Valid points, Chris. My take is that each instruments has its imperfections which by good players are turned into positive characteristics. Organ is an impossible instrument for me because of its relentless sustain combined with utter lack of dynamics. How can you make _music_ on an instrument that lacks dynamics?! But even I must admit that some organists can, by making the most of the organ's unique selling point: articulation. A lute, on the other hand, has infinite shades of dynamics. From almost inaudible to fairly loud, but the gradations a good player can make are what gives a lute one of its strongest possibilities of expression: so fine, so nuanced, so delicate. I find appogiaturas so much more convincing in the context of dynamic shading than on the organ. Furthermore, the lack of sustain on gut strings is a bass string thing, the trebles have sustain enough. In repertoire for Baroque lute, are most appogiaturas not on the say first 5 courses? Another point to consider in the relative volume of the lute is that we play for too large audiences these days, cranking up our volumes to be heard by several hundred people. How can we expect to make the subtle nuances that the lute favours if we use only the upper part of our dynamic range? They would be lost to all but the few people on the front row, if the front row is close enough, even. I think we have to value the strong points of our instrument in appropriate conditions. Perhaps modern strings are an answer to moderns concert conditions, but they do not encourage savouring the best characteristics of a lute: subtle dynamics. To be more explicit, I much prefer especially Baroque ornaments on gut strings, precisely because of their uneven and imperfect character, their three-dimensional quality when the sound is still changing after plucking as compared to the smooth and uneventful sound in the sustain of synthetic trebles. Like I prefer a human voice with character over a perfect artificial sound. For me, that can be a problem with appreciating organ or cembalo too: the uneventful sound these instruments produce.
Where I do lack sustain in bass strings on a lute is in Renaissance polyphony. Perhaps that is one of the reasons for all those senseless repetitions of notes, on the beat even, that so marr the non-metric beauty of the original vocal lines. To turn these weaker points of the lute into stronger points, requires playing with the expectations in the listeners' heads, something I actually enjoy doing where you seem to prefer a lazy audience. ;-) David On 30 August 2011 16:31, Christopher Wilke <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 >> ******************************* >> >> >> >> To get on or off this list see list information at >> http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >> > -- ******************************* David van Ooijen [email protected] www.davidvanooijen.nl *******************************
