Hi All,
A few thoughts off the top of my head (not as far up as it was):
I would say to a composer - listen carefully to the sound of a proper
lute strung with gut strings. You will hear the difference between that
and the modern guitar.
Also, bear in mind that although pushing boundaries can be interesting,
the lute is historically quite limited in range - in terms of the
fingerboard, there are only eight tied frets, after that you're up in
the gods. Unless you're writing for baroque lute of course, in which
case you've got a couple of extra frets.
Think about octaves. They were usually ignored by the intabulators of
old, but they were there - so when composing, you really have to think
about what kind of octave doubling (however subtle) is acceptable.
Temperament is another issue. The old guys mave have used some
approximation to equal temperament, but that doesn't necessarily equate
to total freedom in terms of modulation, or the way the open strings of
the instrument resonate. Some notes are more equal than others.
Special effects (harmonics, tapping the soundboard, etc) are not, as far
as we know, part of historical lute technique. It is therefore a
matter of taste whether to extend the "normal" technique of the
instrument in various ways, but there is always a danger of making it
sound like something it isn't.
Historically most lutenists were obsessed by trying to reproduce vocal
polyphony. Perhaps the organ has more in common with the lute than the
guitar....
Best wishes,
Martin
On 29/03/2011 12:41, Ron Andrico wrote:
Stephen:
Good question and good points. I've encountered similar issues from
both angles - as a composer devising music that is idiomatic for a
given instrument and as a lutenist asked to turn ideas composed at the
keyboard into lute music.
As far as the difference between music composed for guitar and for
lute, I would have to say that the primary factors are texture and
decay. Guitar can be a very sensitive instrument and, in the hands of
a sensitive player, can sound very light and transparent. But the lute
trumps guitar for transparency and light texture hands down. A
guitarist can't help but allow a single note to bloom with intent and
purpose. A lutenist knows that note is going to decay very soon and
had better manage every millisecond.
I was once given a set of songs on texts by Walt Whitman, written by a
very good composer. She had no idea how the lute worked but assumed
that if she made the accompaniments sparse, that the lute should be
able to manage. After the better part of a day of jointly massaging
the keyboard accompaniments, narrowing the upper range and creating
more idiomatic use of cross-string figures, I wound up taking the bare
outline of her ideas and re-composing the music to fit the instrument.
Ron Andrico
www.mignarda.com
> Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:07:44 +0100
> CC: [email protected]
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: [LUTE] Re: a modern lute duet by Gilbert Isbin
>
> This reminds me of a question raised when I wrote a piece supposedly
for lute (6 course) ages ago. I showed it to a lutenist who said it was
really guitar music. Well, I'd written it using a guitar (tuned
appropriately of course) having no lute to use. But it seems to me that
its more a question of the musical style, my piece being a sort of
quasi-classical sonata type of thing.
> So what would the general understanding be, how non-traditional
musical style/content affects whether a piece would be considered
lute-like? Are there really, subtle aspects of how the instrument
works, differently from guitar that would trump these...in which case
how would a non-lutenist ever write for lute?
> (Aside - I've just had a major piece written for guitar by a
non-player, some of which is a little challenging and pushes the
boundaries...which is rather the point to a degree?)
>
> Stephen
>
>
>
> Stuart Walsh wrote:
>
> > Gilbert Isbin has written some lute duets, "3 contemporary lute
duets"
> > published by the Lute Society, 2009. Here is a go at one of them:
> > 'And Autumn Came'.
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
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