ABOUT L U T E AND BAROQUE
GUITAR SET- UP
Our
philosophy concerning gut stringings (but also their synthetic
equivalents)
for the lute family and 5 course guitars is simple:
to reproduce, as
far as
possible, the typical sounds of historic instruments as they were in
use.
Sill,
within those
limitations, research in the
field of
historic stringmaking made some important progress in recent years and,
although we cannot claim we know exactly what the sound of the dolce strumento was
like (a
speculative point rather than a
concrete one, anyway, since there must have been different opinions
among
lutenists in the past, too), we can fairly confidently define the
acoustical
region, common to all lutes,
which was imposed by the
stringmaking
technologies
of the past.
First of all, let us rule
out
the materials whose
sound
definitely cannot match the characteristic sound qualities of the lute:
1.
PVF
(‘carbon’) strings: much too
bright in comparison
with any type of gut string.
2. Nylon: produces a somewhat duller and darker sound than gut.
3.
Nylgut:
thin strings sound very close to gut, but
does
not quite compare by increasing diameters.
4.
Wound
on
nylon multifilament: almost all the
strings of
this type are much too bright and possess too much sustain - the
opposite of
what revealed by research on 18th
century wound strings,
which were
fundamental-heavy and needed octaves for brightness, and had limited
sustain.
And then let’s
consider some other
parameters
pertaining to
the sound of the lute:
5.
Working
string tension:
today’s criteria,
when working
out lute stringings, rarely follow the idea of feeling of equal
stiffness on
every course, like advocated by the ancients. The modern rule is, in
general,
to calculate the string diameters by applying the same tension,
expressed in
kilograms, to each string (this criterion is first described by Maugine
&
Maigne 'Nouveau
manuel complet du luthier' in
Paris, 1869)
and completely ignores the variability of some
typical
factors,
such as the different amount of reduction of the string diameters under
working
tension and how different strings of different manufacture and/or
length feel
under the fingers.
6.
Octave
strings: the modern tendency
is to apply a
noticeably lower tension than on their respective fundamental
strings (Virdung,
1511 seem to
suggest
that the diameter of the octave string should be half that of its
fundamental).
7.
Trebles:
when single strung, modern tendency is
to apply
too low a tension, giving an unbalanced feeling between the treble and
the
other courses.
8.
Stringing
criteria: the
principle of grouping the
strings
into
three well defined Sorts
(like advocated in the old treatises,
in Trebles,
Meanes and Basses) is usually ignored. Thus, we often see strings of
one
Sort invading the field of another, thus altering the timbric
and
dynamic
balance of the instrument (wound strings on the 4th
course,
wound long
diapasons &c).
In
conclusion: the
acoustical qualities of
today’s lutes
are, in general, remarkably brighter and have more sustain in the bass
and,
because of the wound strings, also in the mid-register, thus failing to
achieve
the timbric and dynamic homogeneity we believe was typical of the past.
At
the top end, trebles can be much brighter (PVF
or
‘carbon’) or duller (nylon) than gut. We have
created a
new
sound that doesn’t
have very much in common with that of the past.
No criticism at all on this choice: the lute can well be played like this, too.
