Le 18 nov. 07 =C3! 07:16, howard posner a =C3=A9crit :
>
> On Nov 17, 2007, at 9:34 PM, Michael Bocchicchio wrote:
>
>> With three different tags inside, do we know beyond the shadow of
>> a doubt that the whole soundboard was not remade in the later half
>> of the 17th century? -- It was a common practice. I saw no
>> discussion of that in the thread, only that there was no no sign
>> of a "J" bar.
>
>
> Jakob Lindberg says dendrochronology (a comparison of tree rings in
> the wood with a sort of tree-ring history database) has dated the
> soundboard wood to between 1418 and 1560.
Dear Daniel, Howard, Michael and all
The question then might be whether it was at all possible that the
wood used for this lute's soundboard had been stored from 1560 to
1715 . That is the supposed date of the Baroquing of the 7 or 8c
lute to a 10, 11, or possibly a 13c* lute, perhaps by Leonhard
Mausiel of N=C31/4remberg.
After all, for the restoration of the barring (not the fan barring,
but the cross barring), Jakob acquired 16th century wood, from some
bookcases that had been in the Pitti Palace in Florence. Are we sure
that no such storing of wood for 155 years for soundboards could have
taken place at that time?
We know from Burwell, that old wood and old lutes were appreciated
around the 1650s, but could lutemakers have deliberately stocked wood
for long periods, or simply discover an old piece that had not been
used? Perhaps this is quite impossible, and records show that this
sort of thing never occurred.
However, do we know anything about the barring of the other Rauwolf
lutes. Have they been X-rayed or studied in any other way to see what
barring they had. There are no indictions in the lute database, which
gives size and number of ribs. It would seem strange that Rauwolf
would have suddenly fan-barred one lute, and not others. However, the
remaining number are very small.s
There are four almost certain Rauwolf lutes at
http://tinyurl.com/2wd9b2
1) [Lute ID 725],
http://tinyurl.com/2ta58f
2) [Lute ID 788] Lindberg's lute
http://tinyurl.com/3cza5l
3) [Lute ID 168]
http://tinyurl.com/3cwtk5
4) [Lute ID 204]
http://tinyurl.com/38bng8
5) [Lute ID 383] This one is less certain, but like the Lindberg
Rauwolf has a
doubtful printed label: Hans Neusidler, and is presumed to be a
Rauwolf
http://tinyurl.com/3d76au
I am surprised that more has not been made of this question, but
perhaps it is very hard to prove that the barring is original.
Wolfgan Emmerich told me that some late Railich lutes, he had
studied, probably had been given fan-barring originally. I suppose
those would be about 1650. These are also very full lutes, so
perhaps, there is a relevance here. Large soundboards, perhaps needed
more "taming".
One might ask whether the Fan-barring on the Rauwolf is also
accompanied with the typical thinning to the edge of the soundboard,
or whether it might be an intermediary type with the thickness on the
edge as for a J-barred lute.
One problem, may be that the bridge had probably been pulled off at
some time, and part of the wood damaged. David Munro was obliged to
scrape this from above around the bridge area, until he reached
healthy wood, and then he put the soundboard, outer side down on a
board and used hot sand bags on the inside to press the healthy wood
out, so as to be able to replace the wood he had scraped away (this
is usual practice with violin restoration). After that he inserted a
patch on the inside. This, as we can see on the photo of the bridge
area from below, covers this area of the bridge (see link below).
Even if the bridge area had originally been thinner, close to that of
J-barring, perhaps this new piece, has added stiffness to this area,
making it work more like a piston (the system basically of the modern
speaker cone), as Michael Bocciicchiio has so well described.
"Thinning the edges of a sound board and leaving the center thicker
( approx. 1.8 mm at center tapering to 1.3 at edges) does cause the
sound board to act as or similar to a speaker cone. It stands to
reason that fan bracing would lend itself to this type of thickening.
With this type of thickening and fan bracing, the sound board
resonates more like a singe plate causing a more homogeneous
sustained sound with fewer partials. ---Very pleasing to the modern
ear."MB
Here is the Fan-barring again, so that Michael Bocciicchiio, may be
able to tell us, at
http://www.pbase.com/rauwolf/image/71691186
or
http://tinyurl.com/yulvas
And here, to compare again is is an archlute soundboard on an
Here for example is an archlute soundboard on an
Archiluth / E.546 / Koch, Christoph / VENISE / ITALIE / EUROPE / 1654
http://tinyurl.com/2ruqy3
(13c? *There was a trace on the edge of the neck of something that
could possibly be the remnant of a small second neck not unlike that
of a two headed lute. This question was briefly raised by Stephen
Gottlieb during the conference, but Michael Lowe didn't seem to want
to be drawn into this particular discussion. Perhaps, there was not
enough evidence).
I did not attend the Lundberg lecture, but I understand he says that
there was a break in the tradition handed down from earlier Italian-
German makers, and that attempting to make copies of almond shaped 9
ribbed Bologna type lutes (around 1710), when the source for these
had dried up, was really a failure (Hoffman etc). Therefore, lute
makers resorted to transforming older multi-ribbed lutes, such as the
beautiful swan necked Marx Unverdorben of Denton House, or of course
this Rauwolf.
I am certainly simplifying as I haven't been able to read the
article, and I am just remembering what someone told me about it.
I also understood, that Lundberg considered Fan-barring in some way a
failure. Again, this is only from vague memory, of what was reported
to me.
I think many of us would be interested in understanding this better.
After all when we acquire a Baroque lute with the intention of
playing a particular style of music, we do want to be sure that it is
as close as possible to the type of instrument for which the music
was intended.
Jakob Lindberg played some French Baroque music at the London
meeting, Denis Gaultier, I think, and it was very beautiful, but in
an ideal world, is fan-barring the best choice for that music?
It has often, perhaps been more usual to associate the almond Bologna
lute shape with French Baroque music, but we can see that the shape
of Jakob's Rauwolf shown here, at
=C3! http://tinyurl.com/2rxfpw
is very similar to the one of Denis Gaultier (if this is indeed,
Denis Gaultier himself holding the lute), in the painting La Reunion
des amis, 1640-44, Louvre (The gathering of friends) by Eustache Le
Sueur, who created some of the plates for the Rhetorique des dieux,
with Denis Gaultier on the lute. (Mus=C3=A9e du Louvre, Paris), see at
http://tinyurl.com/2rf27g
Also, Le Sueur was involved in making the plates for the Retorique
des Dieux tablature, and it has been suggested that the lutes
sketched there, might be part of Denis Gaultier's collection, again
we see the rounder fuller Railich type lutes, as at
http://tinyurl.com/2mfxuw
(Indeed, Hoppy used the Pietro Raillich, Venice 1644
( Germanisches Nationalmuseum N=C31/4rnberg ), for his early Astr=C3=A9e LP,
of La Rhetorique des Dieux), picture of it here at
http://tinyurl.com/2mz78c
but although clearly not Bologna shapes, we have no proof that these
fuller lutes were not J-barred (but see the explanations of Wolfgang
Emmerich above, which perhaps does not entirely exclude this
possibility). According to Michael B.'s explanations, the difference
in presence or absence of harmonic structure, due to barring type,
could be essential to the aesthetic structure of these pieces.
Please consider this as a series of questions, I am not myself
competent to give an answer.
Regards
Anthony
>
>
>
> --
>
> To get on or off this list see list information at
> http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
