and Padua, Italy from the beginning of the 16th century till around 1630. Several of their 16th- and 17th-century lutes are on display at the L ...
* Joachim Tielke
Joachim Tielke (14 October 1641 – 19 January 1719) was a German maker of musical instruments. He was born in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), Duchy of Prussia a fief of Kingdom of Poland, and died in Hamburg.
A publication was dedicated to him b ...
Notes
Bibliography
* Articles in
Journal of the Lute Society of America
' (1968–), ''The Lute'' (1958–), and other journals published by the various national lute societies.
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The Lute Corner
*
Lute Society of America
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External links
Societies
The Lute Society of America
(America)
The Belgian Lute Society
(Belgium)
The French Lute Society
(France)
The German Lute Society
(Germany)
The Lute Society of Japan
(Japan)
(Japan, Founded by Toyohiko Satoh
is a Japanese lutenist and composer.
Life and career
At Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Satoh studied music history with Tatsuo Minagawa and guitar with Kazuhito Ohosawa. He gave his first guitar recital in the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan concert hall in 1965 ...
)
The Dutch Lute Society
(the Netherlands)
The Lute Society
(UK)
Online music and other useful resources
reneszanszlant.lap.hu
collection of many useful links: luthiers/lute makers, lute players, tablatures, etc. (in English and Hungarian)
ABC Classic FM presents: Lute Project videos
Watch Tommie Andersson play the theorbo, 7-course & 10-course lutes.
Joachim Tielke
The website for the great Hamburg lute maker Joachim Tielke
Musick's Handmade
Facsimiles/Scans (Dowland, etc.) and pdfs - by Alain Veylit
Sarge Gerbode's Lute Page
7000+ lute solo and ensemble pieces by 300+ composers in midi, PDF, TAB, and Fronimo formats
Another Lute Website
Categorized view on youtube videos of over 250 lute composers
Contemporary and Modern Lute Music
Modern (post 1815) and Contemporary Lute Music. A list of modern lute music written after 1815
Music Collection
in Cambridge Digital Library
The Cambridge Digital Library is a project operated by the Cambridge University Library designed to make items from the unique and distinctive collections of Cambridge University Library available online. The project was initially funded by a donat ...
. One of the most important collections of manuscript music in Cambridge University Library
Cambridge University Library is the main research library of the University of Cambridge. It is the largest of the over 100 libraries within the university. The Library is a major scholarly resource for the members of the University of Cambri ...
is the group of nine lute manuscripts copied by Mathew Holmes in the early years of the seventeenth century.
Le Luth Doré Urtext music editions
The most important collection of modern Urtext music editions for lute.
Photos of historic instruments
* Photos of historic lutes at th
''Cité de la Musique''
in Paris
Instruments et oeuvres d'art
nbsp;– search-phrase: Mot-clé(s) : ''luth''
Facteurs d'instruments
nbsp;– search-phrase: Instrument fabriqué : ''luth''
Photothèque
nbsp;– search-phrase: Instrument de musique, ville ou pays : ''luth''
Lutes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Articles and resources
''Pioneers of the Lute Revival''
by Jo Van Herck (Belgian Lute Academy)
:Original
''Over de pioniers van de luitrevival''
Luthinerie / Gelui
no. 15 (September 2001)
an
no. 16 (December 2001)
Photos and Paintings
from Lute Society of America
{{Authority control
Baroque instruments
Lute family instruments
Basso continuo instruments
Renaissance instruments
Orchestral instruments
Arab inventions
Egyptian inventions
Iranian inventions