Excellent summary Anthony. The iconography does in fact portray the thumb
over on an abundance of Lutes of six courses or less. The fact that Variety
of Lute Lessons does not mention it, that I recall, only shows that the
added number of strings dictated a change in technique. Unless you have a
very large hand or a very small Lute, thumbing over a seven course or
greater Lute seems to me to not be possible, or practical, except by someone
trying to prove a point.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthony Hind" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Luca Manassero" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2007 6:37 AM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Neck section thumb over
Oups, yet another problem, I am all thumbs it seems.
Luca and All
First, I should apologize to all left-handed players, such as Jean- Marie,
since I am going to take it for granted that all you lefties are just
mirror-image right handers, as most lutists do when talking about
left-hand and right-hand technique.
As Denys Stephens implies in his article, which I quoted previously, much
work has been done on rediscovering Renaissance right-hand technique. I
was struck by how close Jacob Heringman's hand position is to the
portrait that could be of Francesco, on Arthur's site. However, rather
less has been done on left hand techniques. It is probable for example
that where a barring can be used to avoid thumb over, most players will
do that, even if Renaissance players might not have done so.
The reasons for this could be complex, first the neck shapes, as you have
pointed out are not always historic (guitarists have often preferred a
wider shallower neck), and do not easily allow such a hand position.
Also, Carlos Gonzales, lutemaker, suggested to the French list that
Renaissance string spacing was much narrower than is the case at the
moment.
Then most specialist Renaissance lute players, such as JH play various
lute sizes from 6c to 10c. They can maintain the same right hand
movement, with slight variation, but going even from a 6c to a 7c would
radically change left hand technique. Some lutists have even suggested
that thumb-over would have stopped with the change from 5c to 6c lutes.
Personally, I think the change would have been progressive, and probably
the technique would have coexisted with barring on 6c lutes.
A further reason could be that most players think that while the
historic right hand technique improves projection and effects the pulse
of the music, historic left hand technique would not make all that much
difference to the music produced. I think the difference between Baroque
and Renaissance right-hand technique would have have a greater effect
than any left hand shift, but I do think that the early Renaissance left
hand technique could effect speed and pulse to a certain extent. Denys
Stephens would be able to discuss this better, as I believe he sometimes
uses both these techniques.
Many lutists are also ex-classical guitarists, and the thumb-over is
almost considered as vulgar and popular in the worse sense, rather than
somehow being seen as folk musicians having carried on older techniques,
that were not in the least scorned in the past. Denys rather thinks that
thumb-over is a "natural " way of playing if barring does not become
essential.
Barring might become essential in chordal music, but not at all natural
in a polyphonous music.
The Hungarian psycholinguist, Ivan Fonagy, developed a theory of the
Semiotics of secondary speech features, in which he claimed that any
vocal gesture that is not an essential functional part of a language
tends take on a symbolic interpretation. Thus lip-rounding, in a language
that does not use lip-rounding significantly, is often interpreted as
mouthing the shape of a kiss (a problem for English speakers,
particularly men, when learning the French front rounded vowels), while
the very wide-open back vowels of Standard British English (as in "car")
are often shunned by French women students, who have always learnt to
speak with the most closed vowels possible (widely opening the mouth even
to laugh, can be considered unacceptable in some cultures, where women
may even cover their mouth "politely" while laughing).
Fonagy suggested that rolling the Rs in a language that no longer has the
rolled R, could be associated with rudely poking out the tongue, or as an
expression of rustic virility, while replacing the R with W, or dropping
it completely, a sign of extreme effectedness (Les "Incoyables" (Fr.
Incroyables) of the French Directoire, c.1800).
Thus wiggling your thumb at the audience over the top of your lute neck
for a musician for whom this is not part of his lute culture, could also
take on some similar gestural role, that somehow is just rather difficult
to come to terms with.
Finally, for this sort of left hand technique to be resurrected we would
need players to specialize in 5c and 6c music to the exception of
anything else.
Regards
Anthony
Le 7 nov. 07 à 08:42, Luca Manassero a écrit :
Dear Collective Wisdom,
thank you to absolutely everybody who contributed to this discussion! It
has been very interesting to read all opinions and to see all those
great details from Arthur's and Jean-Marie sites.
I am now more than convinced that the lutemaker was right follwoign
Dieffopruchar's measures, but then I am also sincerely concerned with
our habit to play Renaissance lute music mostly on a 7- or 8- course
lute. The point being not only the stringing, which tends to double
courses 4-6 at the unison, but also the hand position on a much
"thinner" neck.
I believe everybody needs to meet not only a good, but a great lutemaker
to be able to discuss forms and measures of her/his instrument.
The more time I spend on Italian Renaissance lute music, the more I
believe that that music REQUIRES a 6-course instrument. Travelling
around with an 8-course can be obviously a necessity (Hopkinson Smith
does it for instance, as far as I could see) or an economical choice,
but as far as the XVI century repertoire is concerned all details, even
the iconography we just examined, seem to lead to the obvious decision
that a 6-course instrument is a MUST.
Many thanks again to you all,
Luca
http://liuti.manassero.net
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