Dear All,
Martin pointed out a lot of very important informations.
I have had the pleasure to hear from a very close position the Rauwolf
lute owned by Jakob Lindberg (and had the responsibility to trasport it
on my car...) and can confirm it has a lovely sweet tone. The
soundboard is supposed to be the original one, that's why Jakob got so
interested into that instrument when he could find it.
As far as I can remember Anthony Bailes also plays an historical lute
and Toyohico Satoh has one as well.
I remember Stephen Barber explaining that soundboards get thinner with
the age as the wood naturally looses more and more humidity. This has
two consequences: we shouldn't imitate their present thickness, as this
has lowered considerably, and they get incredibly fragile.
I think that the restauration work on Jakob Lindberg Rauwolf lute took
about 10 years and has required advice from many different lutemakers.
At the same time Jakob radically refuses to expose his historical lute
to any humidity level below 40%.
All in all from what I've heard directly, playing an historical lute
requires an awful lot of care: it's surely a life-lasting experience,
but we shouldn't forget that "the ancient ones" were mostly playing on
new instruments...
So, check your bank account, start that usually complex conversation
with your significant other (where you painfully try to explain why you
need yet another lute), then get in touch with your beloved lutemaker
and order a new instrument.
We should avoid what happens a bit too often in movies: as the story
happens in XVI century, they pick up a 500 years old mansion and do
their filming, usually forgetting that that same mansion in XVI century
was and looked NEW, not the way it looks now ;-)
Have a great sunday,
Luca
Martin Shepherd on 22/04/12 14.30 wrote:
Dear All,
As far as violins are concerned, I'm sure the reason we're still
playing instruments built in the 17th C (albeit now radically
rebuilt) is that since it first appeared in the 16th C, the violin
has not only changed little (it still has four strings, for
instance) it has also been in constant use. Lutes passed out of use
altogether, so the only instruments which survived were those which
were valuable for non-musical reasons such as being made of valuable
materials (ivory, ebony, etc) and/or were pretty enough that people
wanted to hang them on the wall as decoration. It's such a shame we
don't have any surviving lutes from before the middle of the 16th C.
Lutes are delicate, so even those which have been "restored" to
playable condition have had major surgery to achieve this state -
the Rauwolf lute owned by Jacob Lindberg being a good example.
The oldest lute I still own is my no.2 (7c, 67.3cm, with a yew
back), whose labels says "November 1982", so it's coming up to its
30th birthday. I don't think it has changed much over the years,
and (almost uniquely) has never had a loose bar, so the soundboard
has never been lifted. If anything it seems to have got better
through the years, as seems to be usual with lutes. It has been
well used (not thrashed) for all of that time. I also have nos 3
(6c, 53.5cm, 1983) and 4 (6c, 60cm, 1985) and they are also in
continuous use and seem to have if anything improved with age. All
three feature on my website soundfiles.
I'm optimistic that lutes being made now will have a long future
ahead of them, as long as people want to play them.
Best wishes,
Martin
On 22/04/2012 08:09, William Samson wrote:
I agree with most of the comments you make, Chris.
I have a couple of lutes that are between 30 and 40 years old -
one of
them (with a Sitka spruce soundboard) sounded better when new
and now
sounds quite harsh in comparison to its earlier state. The
other one
(Swiss pine soundboard) has improved with age and although the
bridge
had to be glued back on a few years ago, I find it is easier now
to
produce a nice tone from it than when it was new. The caveat
is, of
course, that all this is quite subjective and my technique has
changed
radically over the past 40 years - from guitar technique with
nails,
guitar technique without nails, pinky-down-thumb-inside
technique, and
nowadays the thumb creeping outside and also playing closer to
the
bridge to emulate how I think the old ones played their lutes in
the
17th century.
Where I take issue, though, is that as far as I can tell Mace
doesn't
advocate regular replacement of the soundboard. He does,
however, give
instructions on how to carefully remove the soundboard, repair
loose
bars, cracks etc, and glue it back down satisfactorily once
repairs are
done.
I keep hearing stories of lutes, just a decade or two old,
having their
soundboards replaced with brand new ones. I can't understand
the
motivation behind this unless the old soundboard was made of
very poor
wood or very badly made. Generally speaking, though, I find
that the
older soundboards are made from better wood, with a tighter
grain, than
is generally available nowadays. My gut feeling is that the
tone and
response of the instrument is dominated by the soundboard, so
replacing
a soundboard with a new one could radically alter the way the
instrument sounds. I wonder what seemingly irreparable
soundboard
faults cause players to throw away the whole soundboard in
exchange for
a new one?
Anyway, if you are thinking of replacing your soundboard, I'll
happily
pay postage and packing expenses if you'll send your old one to
me :)
Bill
From: Christopher Stetson[1]<[email protected]>
To: [2][email protected]
Sent: Sunday, 22 April 2012, 2:59
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Why no active historical lutes?
Hi, everyone,
I've been waiting for one of the luthiers on the list to
reply, but
since they haven't, I'll toss in that it's my understanding
that the
physical forces of strings pulling on the glued-down bridges
of
lutes,
which then torque the bridge against the very thin soundboard,
are
quite different from those of strings pushing down on violin
bridges,
which transmit the force downward onto the more robust, carved
soundboards, all of which results in lutes tending to come
apart more
quickly than violins do. Also, I believe that in the opinion
of
some,
at least, because of these different structures and forces,
while
violins tend to sound better as they age, the sound quality of
lutes
(and guitars with glued-down bridges) tends to deteriorate
over time.
Perhaps some luthier list-members could confirm, deny, or
nuance?
Doesn't Mace talk of having his soundboards replaced on a
regular
basis?
Best to all, and keep playing.
Chris.
On Sat, Apr 21, 2012 at 5:57 PM, Edward
Mast[3]<[1][1][email protected]>
wrote:
I think one or two may have survived un-modified (perhaps
the
"Messiah"?). Also, Yo Yo Ma 'de-modified' one of his strad
cellos
(I believe I've read this), reconfiguring it as a Baroque
instrument. (How much of a shame the modifications are
depends
upon
who you're talking with, of course).
-Ned
On Apr 21, 2012, at 5:00 PM, Sam Chapman wrote:
> Just for the record, I don't think any of those
Stradivarius
violins
> are in anything like their original condition. Which is a
real
shame.
>
> All the best,
>
> Sam
>
> On 20 April 2012 20:23, Herbert Ward
[4]<[2][2][email protected]>
wrote:
>>
>> According to Wikipedia, there are many Strativarius
violins
>> in active use today:
>>
[3][3][5]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stradivarius_instrumen
ts
>>
>> But I never hear of anyone playing a historical lute
routinely.
>> In fact, it seems rare for anyone to even handle one.
>>
>> Is this because the thin soundboard becomes fragile with
age?
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>>
>> To get on or off this list see list information at
>>
[4][4][6]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
>
>
>
> --
> Sam Chapman
> Oetlingerstrasse 65
> 4057 Basel
> (0041) 79 530 39 91
>
>
--
References
1. mailto:[[7]5][email protected]
2. mailto:[[8]6][email protected]
3.
[7][9]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stradivarius_instruments
4.
[8][10]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
References
1. [11]mailto:[email protected]
2. [12]mailto:[email protected]
3.
[13]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stradivarius_instruments
4. [14]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
5. [15]mailto:[email protected]
6. [16]mailto:[email protected]
7.
[17]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stradivarius_instruments
8. [18]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
References
1. mailto:[email protected]
2. mailto:[email protected]
3. mailto:[1][1][email protected]
4. mailto:[2][2][email protected]
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stradivarius_instruments
6. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
7. mailto:5][email protected]
8. mailto:6][email protected]
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stradivarius_instruments
10. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
11. mailto:[email protected]
12. mailto:[email protected]
13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stradivarius_instruments
14. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
15. mailto:[email protected]
16. mailto:[email protected]
17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stradivarius_instruments
18. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
