All,
I regret that I must take exception to the idea that attempting to replicate historical construction techniques somehow gives us entry into the way the music sounded way back then. This, in my opinion, is for several reasons: (Please understand that I am basically a maker of baroque instruments so I'm mostly referring to that period and it's instruments.) 1. We have no idea what historical musical presentation sounded like. We can only infer from the notations on the tablature and the style of the instruments along with basically anecdotal comments in extant writings. I play trombone. I happen to have a 1925 King in good condition and I can listen to recordings of Author Pryor and Miff Mole and work to duplicate their phrasing, attack and tempos. We have no idea how fast, loud or even well the period lutenists played. 2. It is very possible that the extant instruments we so arduously attempt to replicate were dogs and that's why they exist. Nobody played them. They have spent their lives in cases in closets. The favorite playable instruments, many recycled from earlier lutes - 10 course renaissance lutes turned into 11 and 13 course baroque instruments for example - had hard playing lives and we can infer - that word again - from art that they hung on the wall and were treated quite casually. My guess is that many of the favorite "players" are dust now or were turned into hurdy gurdys in the 19th century. The protected instruments may be unpleasant to play or even unplayable. Beauty really can be just skin deep. 3. I too cannot believe that renaissance or baroque builders would not avail themselves of modern available woods or glues. So in our quest to build instruments for a music where: we have no idea how it sounded; we have no hard evidence of how fast or with what inflections it was played, we latch onto the only concrete thing we can. We try to replicate instruments extant in museums and collections. Then we take the written music we have - a wonderfully rich corpus indeed I must admit - read the performance notes and inflection markings, try to interpret them, and play in what we believe to be the style of the period. If we had a time machine, we might go back and embarrass ourselves mightily. Or, we can build lutes of stable and beautiful woods not available to the ancients, put together with glues and adhesives who's technology was not even envisioned and strung with state of the art strings from the 21st century. These instruments will last much longer, maintain their appearance much longer and, using that same written music and tab, produce sounds that will please the contemporary ear. People like the sound, buy the CDs, tell their friends, get you on a radio spot, the whole viral modern publicist path. So, for myself, I reject lute building as a study in dogma. I build to play, to last and to please. So far so good. Rob Dorsey [1]http://LuteCraft.com -- References 1. http://LuteCraft.com/ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
