Dear Joseph and all, I have never systematically collected notes about smudges and wear marks on those museum instruments I have seen or found described in sufficient detail, but there are traces of intensive use on the remains of a Maler-lute in the Nuremberg collection (remains because the instrument was rebuilt several times and only the parts held to be original are on display today). The soundboard area where the pinky would have been set looks like it has been treated with a steel brush ...
Many lutes which I remember as looking virtually untouched are made with precious materials like ivory and some of these come from "Kunstkammer" collections, that is: they were meant to be displayed, not to be played .. It seems to be the same with traversos: items made from ivory may be bent or cracked today but they lack wear marks in the areas of the embouchure, the fingerholes and where those parts of the hands which hold the flute touch the wood, all things which I have seen quite often on instruments made of lesser materials. All best, Joachim "Joseph Mayes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb: > Yes - absolutely true - anything could have happened - to some of them, even > most of them, but all of them? > > JM > > > On 5/2/07 7:00 PM, "David Rastall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On May 2, 2007, at 5:29 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >> Museum instruments may have been cleaned and/or refinished to make > >> them > >> 'presentable'. Some may have new sound boards, ones that might > >> never have > >> been played on. > > > > Absolutely, and in the case of an original soundboard the wood may > > have darkened enough (over the centuries...?) to obscure any single > > smudge. > > > > David Rastall > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > www.rastallmusic.com > > > > > > > > -- > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > > > > -- Joachim Lüdtke, Lektorat & DTP-Dienstleistungen Dr. Joachim Lüdtke Blumenstraße 20 D - 90762 Fürth Tel. +49-+911 / 976 45 20
