Thank you Bruno and both Eugenes,
Paul O'Dette's comments are very interesting - I'll read the whole
interview, Eugene. ( I wonder what string length P O uses on his Renaissance
lutes). Yes, scale passages are not a problem with longer string lengths, I'm
sure. I would expect the problems to be with fingered chords, especially
barred chords.
Your stretching exercises are impressive, E.K. I can't achieve that kind
of stretch myself - with practice?? Certainly no problems for you in
performing the Dowland, at least using single stringing.
-Ned
On Aug 10, 2011, at 2:03 PM, Eugene Kurenko wrote:
> 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 li!
ttle 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:
> 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:
> http://pics.livejournal.com/_m_a_s_t_e_r_/pic/0009xtz8
>
> Here is my Dowland on 67cm:
> 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 <[email protected]>
> 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
>
>
>
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