 The lute had a long and
distinguished history over nearly four hundred years, from the
mid-fourteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, and for much of this
time it was at the heart of European musical life. The instrument
changed substantially over this period, becoming steadily larger and more
complex. There is an excellent history of the lute, together with many pictures, on the
website of lutemaker David Van Edwards.
The standard instrument used during most of the sixteenth century was a six-course lute, tuned:
This tuning is much like a modern classical guitar, although tuned in G rather than E and with the third course a semitone lower. The instrument I play is a seven-course renaissance instrument, of a type which would have been used around the end of the sixteenth century. The seventh course is tuned to a low D, a fourth below the sixth course. Each 'course' has two strings tuned in unison (or in octaves for the lower courses) which are plucked together. The top course has a single string. The repertoire for renaissance lute, from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, is enormous and of high quality. Some of the first music ever published was for lute (Francesco Spinacino's two lute books, published by Petrucci in Venice in 1507). In fact far more music was published for lute in the sixteenth century than for any other instrument: Howard Mayer Brown's bibliography Instrumental Music printed before 1600 lists 206 books for lute and only 76 for keyboard. Additionally, much music also survives in manuscripts. The main reason that this repertoire is so under-recognised today is, of course, that there are so few lutenists. A secondary reason, however, is that the music was without exception written in tablature rather than in conventional notation. Tablature is a system which shows the player where to place his fingers, rather than which musical notes are going to sound, and is not therefore readily accessible to non-players. There were several types of tablature. This example is in Italian tablature:
The six lines denote the six courses of the instrument (with the highest-sounding course placed at the bottom) and the numbers show which frets to play: 0 is an open string, 1 is the first fret, etc. Here are the first five bars of this piece transcribed into conventional notation.
I always prefer to play from facsimiles of original sources wherever possible. Many of these are now available from specialist publishers such as Minkoff. |
