From interview with Paul O'Dette: Q: Much lute music would seem to be played more easily on smaller instruments than today's typical G lute, yet contemporary paintings don't show a preponderance of such small instruments. People living then certainly weren't bigger than us. Did they stretch more or perhaps weren't so attached to sustaining notes or am I missing something? A: This is a very interesting question which has many different aspects. I think early players developed more stretch than we do today, by doing exercises to keep the skin in between the fingers as elastic as possible, they also used various oils to keep the skin flexible, they developed stretching techniques which involved releasing the thumb from the back of the fingerboard, and also used the left hand thumb to play some bass notes. The string spacing of most Renaissance lutes is very tight at the nut, making the lateral stretches easier than on today's wider spacing. The problem this creates, however, is that it is more difficult to keep from brushing up against other strings with left hand fingers since the courses are closer together. This would suggest three things to me: 1) That they had smaller, thinner fingers which required less clearance, 2) that they came straight down with the l.h. fingers using only the tips of the fingers and 3) They were less fussy about little noises and buzzes than we are today. I suspect that they also did not sustain bass notes to nearly the degree we do today.
----------------------------------------------------- Thw whole interview can be found here: [1]http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/PODinterview.html BTW I play now on lute with 67cm. Not easy but possible even with my smal hands. But I had to stretch my fingers like this: [2]http://pics.livejournal.com/_m_a_s_t_e_r_/pic/0009xtz8 Here is my Dowland on 67cm: [3]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2srIsT8xuE As you can see it's not perfect but quite satisfactory. The main difficulties for me were from double courses. Especially in chords. There is no significant difference for me in playing scale passages between 60cm and 67cm. But in chords theese 7cm are very important. So I had to remove all that doubles and now play on single courses. 2011/8/10 Edward Mast <[4]nedma...@aol.com> The more I read about the lute during the 16th century, the more it seems to me that the norm for string length then was closer to 65 cm than the 60 cm which seems more favored and common today. Are we (myself included) - who choose the shorter mensur - wimps? If classical guitarists of all shapes and sizes can manage a 64 cm mensur, should we lutenists not be able to do likewise? Just wondering . . . -Ned To get on or off this list see list information at [5]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/PODinterview.html 2. http://pics.livejournal.com/_m_a_s_t_e_r_/pic/0009xtz8 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2srIsT8xuE 4. mailto:nedma...@aol.com 5. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
