David,
My dissatisfaction with gut rests primarily on fact that I find it very
difficult to replicate the style of phrasing that I hear from baroque wind
instruments, bowed string players (with baroque bows) and, above all,
vocalists. Period treatises for these musicians place a great emphasis on
dynamic shading, such as the messa di voce and this is very difficult to
emulate on a lute strung in modern gut. (It is difficult on synthetics, but,
due the greater sustain, less so.) On the renaissance lute, things are not as
crucial since the often profuse ornamentation has a sort of "flattening"
effect. On the baroque lute, however, I have great difficulties reconciling
the sonic characteristics of modern gut with important stylistic traits of the
music.
In the baroque lute literature, this is especially important as the
structure of the music is often made up of fairly large gestures (for example,
an arpeggiated figure on a single harmony over several bars) which must be
grouped accordingly. With the faster decay time of modern gut on a plucked
instrument, the implication would be to just play faster, but I've found this
unconvincing often enough to make me suspicious of the material's sonic
properties as a valid indicator for performance. At least, I don't hear the
above mentioned non-lute instruments playing similar items in the manner that a
lute strung in modern gut seems to demand.
Another context is the long appoggiatura. This is the expressive backbone
of baroque music and the lute literature is no exception. With modern gut
these often seem rather inexpressive to me and that is a real problem. The
other instruments/voices go to extra effort to emphasize the drama of the
moment by doing a crescendo/messa di voce on the dissonant note and relaxing on
the resolution. On a gut-strung lute, however, the notes of the underlying
harmony will often have died away before the consonant note is even sounded.
To me, this robs the whole complex of its expressive purpose. I suppose one
could argue that this is part of the special charm on the lute: a listener, who
is familiar with the vocabulary of baroque style, will recognize when the
performer has set up an appoggiatura and, taking care to remember the
harmonically contextualizing notes even though they're gone, will "fill in the
blanks" in the mind's ear to achieve a sort of
mental pleasure from the simulacrum of expressivity in contrast to the
sensuous pleasure gained from the real thing. At least, that's what I find
myself doing. Personally, I don't want to make my listeners work that hard.
And again, based on what I hear other non-lute HIP musicians doing, I don't buy
it as a historical probability.
Anyways, that's my 415 cents.
Chris
Christopher Wilke
Lutenist, Guitarist and Composer
www.christopherwilke.com
--- On Tue, 8/30/11, David van Ooijen <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: David van Ooijen <[email protected]>
> Subject: [LUTE] Re: long strings?
> To: "andy butler" <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected]
> Date: Tuesday, August 30, 2011, 4:38 AM
> On 30 August 2011 10:27, andy butler
> <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > Beginner's questions.
> >
> > Is the superiority of gut down to the shorter sustain
> time
> > that someone mentioned earlier?
> >
> > Is string damping really unpopular? (unnecessary?)
>
> No such thing as a beginner's question.
>
> Superiority is not a word I would use for gut, as gut
> strings are
> imprefect in many ways. Another level, their imperfectiong
> makes me
> like the sound better, they're more insteresting than bland
> and boring
> synthetics (and there's the whole argument of why bother to
> play an
> 'early' instrument when using 'modern' strings to produce
> the sound,
> but I'll happily leave that to another discussion).
>
> Shorter sustain in extended basses is a happy side effect
> of gut,
> making damping of said basses unneccecary. I feel we can
> get an idea
> of the expected sustain from the music, and to my feeling a
> shorter
> sustain than metal-wound basses is called for in especially
> Baroque
> lute music. A 'gut' feeling, if you like. ;-)
>
> David
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> *******************************
> David van Ooijen
> [email protected]
> www.davidvanooijen.nl
> *******************************
>
>
>
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