Michael, The fingers seen in most paintings of baroque lutenists are not a 90 degree angle, but not as soft an angle as for thumb under technique. You are correct, in that the thumb is seen protruding towards the rose, and that is a position seldom seen in our times. Toyohiko Satoh has changed his technique, in following closer to what icongraphical sources show us.
In this technique, notice that the hand is very, very close to the bridge. But, it is not correct to say that one gets a very thin tone. My experience is that with current string tensions similar to those of renaissance lutes, the results are not very satisfying. There are current thoughts in which baroque lutes were strung with a considerably less amount of tension that we now use. After all, lighter tension strings make a set-up which is much less wear & tear on the baroque instrument, considering that the overall tension is much less. Recent experiments have shown that one can get an astonishingly beautiful sound played by the bridge with a protruding thumb, at very low tensions. Case in point, listen to Toyohiko Satoh's Weichennberger CD. He plays on the bridge, with very low tension strings on an original 11 course lute by Grieff. It is definitely not a very thin tone. Also, he uses all gut with no metal at all on the strings. I am uncertain, but I think he uses only 70% of usual tensions, overall - maybe even as low as 60%. In order to make this situation (playing with technique shown on icongraphical sources) work, one needs a light tension. With heavier tension played very close to the bridge, one gets a brittle sound. But,. with slack strings, the results are very clear and beautiful. ed At 09:09 AM 7/22/2005 -0600, Michael Thames wrote: > The really strange thing is that most all thumb out, hand positions >shown in paintings show the fingers at a 90 degree angle to the stings, and >I've never seen anyone play this way thesedays. If you try it whether on >gut or nylon one gets a very thin tone. Perhaps the trend in the early >1600's was towards a thin percussive tone? > MT To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
