What I can say is - my experience is only Baroque lute. Gut strings are very stiff and it makes it possible to manage certain things on low tension around 2,2 - 2,5 kilos which would never be possible on nylon. Therefore many people play very low tensioned lutes, saying this sounds better. I think as for the tone itself it does sound a bit better but important is to be able to express oneself ad here the problem comes. I never heard anyone to perform a Weiss from Dresden let us say F sharpMinor n 23 or G minor nr 30 or any piece of this scale with trebles having low tension. I am also talking about real tempo. I do think that Presto is FAST! and not a baroque word which means expression etc. Weiss met Corelly and people were well aware of real virtuoso music. So my point is the lute is just an instrument as any other. It has to be playable, tempos fast and it must be in tune. My wife Anna and concentrate on Bach and Weiss mostly pieces that are very technically demanding and there is absolutely no way to push them to the right limit on the slopy stringing. I do think that gut enables you to articulate better and when needed play faster and indeed produce better contrasts. The lute with gut is just a different instrument. Very different... It feels correct:)
--- On Fri, 1/29/10, Franz Mechsner <[email protected]> wrote: > From: Franz Mechsner <[email protected]> > Subject: [LUTE] Re: Switching between gut strings and synthetics? > To: "Anton Birula" <[email protected]>, "Bernd Haegemann" <[email protected]> > Cc: "lute" <[email protected]> > Date: Friday, January 29, 2010, 5:24 PM > The problem is that > playing gut changes our perception of the lute > tone, touch and articulation. A lot > of things we are trying to reach > on nylon are happening themselves on > gut. > > Dear Anton > > Could you please explain that in some > detail? > > Thanks > Franz (no gut-experience) > > > -- > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >
