A Brief History of the Lute
Part One

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The European lute derives both in name and form from the Arab instrument known as al ‘Ud, which means literally ‘the wood’ (either because it had a soundboard of wood as distinct from a parchment skin stretched over the body, or because the body itself was built up from wooden strips rather than made from a hollow gourd). The Arab ‘Ud was introduced into Europe by the Moors during their conquest and occupation of Spain (711-1492). Pictorial evidence shows Moorish ‘Ud players, and 9th and 10th century accounts tell of visits of famous players such as Ziryab to the court of the Andalusian emir ‘Abd al Rahman II (822-52). This ivory box dates from 968 the reign of al-Mugira the son of Abd al Rahman III in Andalusia and shows one of the earliest representations of an ‘Ud. It is being played standing up and in the detail you can see that the player is using a substantial plectrum. The figures are also wearing their hair in a style apparently also introduced by Zyriab, who seems to have been something of an arbiter of taste in Andalusia. He even founded a music school in Cordoba.

Ivory box (15cm high) in Louvre Museum, Paris.

Byzantine ivory carving (9th - 10th century) part of four panels.
Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt No. Kg. SU. 215

The ‘Ud was not confined to Muslims, however, as is shown by illustrations to the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso el Sabio (1221-84) which include players in distinctive Christian costume.

Also a book of chess endgame problems also commissioned by Alfonso X “el Sabio” in 1283 shows a lute with a more western-looking pegbox.

An interesting diagrammatic drawing of a five course fretted 'ud of just after this time from the book “Kitab al-adwar” by Safi al Din 'Abd al-Mu'min b. Fakr al-Urmawi can be seen here.

However from pictorial and written evidence it is clear that by 1350 what we must now call lutes, since there is no longer a connection with Arab musicians, had spread very widely throughout Europe, even though trading and cultural links with Moorish Spain were not well developed. We need to look elsewhere for a route that would lead to the eventual domination of European lute making by numerous German families who came originally from around the Lech valley region and Bavaria. Bletschacher (1978) has argued that this was due largely to the royal visits of Friedrich II with his magnificent Moorish Sicilian retinue to the towns in this valley between 1218 and 1237. The valley was a main north-south trading route across the Alps and the necessary raw materials grow there in abundance so it would have been a natural focus for any such development to occur. Especially following the capture of Constantinople in 1204 by the Venetians helping the second Crusade which so greatly increased their trading activities with the Near East.

The ‘Ud is still in use although it no longer has frets and over the centuries has undergone structural changes analogous to those of the lute, which mean that it is not the same now as either the original ‘Ud or the medieval lute.

As no lutes from before the 16th century have survived, information must be gathered from pictures, sculpture and written descriptions. These indicate that the lute has usually had its strings in pairs, and that at first there were only four such 'courses' From the start, lutes were made in widely different sizes, and therefore of different pitches.

Click here to see a reconstruction of this type of lute.

Both pictorial and written evidence points to the use of different sized lutes for treble and ground duet performance. (see Polk, 1992)

During the 15th century a fifth course was added. In 1426 Masaccio shows two five course lutes in his altarpiece,

(Virgin and Child, National Gallery, London).

Later, c.1481-3, Tinctoris mentions a sixth course and there are even tablatures from this period calling for a seven course lute, though no pictures from so early show one.

The earliest extant account of structural details for the European lute is in a manuscript of about 1440 written by Henri Arnaut de Zwolle.(see Harwood, 1960).

Arnaut described both the lute itself and the mould on which it was built, combining the two in the same diagram. His design was unmeasured but instead was worked out in terms of geometrical proportion, including the positions of bridge, soundhole and three transverse bars. Almost 200 years later, Mersenne (1636) described the design and construction of a lute by remarkably similar methods. By his time the number of soundboard bars had doubled, but the placing of three of them, as well as that of the soundhole and bridge, corresponds with that given by Amaut. There can be no doubt that there was a well-established tradition of instrument design by geometrical methods, going back to the ‘Ud at least as far as the 9th and l0th centuries (see Bouterse, 1979). It is perhaps significant that when the lute maker Gaspar Duiffoprugcar (1514-1571) commissioned a portrait of himself in 1562, surrounded by his lutes and other instruments, he is shown holding a pair of dividers in his right hand. Alas not very clear in this copy of the picture.

However when Arnaut’s design is compared to lutes shown in most paintings of the period it is in fact rather different, being oddly rounded at the top of the body. The very long neck he specifies is almost never shown. Suggesting that, as an enquiring scholar, he may have been given the general principles of design by the lute-maker(s) he consulted, but not the exact relationships which determine the precise shape and which may have been regarded as a craft secret.

Medieval lutes usually had two circular roses, one large and more or less halfway between the bridge and the neck, as specified by Arnaut, the other much smaller and higher up the body close to the fingerboard. The large rose was occasionally of the ornate ‘sunken’ variety, often with designs similar to some gothic cathedral windows. This may have been intentional for Arnaut calls the rose in his drawing ‘Fenestrum’. For instance the famous painting of the Nativity (c. 1470) by Piero della Francesca in the London National Gallery show two lutes with this kind of rose. Although the painting has been cleaned to within an inch of obliteration these roses can just be made out.

Around 1480 there was even a brief fashion for the upper rose to be in the form of a lancet window.

Interestingly just such a rose has survived in the clavicytherium now in the Royal College of Music, London, which has also been dated to about 1480.(see Wells, 1978)

Click here to see a reconstruction of this type of lute.

The ‘Ud was, and still is, played with a plectrum, and at first the same method was used for the lute. With this technique it was probably mainly a melodic instrument, playing basically a single line of music, albeit highly ornate, with perhaps strummed chords at cadences and other important points. However some of the very early plectra are shown as large and solid looking, so it may also have been used as a percussive rhythm instrument rather like the Rumanian Cobsa, which closely resembles the very early medieval lute, especially in the wide spacing of the strings at the bridge and the shortness of the steeply tapering neck. (see, Lloyd, 1960) This may explain the early drone tunings (see § The tunings of the lute).
During the second half of the l5th century, there was a change to playing with the fingertips, though, as Page (1981) pointed out, the two methods continued for some time side by side. Tinctoris (c.1481-3) wrote of holding the lute 'while the strings are struck by the right hand either with the fingers or with a plectrum', but did not imply that the use of the fingers was a novelty. However, the change was very significant for the lute's future development, for it allowed the playing of several parts at once, and meant that the huge repertoire of vocal part music both sacred and secular became available to lute players. This function was made easier by the invention about this time of special systems of notation known as tablature into which much of this repertoire was transcribed [intabulated]. There were three main kinds of tablature for the lute, developed in Germany, France and Italy respectively. A fourth early system, 'intavolatura alla Napolitana', was also used from time to time. Of the four main types the French may have been the earliest. The German one was probably written during the lifetime of Conrad Paumann (d 1473), the supposed inventor of the system. Although Tinctoris had mentioned a six-course lute, these first tablatures, and indeed the very names by which the strings of the instrument were known, suggest five courses as still the most usual number at this time.

Click here to see a reconstruction of this type of lute.

By about 1500 a sixth course was commonly in use, which extended the range of the open strings by another 4th to two octaves.

This may have been enabled by improvements in string-making. Gut was used for all the strings and it was usual on the two or three lowest courses to set one of the pair with a thin string tuned an octave higher, to lend some brilliance to the tone of its thick neighbour.

A Brief History of the Lute
Part 2

By 1500 the first written records confirm the existence of several families making lutes as a trade in and around Füssen in the Lech valley. Most of the famous names of 16th and 17th century lutemaking seem to have come originally from around this small area of Southern Germany. By 1562 the Füssen makers were sufficiently well established to set up as a guild with elaborate regulations which have survived.(see Bletschacher, 1978, and Layer, 1978) A careful reading of these regulations reveals how much they were predicated on the idea of export. They also show an organised tendency to keep the trade within individual families, which resulted in much inter-marriage. This was a powerful force for continuity which clearly lasted for centuries. However the number of masters who could set up workshop in the town was limited to 20, so there was a built-in pressure for emigration. It was also just this area which was devastated first by the Peasants war of 1525, the Schmalkald war and finally by the Thirty Years War which killed more than half the population of central Europe. Small wonder then that lutemakers, who already had international connections, moved out in such numbers.

Many settled in Northern Italy, no doubt attracted by the country’s wealth and fashion but also perhaps by the access to exotic woods imported via Venice. The tradition of inter-marriage meant that they remained as colonies of Germans and did not become much integrated into Italian society. Already by 1518 Laux Maler (see Pasqual, 1999) was well established as a lutemaker in Bologna, by 1530 he was a property owner of considerable substance and had built up an almost industrial scale workshop employing mostly German craftsmen. The inventory compiled at his death in 1552 lists about 1100 finished lutes and more than 1300 soundboards ready for use; his firm continued trading until 1613. Among several other lutemakers in Bologna were Marx Unverdorben (briefly) and Hans Frei. The main characteristic of their lutes is a long narrow body of nine or 11 broad ribs with rather straight shoulders and fairly round at the base.This form is remarkably close to that proposed by Bouterse (1979) in his interpretation of Persian and Arabic manuscripts of the 14th century. The chief difference is that these Middle Eastern descriptions, like Arnaut’s, indicate a semicircular cross-section, whereas the instruments of Maler and Frei are somewhat ‘more square’. Often made from sycamore or ash. they remained highly prized as long as the lute was in use, but became increasingly rare as time went on. No unaltered example is known to have survived, for their prestige was such that they were adapted (sometimes more than once) to keep abreast of new fashions. They have all been fitted with replacement necks to carry more strings. Sometimes, indeed, the vaulted back is the only original part remaining. (see Downing, 1978)

An original Maler lute back with baroque bridge, neck and pegbox by Leopold Widhalm. These have been removed and now just the folorn back and front hang separately in the museum.

In Venice, as in Bologna, the German colony kept to its own quarter with its own church. By 1521 Ulrich Tieffenbrucker is recorded as present in the city, and for the next hundred years the Tieffenbrucker family, Magno I, Magno II and Moises, as well as Marx Unverdorben and Maler’s brother, Sigismond, dominated lute-making in the city (see Toffolo, 1987). The name Tieffenbrucker was from their original village of Tieffenbruck, but their instruments are usually signed Dieffopruchar and regional spellings abound with variants such as Duiffoprugcar and even Dubrocard. Another branch of the Tieffenbrucker family settled in Padua, including Vendelio Venere, who has recently been discovered to be Wendelin Tieffenbrucker, son of Leonardo Tieffenbrucker (see Kiraly, 1994 and 1995). Michael Harton also worked in Padua and may have been taught by Venere. The typical body shape of these Venetian and Paduan lutes was less elongated than that of Maler and Frei, with more curved shoulders (fig.9a, c-f). The first examples had 11 or 13 ribs, but later the number was increased, a feature associated with, but not exclusive to, the use of yew, which has a brown heartwood and a narrow white sapwood. For purposes of decoration, each rib was cut half light, half dark, which restricted the available width and required a large number of ribs, sometimes totalling 51 and even more. The yew wood was supplied from the old heartland of lutemaking in South Germany, and cutting the ribs for Venetian makers became a valuable source of winter employment there. (see Layer, 1978)

Photo by Stephen Murphy
A lute by VVendelio Venere (Wendelin Tieffenbrucker) with a multi-rib yew back, though in this case it is heartwood only with maple lines between the ribs.

The use of geometrical methods of lute design has already been mentioned, and it has been found by several writers (Edwards, 1973; Abbot and Segerman, 1976: Söhne, 1980; Samson, 1981; Coates, 1985) that the shape of these instruments can readily be reproduced by such means; this may account for the similarity in basic form between instruments of different sizes and by different makers. By comparison with the modern guitar, these early lutes, whether of the Bolognese or Paduan type, are distinguished by the lightness of their construction. The egg-like shape of the lute body is inherently strong and does not need to be built of very thick materials. Although the total tension of up to twenty four gut strings (for later lutes) can be as much as 70 -80 Kg, the well-barred thin soundboard withstands this pull remarkably well. Though in the 17th century, as the Constantijn Huygens correspondence makes clear, it was routine to re-bar old lutes as part of their renovation this may be more to do with alterations in barring layout than structural weaknesses.

The instruction to tune the top string as high as it will stand without breaking is given in many early lute tutors, (though not by Dowland or Mace) and is a practical matter. For if the highest string is lowered for safety's sake much beneath its breaking point, the basses will be either too thick and stiff or, if thinner, too slack to produce an acceptable sound. Wire-wound bass strings which could ease this dilemma by increasing the weight without increasing the stiffness are not known to have been available until after 1650, and apparently not much used thereafter either. Therefore, as the breaking pitch of a string depends on its length but not on its thickness, the working pitch of a given instrument is fixed within quite narrow limits.

In the second half of the 16th century there was a tendency to build instruments in families of sizes, and thus pitches, roughly corresponding with the different types of human voice. The lute was no exception. Examples of the variety of sizes available at about 1600 are the instruments shown in Fig 9. Magno Tieffenbrucker, Venice 1609, 67cm (fig. 9a), Wendelin Eberle, Padua, c.1580, 29.9cm, 44cm, 44.2cm (fig. 9c-e), VVendelio Venere, Padua, 1582, 66.6cm (fig. 9f), Michael Harton, Padua, 1602, 93.8cm (fig. 9g) Strictly speaking, the smallest of these (fig.9c) should be called a mandore (see MANDOLIN, §2).

In England the nominal a’ or g' lute was known as the 'mean', and was the size intended in most of the books of ayres, unless otherwise specified. The only other names used in English musical sources are 'bass' (nominally at d’) and 'treble', which is specified for the Morley and Rosseter Consort Lessons. The pitch of these “treble” lutes implied by the other parts was also g’ but there is a possibility (see Harwood, 1981) that this music was to be played at a pitch level a fourth higher than that of the mean lute. This nomenclature of ‘treble’ has caused some interest and put together with a number of specifically English pictures of small-bodied long-necked lutes may indicate a particular English variant. (see Forrester, 1994)<

A Brief History of the Lute,
Part 3

It is noteworthy that although all sorts of sizes were available at most times, the general trend from 1600 to 1750 is towards larger instruments for those in common use. Thus for example, we might expect Dowland’s songs to be accompanied on a lute of about 58 cm string length tuned to a nominal g’ or a’, whereas most French baroque music of the mid 17th century calls for an eleven course lute of about 67cm with a top string at a nominal f’, while the lutes used in Germany in the 18th century were mostly 13 course lutes of about 70 - 73cm also with a nominal top string of f’. Some of this may represent a drop in the pitch standard, but we must also assume that string makers had managed to improve their products to increase the total range available, since these size changes represent considerable changes in the instruments’ requirements. Apart from the development of overwound strings this increase in range could only have been achieved by increasing the tensile strength of the trebles, by making the thick basses more elastic and flexible or by increasing the density of bass strings perhaps by the addition of metallic compounds. (see, Peruffo, 1991) There is currently much interest in trying to reproduce these conjectured developments. It is noticeable from written accounts that the cost of strings was remarkably high compared to that of the lutes themselves, leading to the thought that there was more to their manufacture than is now apparent.

Although seven course lutes appear as early as the late 15th-century, and Bakfark’s apprentice, Hans Timme, wanted to buy an Italian seven course lute as early as 1556 (see Gombosi, 1967), it was only in the 1580s that they became at all common with the seventh at sometimes a tone, sometimes a 4th, below the sixth. Improved strings are conjectured to have popularised this greater range, perhaps providing a better tone and enabling John Dowland, in his contribution to his son Robert's Varietie of Lute Lessons (1610), to recommend a unison sixth course:
Secondly, set on your Bases, in that place which you call the sixt string, or c ut, these Bases must be both of one bignes, yet it hath beene a generall custome (although not so much used any where as here in England) to set a small and a great string together, but amongst learned Musitians that custome is Ieft, as irregular to the rules of Musicke.

The same book, reflecting the growing tendency to increase the number of bass strings, included English and continental music for lutes with six, seven, eight and nine courses. This only ocassionally extended the range to low C; mostly the extra strings were used to eliminate awkward fingerings resulting from having to stop the seventh course. These ‘diapasons’ were usually strung with octaves. Already by 1600 the ten-course lute had made its appearance, shown in contemporary illustrations as constructed like its predecessors, with the strings running over a single nut to the pegbox, which has to be considerably longer to accommodate the additional pegs. The pegbox is also usually shown as being at a much shallower angle to the neck than the earlier renaissance lute (fig.l4), a fact borne out by the surviving original 10 course lute by Christofolo Cocho in Copenhagen (No 96a). Often the paintings of 10 course lutes show a treble rider, a small extra pegholder on top of the normal pegbox side, designed to keep the top peg clear of the left hand and to give a less acute angle on the nut for the fragile top string.

Another innovation reported by Dowland in Varietie was the lengthening of the neck of the instrument. 'for my selfe was borne but thirty yeeres after Hans Gerles booke was printed, and all the Lutes which I can remember used eight frets ..... some few yeeres after, by the French Nation, the neckes of the Lutes were lengthned, and thereby increased two frets more, so as all those Lutes, which are most received and disired, are of tenne frets'. Initially this may have been done to improve the tone of the low basses, but unless stronger treble strings became available at the same time, the pitch level of these longer lutes must have been lower than the older eight-fret instruments. Interestingly, one such lengthened neck survived until quite recently but when it was ‘restored’ this important evidence of the practice was removed. Sometimes extra wooden frets were glued on to the soundboard, an invention which Dowland attributed to the English player Mathias Mason.

It is interesting that Dowland should thus report the prevailing fashion in lutes as coming from France, for by his death in 1626 France was the dominant culture musically and was the centre for developments in different tunings, starting some time around 1620, which led to the 11 course lute. Lowe (1988) has suggested that the eleventh course may at first have been only an octave string. The later surviving 11 course lutes mostly appear to be conversions from 10 course lutes, all done in the same way, by making the second course single and adding a treble rider for the top string or ‘chanterelle’ on the top of the normal pegbox treble side. This effectively gave two extra pegs which were used for the new bass course, but, because the neck was now too narrow, these strings were taken over an extended nut which projected beyond the the fingerboard and were fastened to the pegs on the outside of the pegbox. The portrait of Charles Mouton, a famous player and composer of the period, clearly shows that this was obviously not regarded as a stopgap measure.

Charles Mouton by François de Troy, Paris, 1690

Click here to see a reconstruction of this type of lute.

This final extra course on the same string-length has often been attributed to the invention of wirewound or overspun strings, first advertised in England by Playford in 1664. However there is distressingly little hard evidence that these were in fact much used and they are not mentioned by either Mace or the Burwell tutor even though both wrote about the choice of strings, and Mace at some length. As Lowe (1976) has shown, during the 17th century the French were already buying up and converting early 16th century Bologna lutes, seemingly because of a new aesthetic which valued the antique. There are so few surviving lutes with any claim to have been made in France that it is not possible to be sure what their makers were doing by way of new lutes at a time when lute playing was so important to French musical life. The French cannot all have been playing on antique instruments one supposes. Indeed the inventory of the French maker Jean Desmoulins, who died in 1648, points to a vigorous production since it lists 249 lutes in various stages of construction as well as 14 theorbos both large and small (see Lay, 1996). Only one lute from this maker has survived (CNSM 979 - 2 - 69)


Makers working in Italy, where the old tuning held sway, had already addressed the problem of extending the bass range in the 1590’s by the expedient of having longer and therefore naturally deeper-sounding strings carried on a separate pegbox. The theorbo, chitarrone, liuto attiorbato and archlute all had extended straight-sided pegboxes carved from a solid piece of wood set into the neck housing at a very shallow angle and carrying at their ends a separate small pegbox for these extended bass strings. The form of all these instruments is very similar, differing mainly in the length of the extended pegbox, the number of courses carried and whether the bass courses were double or single.

It was therefore only to be expected that this principle of longer, and therefore unfingered, bass strings should also be applied to non-continuo lutes. From c.1595 to c.1630 various other types of extended pegboxes were tried for the bass strings. In one version, an extra piece of neck was added on the bass side which carried its own little bent back pegbox. One of these [by Sixtus Rauwolf 1599, though the extension may be later] has survived in Copenhagen and there are several paintings showing this form.

Molenaer

More widely adopted was a double headed lute with curved pegboxes, (fig. 10) one set backwards at an angle rather like the normal lute, the other extended in the same plane as the fingerboard. This carried four separate little nuts to take the bass courses in steps of increasing length.

Hendrik Martensz Sorgh (1611 -1670)
The lute player
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Click here to see a reconstruction of this type of lute.

This form usually had 12 courses and was apparently invented by Jaques (English) Gaultier c.1630 (see Spenser, 1976; Samson, 1977) but was not used much by the French who stayed largely loyal to their single-headed lutes. As the author of the Burwell lute tutor (c1670) wrote: 'All England hath accepted that Augmentation and ffraunce att first but soone after that alteration hath beene condemned by all the french Masters who are returned to theire old fashion keeping onely the small Eleaventh'. He, or she, objected to the length of the longer bass strings and felt they rang on too much, thereby causing discords in moving bass lines. It was, however, widely used in England and the Netherlands until at least the end of the 17th century. The apparent thinking behind this form was a desire to avoid the sudden jumps in tone quality between the treble and bass strings which characterise the theorbo and archlute forms. An important tutor for this type of lute, Musick’s Monument, was published by Thomas Mace in 1676, in which he characterises it as a French lute, although Talbot (c1690) in his manuscript called it the 'English two headed lute'. For Talbot the 'French lute' had 11 courses, with all the strings on a single head. There has been some discussion of the usual size for these instruments (see Segerman, 1998) But Talbot measured a 12-course instrument of this type as 59.7cm and the iconography shows all sizes. So far, six examples of this type have turned up with fingered string lengths of between 50 and 75cm.

This same principle of stepped nuts for bass strings of gradually increasing length lay behind a specifically English form of the theorbo, which is also described and illustrated in Mace and was measured by Talbot (see Sayce, 1995; Edwards, 1995) . Unusually for a theorbo this had double strung courses in the bass which still further smoothed the transition across the range. None of these have survived.

Thomas Mace, Musick's Monument (London. 1676) The theorbo half of The Lute Dyphone.

Click here to see a reconstruction of this type of lute.

The French too seem to have developed their own version of the theorbo principle in the 17th century with a shorter extension than the Italian theorbo and maybe with single stringing.

In Italy in the 17th century the drive towards extending the bass range of the lute was accommodated somewhat more consistently by continuing the theorbo design into smaller lutes for solo use. Thus the liuto attiorbato came to be used in addition to normal lutes and theorbos, and later archlutes, for accompanying singers and continuo work. Matteo Sellas was part of another large German family of instrument makers still based in Italy, and produced very elaborate lutes and liuti attiorbati of ivory and ebony at his workshop ‘alla Corona’, at the sign of the crown, in Venice. His brother Giorgio made equally decorative guitars and lutes ‘alla stella’. Working in Rome, beyond what might seem to be the natural migration range from Germany, were David Tecchler, Antonio Giauna and Cinthius Rotundus, from each of whom has survived an ARCHLUTE, attesting to this instrument’s importance in Rome in the 17th century.

A Brief History of the Lute,
Part 4

By the beginning of the 18th century, the centre of activity in lute music shifted from France to Germany and Bohemia. The makers extended the range of the instrument still further, and by 1719 composers were writing for 13 courses. There were two types of 13 course lutes developed and it is hard to say which was first, since both are possible conversions from pre-existing 11 course instruments and so labels are not conclusive. Paintings of both types are suprisingly rare. In one version a single pegbox was used like that of the 11 course lute, but, possibly starting as a conversion, a small subsidiary pegbox or ‘bass rider’ with four pegs to take the extra two courses was added to the bass side of the main pegbox (fig 12). This had the effect of giving between 5 and 7cm extra length to these two courses. Commonly these lutes were quite large by previous standards with 70 to 75cm being the usual string length. From what has been said so far about stringing this must imply a lower pitch for the main strings. It is clear from the details of the tablature that Weiss wrote throughout his life for this version of the 13 course lute which was developed by the new wave of German makers, working in Bohemia and Germany itself. Among the most important at this time were Sebastian Schelle and his pupil Leopold Widhalm working in Nürnberg (see Martius, 1996), Martin Hoffmann and his son Johann Christian Hoffmann working in Leipzig, Joachim Tielke and his pupil J. H Goldt working in Hamburg (see Hellwig, 1980) and Thomas Edlinger I of Augsburg and his son Thomas II who moved to Prague and set up his workshop there. All these makers were violin makers as well, reflecting the growing importance of this instrument at a time when the lute was becoming less in demand.

These were also the makers responsible for the other version of the 13 course lute with extended bass strings, the German baroque lute. (see Spencer, 1976) This had an ornately curved double pegbox carved out of a single piece of wood, usually ebonised sycamore. This type did not usually have a treble rider, but did occasionally feature a little separate slot carved in the treble side of the main pegbox to take the top string. Typically this kind of lute had 8 courses on the fingerboard and 5 octaved courses going to the upper pegbox, these five being normally between 25 and 30cm longer than the fingered strings.(fig.“Mozart & Hadyn” in Mozarteum) This design appears to be a modification of the pre-existing angelique form. Some apparently early 13 course lutes, such as the 1680 Tielke, dating from long before the surviving 13 course music which first appears c.1719, seem to be converted angeliques. Others like the Fux conversion in 1696 of a Tieffenbrucker instrument and the 169? 13 course lute of Martin Hoffmann raise more awkward questions of dating. An even more elaborate triple pegbox form of this type was also developed and a few examples have survived, notably by Johannes Jauck, a lute and violin maker working in Graz and Martin Bruner [1724 - 1801] in Ollmouc. These seem to have been functionally the same as the double pegbox form, and they may have been another attempt to obtain a smoother transition from treble to bass courses.

Anonymous lute probably made in Italy in 16th century and converted to triple-headed baroque form by Jauck in Graz
Yale, No. 4565.1960 (photo by Kenneth Bé)

Internally, the barring structure behind the bridge was altered by these makers. Starting with an increase in the number of little treble-side fan bars, finally the characteristic J bar on the bass side of the renaissance lutes was removed and various kinds of fan-barring were introduced right across this area of the soundboard. These seem to have the effect of increasing the bass response. The main transverse bars were also made slightly smaller and more even in height, maybe with the same intention. The body outline of these lutes is remarkably similar to that of the early 16th-century lutes of Frei and Maler and this resemblance may well have been deliberate, for the old instruments continued to be highly prized. It was about this time (1727) that the first systematic history of the lute was written, by E. G. Baron. Referring to the lutes of Laux Maler, he wrote:

But it is a source of wonder that he already built them after the modern fashion, namely with the body long in proportion, flat and broad-ribbed, and which, provided that no fraud has been introduced, and they are original, are esteemed above all others. They are highly valued because they are rare and have a splendid tone.

This echoes the value put on Maler lutes in the Fugger inventory of nearly 200 years earlier, which talks of ‘An old good lute by Laux Maler’ and ‘One old good lute by Sig[ismond] Maler’. Baron’s comment on the possibility of fraud is also interesting in this context, since there are several surviving lutes with supposedly 16th century Tieffenbrucker labels which are clearly the work of Thomas Edlinger working in Prague at about the time Baron was published. Thomas Mace too, writing of Maler, says, ‘..but the Chief Name we most esteem, is Laux Maller, ever written with Text Letters: Two of which Lutes I have seen (pittiful Old, Battered, Crack’d Things) valued at 100l. a piece.’

In the 18th-century a much simpler form of German ‘lute’, the mandora, emerged with the same string lengths and barring system as the baroque lute but usually with only six or eight courses in a variety of tunings,. Apparently mainly used by amateurs, it also found a useful niche in orchestras in place of the 13 course baroque lute.


Throughout the lute’s history the gut strings have been matched by moveable gut frets tied round the neck. The placing of these frets has always been a problem to both theoreticians and players, and many attempts have been made to find a system that will give the nearest approach to true intonation on as wide a range of intervals and in as many positions as possible. A number of writers, including Gerle (1532), Bermudo (1555), the anonymous author of Discours non plus mélancholique (1557), Vincenzo Galilei (Il Fronimo, 1568) and John Dowland put forward various systems, many of which were based on Pythagorean intervals. Late I6th-century theorists in Italy, as well as 17th-century writers such as Praetorius and Mersenne, habitually assumed that the intonation of the lute (and other fretted instruments) represented equal temperament, whereas keyboard instruments were tuned to some form of mean-tone temperament (see Temperaments).

Günther Hellwig: Joachim Tielke, Ein Hamburger Lauten- und Violenmacher der Barockzeit, (Frankfurt am Main ,1980)
Klaus Martius: Leopold Widhalm, und der Nürnberger Lauten- und Geigenbau im 18. Jahrhundert, (Frankfurt am Main, 1996)
Sandro Pasquale & Roberto Regazzi:Le Radici del successo della liuteria a Bologna, (Bologna, 1998)
Ray Nurse: ‘Design and Structural Development of the Lute in the Renaissance’, Proceedings of the International Lute Symposium, (Utrecht, 1988)
Kevin Coates: Geometry, Proportion and the Art of Lutherie, (Oxford, 1985)
Monika Burzik:Quellenstudien zu europäischen Zupfinstrumentenformen, (Kassel 1995)
A. L. Lloyd: ‘The Rumanian Cobza’, LSJ. ii (1960), 13
Edmund A. Bowles: Musical Performance in the Late Middle Ages, (Minkoff, 1983)
Peter Kiraly: ‘Some new facts about Vendelio Venere’ LSJ. xxxiv (1994), 26 and LSJ. xxxv (1995), 73
Peter Forrester: ‘An Elizabethan Allegory and some hypotheses’ LSJ. xxxiv (1994), 11
John Downing: ‘The Maler and Frei Lutes - Some Observations’ FoMRHI Bull. 11 (1978), 60
Mimmo Peruffo: ‘New hypothesis on the construction of bass strings for lutes and other gut-strung instruments’ FoMRHI Bull. 62 (1991), 22
Keith Polk: German Instrumental music of the Late Middle Ages, (Cambridge 1992)
E. Segerman: ‘The size of the English 12-course lute’ FoMRHI Bull. 92 (1998), 31
Lynda Sayce: ‘Continuo lutes in 17th and 18th-century England’ Early Music xxiii/4 (November 1995), 666
Lynda Sayce: ‘Performing Purcell; A question Answered?’ Early Music Review (March 1995),
D. Edwards: ‘Talbot’s English theorbo reconsidered’ FoMRHI quarterly, Bull. 78, (1995), 32
Stefano Toffolo: Antichi Strumenti Veneziani, 1500-1800: Quattro Secoli di Liuteria e Cembalaria. (Venice, 1987)
Peter Päffgen: Laute und Lautenspiel in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, 1978)
Peter Lay: ‘French Music for solo theorbo - an introduction’ Lute News, No. 40, (1996), 3
Catherine Massip: ‘Facteurs d’instrument et maîtres à danser parisiens au XVIIe siècle’ Instrumentistes et Luthiers Parisiens XVII - XIX siècles, (Paris, no date)
Catherine Massip: La vie de musiciens de Paris au temps de Mazarin (Paris, 1976)
Elisabeth Wells:‘An Early stringed keyboard instrument’ Early Music Vol 6 No.4 (October 1978), 568
Sandro Pasqual: ‘Laux Maler (c.1485 - 1552)’ Lute News, No.51 (1999), 5 - 15
M.G.Lowe: ‘Renaissance and Baroque Lutes: A false dichotomy. Observationes on the lute in the seventeenth century’. Proceedings of the International Lute Symposium, Utrecht, 1988
Joel Dugot & others: Luths et luthistes en Occident(Paris, 1999)

This forms part of the lute entry in the new Grove Dictionary of Music and has been posted here in lieu of any payment whatsoever for the work done!

Structure of the Western lute.

The structure of the Western lute evolved gradually away from its ancestor the Arab lute or ‘Ud, though some features have remained sufficiently consistent to constitute defining characteristics. Chief among these are: a vaulted back, pear-shaped in outline and more or less semi-circular in cross-section, made up of a number of separate ribs; a neck and fingerboard tied with gut frets; a flat soundboard or belly in which is carved an ornate soundhole or ‘rose’; a bridge, to which the strings are attached, glued near the lower end of the soundboard; a pegbox with pegs inserted laterally; and strings of gut, usually arranged in paired courses.

The Ambassadors (detail) Hans Holbein, National Gallery, London. (Nb. this shows a 16th century lute)

The ribs, of which the body is constructed, are thin (typically about 1.5mm) strips of wood, bent over a mould and glued together edge to edge to form a symmetrical shell. Although the overall sizes of lutes vary considerably, there is much less variation in the thicknesses of their constituent parts, and even very large lutes have ribs of less than 2mm. The glue joints between the ribs are reinforced inside with narrow strips of paper or parchment. Many surviving lutes also have five or six strips of, usually, parchment glued round inside the bowl across the line of the ribs. The number of ribs varies according to date and style from only seven to more than 51, but it is always an odd number because lute backs are built outwards from a single central rib. Many kinds of wood, even sometimes ivory, have been used for the back. Maple (acer spp. ) and yew were the favoured local European woods but exotic woods from South America and the Far East such as rosewood, kingwood and ebony, were used as they became available in the 16th century. The extent of their use by 1566 is revealed in the inventory of Raymond Fugger (see Smith, 1980)

At the lower end, where these ribs taper together, they are reinforced internally with a strip of softwood bent to fit, and externally with a capping strip, usually of the same material as the ribs. At the other end the ribs are glued to a block, often of softwood, to which the neck is attached. In most pictures of medieval lutes up to about 1500, as in the early Arab ‘Ud, the ribs are shown as flowing in a smooth curve into the line of the neck.

In these cases the end of the neck itself, suitably rebated, may have formed the block to which the ribs were glued. However even by 1360 there are already some pictures showing lutes with a sharp angle between neck and body, implying that the separate block, which is universally present in surviving lutes, was not unknown. The overlap of these two forms lasted at least two hundred years. For instance, The Last Judgement by Bosch c.1500 (Vienna Academy) still shows both forms in one picture. In the later two-part construction the joint is a simple glued butt joint, secured with one or more nails driven through the block into the end-grain of the neck. This simple joint proved adequate for the rest of the lute’s history

Most surviving lutes from the early 16th century have been re-necked in later styles but, from pictures, the early necks appear most often to have been a single piece of hardwood such as sycamore or maple to match the body. {fig 3 Ambassadors] In later and surviving lutes after about 1580 the neck is most often veneered in a decorative hardwood, often ebony, sometimes striped or inlaid with ivory, on a core of sycamore or other common hardwood. At first through the medieval period and into the renaissance, necks were semi-circular or deeper in cross-section. As the number of courses increased through the 16th and 17th centuries, the necks became correspondingly wider, necessitating a change of left-hand position to enable stretches across to the bass strings. This made a thinner neck more comfortable. Baron (1727) commented that Johann Christian Hoffmann (1683 - 1750) made the necks of his lutes to fit the hand of their owner, unlike his father Martin Hoffmann(1653 - 1719) who made his necks too thick.


Separate fingerboards are often not very apparent in pictures of medieval lutes, leading to the supposition that they were either boxwood or simply the flat top surface of the neck. Sometimes when there is a marked change of colour between the “fingerboard” and the soundboard, the join occurs so far down the soundboard it would be beyond any possible neck block and therefore structurally impossible. This must represent a protective coat of something like varnish. Surviving lutes from the 1580’s onward almost universally have separate ebony fingerboards set flush with the soundboard and, after about 1600, usually with separate “points” decorating the joint between fingerboard and soundboard. [fig 1] The lutes of Tielke in the 18th century indeed often had multiple “points.” (see Hellwig, 1980) Medieval and renaissance lute fingerboards were usually flat, even the wide chitarrone and theorbo fingerboards, but from about 1700 makers started to give a curve to their fingerboards, helping the lie of the frets and making fingering easier.

At the back of the top end of the neck a rebate is cut out to form a housing for the pegbox. This same design of joint, with or without a reinforcing nail into the end-grain of the neck, was used throughout the history of the lute, as was the basic form of the pegbox: a straight sided box, closed at the back, open at the front and tapering slightly in both width and depth. However after about 1595 various branches of the lute family also developed different and characteristic pegbox forms in order to accommodate the longer bass strings needed to extend the range of the lute downwards.

Slender tapering hardwood tuning-pegs are inserted from the sides. Medieval pegs appear often to have been made of boxwood but later, in the 17th and 18th centuries, fruitwood such as plum seems to have been a preferred material, though these were often stained black.

There is some controversy about the soundboard material, mainly as a result of confusion about the exact historical distinction between fir, pine and spruce. At all events, it is a flat straight-grained softwood plate, nowadays mostly thought of as Picea abies or Picea excelsa, into which is carved an ornamental rose soundhole, whose pattern often shows decidedly Arabic influence (see Wells, 1981) However it is noticeable that the iconography does not support a continuous tradition of rose design from the Arabic Ud; most medieval pictures of lutes feature gothic designs, and the frequency of Arabic patterns in the later surviving lutes may reflect rather the contemporary interest in such designs by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Dürer. The soundboard is usually made from two halves joined along the centre line, but on larger instruments several pieces may be used. Most surviving lute soundboards are quite thin, often about 1.5mm. However there is some support for the view that the very earliest from c. 1540 may have been rather thicker, and that soundboards were made progressively thinner as the number of the supporting bars was increased. (see Nurse, 1986) Early lutes before the 1590’s usually have no edging to the soundboard. After that, often an ebony or hardwood strip was rebated in to half the depth of the soundboard edge as a protective measure. Later still, when the fashion for re-using old soundboards was in sway (see Lowe, 1976), a ‘lace’ of parchment or cloth with silver threads was often used to wrap the edge, possibly to cover pre-existing wear.

Later still, a protective outer reinforcing strip of hardwood was often used, applied over the joint between soundboard and ribs particularly on the treble side. This seems to have been because the extra strings of the baroque lutes had made their pegboxes heavier and longer, thus increasing the pressure between the lute and the supporting knee of the player.

Bridge designs went through a slow evolution, particularly in the shape of the decorative “ears” which terminate both ends, but were consistently made of a light hardwood such as plum, pear or walnut, sometimes stained black, and were glued directly to the surface of the soundboard. Their cross-sectional design was very cleverly arranged to minimise stress at the junction with the thin and flexible soundboard. Holes drilled through the bridge took the strings, which were tied so that they were supported by a loop of the same string rather than by a saddle as in the modern guitar. This has a marked effect on the tone of the instrument, and contributes to the sweetness of the lute’s sound.

The tension of the strings, because they are pulling directly on the soundboard, tends to cause it to distort. This is resisted by a number of transverse bars, of the same wood as the soundboard, glued on edge across its underside. These bars, besides supporting the soundboard, have an important effect on the sound quality. By dividing the soundboard into a number of sections, each with a relatively high resonant frequency, they cause it to reinforce the upper harmonics produced by the string, rather than its fundamental tone. This is matched by the strings themselves, which are quite thin compared with a modern guitar; a thin string tuned to a certain note produces more high harmonics than a thicker string tuned to the same note. Thus the whole acoustical system of the lute is designed to give a characteristically clear, almost nasal, sound.

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History of the Lute

The lute was played in Europe for over 500 years and, for some of that time,was the most important musical instrument in European culture. Its history and the story of the current revival follows.

To get in the right mood, here's a bit of lute music; Chris Wilson plays some Francesco da Milano (1497-1543) for us. This recording is here with Chris Wilson's permission (20 seconds for 235k). Please click on the button below.

The ancestor of the European lute is the north African and middle eastern musical instrument, the ud, (also spelled oud). The ud resembles the European lute and has four pairs of strings which are played with a plectrum. Obvious visual differences are the ud's curved pegbox and the presence of more than one rose. In Arabic 'al ud' means 'the wood' and the words 'al ud' have given our language the word 'lute'. The ud has existed for over a thousand years and is still played today.

Whether due to invasion or commerce, the ud was known in Europe before 1000 AD. Here, the ud was adapted to local needs and paintings from the 15th century show instruments, which are definitely lutes, with five courses (a course is a pair of strings played together, or a single string) being played with a plectrum. No lutes survive from this period but there is an interesting manuscript from about 1450 which loosely describes lute construction (Arnault's manuscript) In Europe, the size, shape, stringing, and tuning of the lute would continue to evolve as the musical styles changed and as new technology became available.

The middle Renaissance (1500-1580) lute had six courses, the top string often being single. The use of a plectrum facilitated the playing of single highly ornamented lines of melody. This style can still be heard in modern ud music. The new Renaissance trend to play more than one line of music at a time (polyphony) was not easily accommodated with the plectrum and the technique of plucking with fingers evolved. At about this time a form of music notation for the lute appeared, known as tablature, which gives the positions of the fingers on the fingerboard as a guide to the music. This century saw the beginning of published lute music with music books and tutors being printed all over Europe. The music above is from this period.

Woodworkers with German names such as Frei, Mahler, and Unverdorben had workshops in northern Italian cities and produced lutes typically with six courses and pear shaped bodies made of nine or eleven hardwood ribs. A few instruments of this period survive. The workshops were good sized and long lived, often family businesses, and produced many thousands of lutes.

As better bass strings became available, lute makers began to produce lutes with seven courses. The first mention of a seven course lute is in 1511 and the first published music for the instrument began to appear around 1580. Thesenew strings, known as catlines, probably used rope technology to twist the gut to increase flexibility and thus their ability to play lower notes. It is possible that the strings were also treated chemically to increase their density. The seven course lute was slow to appear in England.

The late Renaissance (1580-1620) is a particularly interesting time for the lute. It was well established as an instrument of the court and was studied by many prosperous citizens. The student of the lute needed to be sufficiently affluent to afford the instrument, music, strings and tuition. Its main uses were as a solo instrument or to accompany voice but it was also used in ensembles, known as consorts. John Dowland, perhaps the finest lute virtuoso ever, played and published his music in England and on the continent during this time. Many cities supported lute making workshops and some lute makers were, to judge by their tax records, comfortably well off.

The outline of the lute body in the late Renaissance was not elongated, as were the earlier lutes, but more rounded. The number of ribs used to make the body increased, at first to thirteen or fifteen, then twenty-five and later to more than thirty, and occasionally to over fifty. Quite a few instruments of this period survive and some are exquisitely crafted. Most of the surviving multi-rib lutes are made of yew. Indirectly this may have been the result of improvements in metal technology as stronger metals allowed gunpowder to be used in guns and cannon. Certainly it was at about this time that the yew longbow was becoming obsolete as a weapon of war and stocks of the wood held for military use may have become available to musical instrument makers.

Once the seven course lute was established, lutes with eight, nine and ten courses appeared relatively quickly. Although these lutes might have nearly twenty strings, the playing of them was sensibly organised. Only the first six courses were stopped and the relative tuning of these strings was not far removed from that of the modern guitar. Courses seven to ten were not usually stopped and had their pitch altered, if necessary, to the accidentals of the key being played. The actual pitch of the strings was determined by the first course of a single string which was tuned as high as possible without breaking. The remainder of the strings were tuned to it. However the intervals between courses were the same as the modern tuning of g' - d' - a - f - c - G. A seventh course would be tuned to D or F.

This tuning was the standard until the the mid 17th century when new tunings evolved for the first six courses of the lute. A new string technology, the winding of wire over gut strings to make overspun strings, allowed experimentation in lute design. Towards the end of the 17th century, new lutes had eleven courses (sometimes thirteen or fourteen) with the first two courses strung singly. The top six courses were often tuned to a minor chord, f' - d' - a - f - d - A, the D minor tuning. Full use was made of overspun strings for the basses, and with an increased string length, the instrument had a very different tone and compass when compared to earlier instruments. The bodies of these instruments took their shapes from both the elongated and rounded lute bodies. Many older instruments were altered to carry more strings of the new longer string length. Those instruments made by the early Renaissance makers were especially prized for this purpose. As the lute was played during the Baroque period it is often known as the Baroque lute.

The following ten seconds of solo lute is played on an eleven course lute made in 1644 by Pietro Railech. The gut strings are tuned a slightly lower tension that musicians might prefer, but museum curators must protect instruments in their care. The piece is La Rhetorique des Dieux, 1652, by Denis Gaultier (1597-1672).

Thirteen course lutes appeared in several variations. One version was a modified eleven course lute, with a rider to carry courses twelve and thirteen. The rider was attached to bass side of the pegbox, held four pegs and a short nut for the two courses. Another type of thirteen course lute had two pegboxes, neither bent at a sharp angle to the neck, but attached in line with the neck, one after the other, making a very long instrument. These instruments are often called theorboes, but are in fact are thirteen course lutes using a different constructional solution to the problem of so many strings.

There was a large variety of sizes and shapes of lutes. The most common size was, and is, often called the mean lute. Higher pitched instruments were known as treble lutes, while larger, lower pitched instruments were bass lutes.

A family of lutes with two pegboxes appeared in the late sixteenth century. They initially developed from bass lutes and showed a variety of pegbox positions and neck lengths. Known as the theorbo and chitarrone, they were used to accompany voice and in ensemble. They outlived the mean lute and were used for bass continuo well into the eighteenth century. They are all fascinating shapes, some with very long necks indeed and sometimes made by re-necking old lute bodies.

For nearly five hundred years the lute was played in the cities of Europe. It was the most respected of all musical instruments. In western musical history there is not another instrument to equal its combined longevity and stature.

The reasons for decline of the lute are not easy to document. Certainly the appearance of larger, and therefore louder, orchestras and an increasing reliance on keyboard instruments such as the harpsichord and piano, both reduced the demand for lutes and lute players. J. S. Bach, who died in 1750, composed some of the last music for solo lute. The professional lute players who retired during the time of Mozart and Haydn were not replaced.

Revival

The tradition of lute making entirely disappeared. No old workshops, plans or lute making tools survive. All the information known today about lutes has painstakingly won by research.

What did survive in quantity and of excellent quality, was the music.

For all twentieth century lute makers, the sources of information about the old lutes are limited; paintings, the surviving lutes, the music and a handful of contemporary tutors. Paintings and drawings are only sometimes accurate, but used with care they have provided considerable information about stringing, shapes, sizes, materials and chronology.

The surviving instruments are both rare and precious. From northern Italy about 1600 there are about twenty good examples of seven and eight course lutes. Each one has been altered, damaged, or is an unusual size and none can be copied as it now exists for modern use. But together they give a good insight into lute making of the time. From 1550 and earlier there are two, perhaps three, informative lutes remaining. The oldest surviving lutes are the often modified lute bodies by Frei, Mahler, Unverdorben etc. Some of these may date as far back as 1520, but very few original soundboards have survived.

The music can also provides clues. Besides giving immediate information on the stringing of the instrument, if the lute is not made properly it becomes difficult, and sometimes impossible to play the music.

There has also been confusion and misinformation. Consider the modern lute maker attempting to analyse an authentic Renaissance lute which had been altered by an eighteenth century craftsman to play Baroque music. There were German guitar makers in the 1920's making massive lutes which owed most of their construction to the modern guitar. There are folk instruments which are like a cross between a lute and a guitar. Both of these have been, at times, confused with authentic old lutes. There were forgeries in museums and modern restorations of old instruments which caused valuable information to be lost.

In the early years of this century Arnold Dolmetsch became interested in the lute and managed to play at least one old instrument by Michael Harton. Although it is said that Dolmetsch made a modern reproduction lute (and recorded with it), he would have found research difficult. In early publications of the American Lute Society, Suzanne Bloch wrote of her experiences in the 1910's and 1920's in Germany, tracking down the lute and lute music, and meeting Arnold Dolmetsch and Diana Poulton.

Here are Arnold and Rudolph Dolmetsch playing lute and viol, possibly in that order and probably about 1930. This is from a Columbia 78rpm record. It has been said that Arnold played a heavily built lute but I have seen a picture of him captioned something like 'Arnold Dolmetsch playing a lute by Micheal Harton'. It is interesting to speculate what lute is heard here.

The Lute Society in England was founded in 1956 and the decade following saw a great interest in what became known as 'Early Music'. Interest in the old instruments followed close behind. Initially, the modern lutes showed a lack of historical research, but slowly the information was rooted out from the centuries. In Germany, Friedman Hellwig was in charge of musical instruments in museums and began to measure, document and publish plans. His articles about lutes, makers and construction practice broke new ground. Especially important for modern makers was his description of the geometrical barring patterns used by old makers. Musical instruments, including lutes, began to be x-rayed. In the England, the Fellowship of Makers and Researchers of Historical Musical Instruments, founded in 1975, provided a forum for discussing accurate historical information. Ephraim Segerman, sometime editor of the FoMRHI quarterly and founder of Northern Renaissance Instruments, has been indefatigable in the search for historical accuracy in reconstructing the old instruments. Lute makers Michael Lowe in Oxford, and Stephen Gottlieb and Steven Barber in London, produced some of the earliest acceptable modern lutes. It became possible, for the first time in two hundred years, to receive full time training to become a lute maker.

In the U.S.A., the American Lute Society and the Guild of American Luthiers cater to the needs of players and makers. Robert Lundberg has written an important series of articles on lute making for the magazine published by the Guild of American Luthiers and these articles are now available as a book.

The revival is not over nor is it static. There is presently plenty of discussion over the merits of gut, nylon, carbon fibre, coated gut, brass wound and copper wound strings. But the lute, and early music, have become established as part of classical music. It is due to the scholarship, musicianship and dedication of musicologists, lute makers and musicians that the lute and its music is heard again.

F

The lute repertoire

Notable composers of lute music include Francesco da Milano, John Dowland, John Johnson, Denis Gaultier, Johann Sebastian Bach, Sylvius Leopold Weiss, Philip Rosseter, Thomas Campion, Joseph Haydn, Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger, Robert de Vis饼/a>, Alessandro Piccinini, Karl Kohaut.

Many historical lute pieces were published, but many others are found only in manuscripts, perhaps belonging to the composer or perhaps belonging to some amateur lutenist who would copy in unpublished songs, or have a renowned guest indite a new composition while visiting. These lute books are generally known by name, such as Jane Pickeringes Lute Book, The Straloch Lute Book, The M.L. Lute Book, etc.

The modern repertoire is almost entirely drawn from historical publications and manuscripts, though a few modern compositions do exist. The historical corpus is vast, and much of it exists only in the original manuscripts and has never been published. Much material circulates among lutenists in facsimiles of the manuscripts or as photocopies of handwritten copies. Historical lute music is most commonly written in tablature, though sometimes in ordinary musical notation instead.

The standard repertoire for classical guitar includes many transcriptions or arrangements of Renaissance lute music. These pieces are often transposed to a key that is more congenial for the guitar, due to the differnces in tuning between guitar and lute.

Much of Ottorino Respighi's orchestral Ancient Airs and Dances is based on a manuscript of Renaissance lute music once possesed by the musicologist Chilesotti, which is now lost.

The Baroque Lute was developed around 1650. At first it had 11 courses of strings (in a tuning based on a d-minor triade), which were augmented to 13 or rarely even 14 around 1720. Important composers for the Lute of the 18th century included Sylvius Leopold Weiss (a friend of J.S.Bach), Karl Kohaut, and Joachim Bernhard Hagen. After 1800 the Baroque Lute fel into neglect with a few works still being composed for it until its revival in the 20th century.

Illustrated History of Lute in Central Europe

source:    http://polyhymnion.org/swv/vita.html

 

Last update: June15, 2004

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"Una a una, en els meus ulls ordeno les vides conegues....."

-Salvador Espriu

 
Baroque Lute is unique in music history in that it was the first to carry the task of the Private Communion with The Divine, which is the cornerstone of the modern ideal of self-expression, reflecting a notion of private worship postulated in New Testament. Just as Renaissance Artists sought to emulate the Ancients in the Arts of the Visual Realm, XVIII-th  century Lutenists of the Weiss and Sautscheck circle sought to emulate the Ancients in the Realm of the Spiritual. Thus were planted the seeds of Private Desolation and Private Supplication, a rather modern idea... It origated among French lutenists during the 17th Century, but it was J.J. Froberger, a keyboard composer who became its first major representative.

As far as the subject of these pages is concerned it manifested itself in a propensity toward minor keys, somewhat uncharacteriristically for the times, as well as predilection for such commemorative forms as TOMBEAUX at the expence of lighter forms of GALANTERIEN. XVIIIth century saw the advent of tuberculosis: Life not expected to last provided considerable inspiration for "funerary" musical forms for many artists, even those who otherwise were known to be bon-vivants. Anyway the difference between an everyman and an artist lies in the fact that the latter knows that earthly existence is finite...

The influence of Hegels's dialectics on this idea [more specifically, the hegelial logic of idea developement] produced spectacular results in music of the late- and post-Classical eras, and it would be very tempting to attempt to apply this to music for the lute....

But, to return to our subject:

By the beginning of the 18th century, the center of activity in lute music shifted East from France to Germany and Bohemia. The makers there extended the range of the instrument to suit the demands posed by new musical developments, and by 1719 composers were writing for lutes with 13courses. This invention is often ascribed to Sylvius Leopold Weiss.

Previously lutes had only 11 courses of strings.

Here's an earlier 11-course type (detail):

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The new generation of lute composers writing for 13-course lutes included:
Georg-Anton Sautscheck, Johann Sebastian Bach, Sylvius-Leopold Weiss, Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach, Wolff-Jacob Lauffensteiner, Adam Falckenhagen, Johann Joachim Sautscheck, Johann Melchior Sautscheck, Joachim-Peter Sautscheck, Gotthold Ephraim Sautscheck, Joachim-Bernhard Hagen, Karl Kohaut, Konradin-Aemilius Sautscheck, Johann-Friedrich Reichardt, Friedrich-Wilhelm Rust, Timofey Belogradsky, Weyrauch, Kropffganns, Kleinknecht, Blohm, Weichenberger, Pichler, Gleimius, Corrigniani, Sollnitz, Hoffer, Meusel, Kalliwoda, Baron et alia.

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There were three types of 13 course lutes developed and it is hard to say which was first, since both are possible conversions from pre-existing 11 course instruments and labels are not conclusive. Paintings of all 3 types are surprisingly rare.

In one version a single pegbox was used like that of the 11 course lute, but, possibly starting as a conversion, a small subsidiary pegbox or 'bass rider' with four pegs to take the extra two courses was added to the bass side of the main pegbox. This had the effect of giving between 5 and 7cm extra length to these two courses, so the stings used for them would be of the same gauge as the preceding ones, a manufacturing shortcut.

Here's a newer 13-course type:

Commonly these lutes were quite large by previous standards, with 70 to 75cm being the usual string length. It is clear from the details of the tabulature that Weiss wrote throughout his life for this version of the 13 course lute which was developed by the new wave of German makers, working in Bohemia and Germany itself.

Among the most important at this time were Sebastian Schelle and his pupil Leopold Widhalm
working in Nürnberg, Martin Hoffmann and his son Johann Christian Hoffmann working in Leipzig, Joachim Tielke and his pupil J. H
Goldt working in Hamburg, and Thomas Edlinger I of Augsburg and his son Thomas II who moved to Prague and set up his workshop
there. All these makers were violin makers as well, reflecting the growing importance of this instrument at a time when the lute was becoming less in demand.

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These were also the makers responsible for the other version of the 13 course lute with extended bass strings, the German baroque lute. This had an ornately curved double pegbox carved out of a single piece of wood, usually ebonised sycamore. This type of lute did not usually have a treble rider, but did occasionally feature a little separate slot carved in the treble side of the main pegbox to take the top string. Typically this kind of lute had 8 courses on the fingerboard and 5 octaved courses going to the upper pegbox, these five being normally between 25 and 30cm longer than the fingered strings.

This design appears to be a modification of the pre-existing angelique form. Some apparently early 13 course lutes, such as the 1680 Tielke, dating from long before the most of the surviving 13 course music which first appears c.1719, seem to be converted angeliques. Others like the Fux conversion in 1696 of a Tieffenbrucker instrument and the 169? 13 course lute by Martin Hoffmann raise more awkward questions of dating.

 

A Hoffmann lute:

 

Another Hoffmann type lute by Stephen Murphy:

 

A Goldt lute by David Van Edwards:

 

A Widhalm lute :

This particular style of lutherie did not disappear with lute's demise in the 18th century. It lived on for 150 years more in Eastern Europe, most notably in Ukraine, where German Baroque Lute has adopted some local characteristics and became the Torban, or Ukrainian Theorbo (click on the picture to proceed to the Torban pages):

 

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An even more elaborate triple pegbox form of this type was also developed and a few examples have survived, notably by Johannes Jauch, a lute and violin maker working in Graz, Martin Brunner [1724 - 1801] in Olomouc/Ollmütz, and Jonas Elg in Lund, Sweden. These seem to have been functionally the same as the double pegbox form, and they illustrate a more successful attempt to obtain a smoother timbre transition from treble to bass courses.

This wasn't exactly a new developemnt. Some Italian lutemakers have been experimenting with this system of pegbox construction as early as a 100 years previously [special thanks to David Van Edwards for these illustrations].

Here's an anonymous instrument in Cite'-de-la-Musique:

 

Here's a Sellas instrument preserved in the Brussels Conservatory Museum:

 

Here is the Jonas Elg 15-course lute:

 

Here is a so-called Weiss-theorbo [rear view] by Brian Cohen:

 

Martin Brunner 1762:

This writer, with his Martin Brunner [L.Brown] lute:

 

A Jauch in Yale:

A Jauch in Copenhagen:

And the Jauch type by Cezar Mateus:

A similar Theorbo in Deutsches Museum in München:

An "Tiffenbrucker" in Munich Stadtmuseum (spurious label, likely to be by Edlinger):