Maybe we're talking nonsense because we haven't defined our terms.
Or maybe you assume a clear dichotomy between blending and not
blending; the world is a more complicated place than that.
Indeed, I think the whole notion of a single sound ideal for all of
Europe for a century or more is inherently incredible, but that's
another discussion.
Pictures show single instruments
(harps, fiddles, lutes, flutes), playing together with singers.
Surviving ars nova music, when executed with instruments so distinct,
leaves no chance to merge or blend.
Saying this does not make it so. We don't even know what the
instruments were playing. Likely they were doubling the singers, in
which case the dominant sound on each line would be the voice,
colored by the doubling instrument; the question of whether a harp
could "blend" with a lute would be unimportant.
If other instruments are producing a treble-heavy sound, a lute
player playing with a quill might just as well be trying to blend
with them.
How can he / she, playing his / her own part?
1) We don't know what part the lute played;
2) If you had a lute in your hand and wanted to match, as much as
possible, the the tone of a rebec or a bray harp, would you play
with fingers over the rose or with a quill back toward the bridge?
Rhythm guitar players play with plectra today, but they
rarely want to focus attention on their individual instrument.
No such thing like rhythm lutes in medieval ensemble music,
How do you know? Have you been listening to those non-existent
recordings? You don't think any 14th-century lutenist in a dance
band ever strummed a bunch of fifths?
or baroque
for that matter, as far as I can see.
It's called continuo. In broken consorts, and some lute songs, its
called "the tab parts that don't have divisions."
A viol player in a
polyphonic consort needs to have his instrument and his line heard
distinctly. The cittern player in a broken consort wants to blend
with the pandora (and lute, if the lute isn't playing divisions).
Again, how can he / she (cittern), playing his / her own part?
By DOING IT. It's what musicians do. I'm listening at the moment to
a recording of Swanne Alley; the bass viol, bandora and cittern blend
very nicely in the sense that unless I'm trying to deconstruct it as
I hear it, it sounds like one big instrument most of the time.
About once a year, this list embarks on a discussion of whether the
lute/archlute/theorbo is audible in continuo sections with
harpsichords, and I always make the point that the object isn't to be
heard as discrete voice, but rather to combine into whatever continuo
sound you're trying to achieve.
But let's omit orchestras, the lute not being an orchestra instrument.
The archlute is. I assume you meant to exclude gallichons and
theorbos, and I won't argue that point with you, but the archlute is
just a lute with extra bass strings.
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