The lute in its historical reality
by Mimmo Peruffo
'Now
divine aire, now is his soule
ravisht, is
it not strange that sheepes guts should hale soules out of mens bodies?'
William
Shakespeare, Much
Foreword by the Author
For each historical period of the Lute I listed the diverse, concomitant historical evidence I have knowledge of (both treatises, and of a technological, epistolary, iconographical nature) dealing with strings, to which are added mathematical verification and experimental tests (every hypothesis must also work in practice in order to be accepted as plausible). The conclusive hypothesis, as harmonized synthesis of all sources, is expressed at the end of the exposition of the documentation.
Of course I tried to make sure it does not contradict any of the listed documents. When so, I left a doubt, or a different interpretational model, open.
On the other hand, wherever different points of view exist, I took care to expose them together with their reasons, pointing out their weak points (in the light of historical sources, mathematical calculations etc.).
To better tackle this task I drew on the synergic competence acquired from my former activities as chemical analyst, amateur lute maker and (again, out of passion) lute student.
To this sum of experiences is to be added my profession as string maker, which integrates the teachings received from my mentor, Arturo Granata (the last string maker in Italy who excercised his trade for many decades), in the active research in the fields of ancient string making and historical documentation and treatises on the Lute and other string instruments.
My activity as string maker plays here a fundamental role: the fact of never having seen and handled fresh gut strongly limits the very formulation of hypotheses that first of all must take into account whether gut can eventually produce what we expected it would do.
So a long and thourough study was necessary of the technologies in use in the 16th and 17th centuries (especially regarding the dyeing of leather, fabrics, silk, hairs etc. and then the techniques of metal wire), constantly supported by Franco Brunello, one of but a few experts in the world on the subject of applied chemistry to the tanning of leather and dyeing of fabrics and silk in the 16th-18th centuries.
It was thanks to his suport that I had the good luck of having at my disposal original historical texts or now very rare16th and 17th century reprints of a technological nature, which allowed me to carry out, in the period 1983-1990, at least 1,500 tests after ancient (and partly more recent) recipes from the dyeing and tanning trades, in the hope of being able to apply them to the loading of gut for bass strings.
Besides, I read several ancient recipe books and went through a few hundreds of volumes of lists of 16th and 17th century manuscripts from the principal Italian libraries, in the hope of finding some useful information about string making technology (and this is how the Statutes of Roman and Neapolitan string makers were found).
This kind of research was also extended to the State archives of cities that had been historical string production centers like Rome, Pistoia, Florence, Bologna, Naples, Lyon, Strasbourg etc.
Very helpful was, specifically, the in-depth study of Renaissance techniques of silk treatment with minerals and so was my knowledge of chemistry applied to goods and of the mineral chemical compounds known in the past.
The resarch carried out in the museums of Vienna, Nürnberg, Paris, Florence, Bologna, Rome, Barcelona, Innsbrück, Berlin, Eisenach, or in private collections (with the scope of measuring the diameters of bridge holes on surviving Lutes) and at the same time the analysis of the iconographical sources of the time finally closed the circle.
At this point I would like to mention the surviving pieces of historical strings found in some European museums (Rome, Innsbrück, Brussels, Vienna, Nürnberg), on which I am keeping a constantly updated database that presently counts hundreds of specimens that can be defined as 'ancient'.
Finally, I would also like to mention the filmed interviews (with practical demonstrations of working techniques, tools, processes, etc.) with the last, very few, elderly Italian string makers, heirs of a historical technological tradition passed on from father to son, just in time to prevent its final disappearance.
Fortunately we were able to achieve that task before it was too late and we can now state that every phase of the whole historical production cycle is safely recorded and perfectly reproducible.
I hope that this work will help stimulate further debate and practical research rather than simply support the formulation of certainties (or, at the other end, superficial opinions) based, only too often, on scarce (or partial) knowledge of the documents, of the mechanical and acoustical properties of strings and of the technological resources of the past which, in achaeological work, nearly always only add to confusion and leave things as they were.
A few words on the
Lute,
The Lute
is no doubt the
instrument on which the ancient lute and string makers invested all
they could
invest to obtain the maximum acoustical performance from the interface string-instrument.
The
limited working
tension, the sound emission obtained through just one initial impulse
from the
fingers (and not a continuous one as obtained with a bow) and the
remarkable
open string range (especially on instruments with ten or
eleven courses on
a single neck) made it a gymnasium of projectual and constructional
abilities.
Just as
any architect has
to use a brick’s mechanical properties as his starting point, the
ancient lute
makers designed their instruments - be they Lutes, Violon
d’arco or Viole
da Brazzo - starting from the mechanical and acoustical
properties
of the available gut strings, and not the other way round. Nobody would
design
a new internal combustion engine and afterwards start looking for the
right
type of fuel.
Concerning
the stringmakers,
we can safely assume that they always produced strings of the
best
possible quality compatible with the technology at their disposal.
As
example in our opinion, the Lute 1st strings -in the early 16th
century-
had already reached, as far as the tensil strenght is
concerned, their ultimate degree of perfection (whereas their
potential
falseness remained an unsolved problem).
We must
point out that
improvements in the string quality never took place through a gradual,
steady
perfecting of production techniques but through sudden
technological leaps,
which always specifically dealt with the development of Bass strings of
a
better acoustical performance.
The
success of such improvements always had
important consequences on our instrument, first of all an increase in
the
number of bass strings (originally on one single neck).
Let us
now try and explain
by what criteria the Lute was the result of the optimization of already
available
strings, starting from a few basic elements:
1) Working tension:
frequency and string length being equal, it only depends from the
thickness of
the string: the diameter was to be chosen so that the string would be
neither
too stiff, nor too slack to the touch.
2) Equal
feeling: once
the diameter that granted the ‘right’ tension was found it
should be applied to
all strings on the instrument.
3) Inharmonicity of
thicker strings: the thicker a string is (tension, string length,
quality of
the material and manufacturing technique being equal) the lower it
sounds, but
at the same time the overall acoustical qualities decrease in a
progressive
manner, until - beyond certain diameters - the increase in stiffness
makes them
completely unsatisfying.
Let’s look
at things in detail:
Point 3)
is a problem that
has to do with a law of Physics, whose practical opposite is: any
strategy
apt to reduce the string’s diameter can only go in the right
direction.
The
solutions leading to a
reduction in diameter, frequency being equal, are:
1) -
reduced working
tension
2) -
longer string
length
3) -
increased string
elasticity
4) - increased specific
weight
Point 1)
depended on the
player (neither too taut nor too slack strings); points 3) and 4) only
depended
on the string makers and were the cause of real organological and
musical
eras, as they introduced novelties onto the market.
The only
point directly
concerning the lute maker was thus point 2): string length and diameter
are
inversely proportional and in order to optimize the acoustical
performance of
strings it was necessary to adopt the longest possible string length.
This was
done to the benefit of the Basses, the thickest strings and therefore
most
liable to suffer from inharmonicity, in order to reach the smallest
possible
diameter and consequently the best possible acoustical
performance.
On the
other hand it was
not possible to increase the string length at will, the breaking point
of the
treble being the limiting factor.
Let us
see
why:
When a
string - of any
material - is put under increasing stress between two fixed points
(string
length) a frequency will be eventually reached at which it will snap.
This
point coincides with the linear breaking load, which for gut
experimentally
averages 34kg/mm2 (an average value we can assume as reliable - on
proven
grounds whose demonstration lies beyond the scope of this article - and
applicable also to gut trebles from the 16th and 17th centuries).
Such
limit, called breaking
frequency, is completely independent - counter-intuitive as it may
sound -
of diameter, and that can be easily verified both mathematically,
through the
general formula of strings, and experimentally.
This
frequency is directly
proportional to the string length; so if you, say, half the string
length the
frequency will be twice as high. In other words, the product of the
string
length (in meters) by frequency (in Hertz) is a constant, called Breaking
Index.
Experimentally,
the mean Breaking Index of a
modern lute’s treble breaking at 34kg/mm2 is 260 Hz/mt (that is,
a string
In fact,
the lute maker
must reason the other way round: the frequency of the treble is
the first
parameter taken into account when designing an instrument.
According
to the above
described proportions, dividing the Breaking Index by the Frequency of
the
treble will give the theoretical string length at which
that string
will break.
In the
case of a lute in G
(g=392 Hz at A 440) we obtain: 260/392=.66mt.
For the practical
string length a certain prudential shortening of this critical length
must then
be taken into account. By how much? The shorter the string the
more
problematic the acoustical performance of the Basses.
From the
examination of
some (reliable) surviving Renaissance and Baroque lutes, and the
proportions of
the instruments described by Pretorius, we could ascertain that the working
string length was 2-3 semitones below the theoretical string
length
described above.
Why?
Using a
research carried
out by the lute maker David van Edwards ( 'Gut
strings and Angled Bridges' in
The Lute Vol XXV 1985) as a
starting point, we put under increasing
stress a Lute treble and obtained, too, the following curve:
As can be
seen, the string
keeps its linearity up to about two semitones below breaking point.
From there
on it loses almost completely its tensility under increasing stress and
quickly
reaches its breaking point.
This
aspect was of course
well known to the Ancients: this is what Bartoli wrote: ...una
corda
strapparsi quando non può piú allungarsi... -a string
broke when it cannot stretch furthermore- (DANIELLO BARTOLI: Del
suono, de’ tremori armonici e dell’udito, a spese di
Nicolò Tinassi, Roma
1679, p. 263).
So the
critical point where
the tensility of a treble begins to fail was taken as
decisive element
when calculating the longest possible working string length on a Lute,
to the
point of exploiting up to 90-95% of its tensile reserve under working
condition.
In other
words they
constantly worked close to breaking point.
This
curve also explains
the well known Renaissance Lute rule which demanded that the
first (and
expensive!) string be tuned as high as it will go before breaking; but
not to
worry: the string would warn the lutenist when its extreme limit was
nearly
reached (a slight turning of the peg would cause a much higher
frequency
increase than before, thus
signalling
that the exitus was nearly reached).
We call
this upper limit.
There is another, a lower limit, which is, by its own nature,
less
clearly defined than the upper one, since it is essentially a
subjective
parameter and has more to do with the acoustical qualities of the
lowest bass
string. The open string range between the top string (which can not go
any
higher) and the lowest bass (which defines the boundary of what was
acceptable
to the ear of the time) summarizes, in extreme synthesis, the state of
the
manufacturing abilities of the string makers who were contemporaries of
our
instrument.
Just like
a liquid, when
poured into any vessel, immediately occupies the maximum surface
available, the
characteristic of the Lute, strumento perfectissimo et
eccellentissimo,
was that of exploiting to the largest possible degree the mechanical
and
acoustical properties of the available strings.
Even in
its constructional
optimization, though, it was bound, at both ends, to its limits:
but
whereas the upper one could never be exceeded (the tensility of gut
chantarelles was that
and remained that), the lower one was the real, practical field
of experimentation
for the coming centuries.
Strings
produced in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, unlike today, were
identified by
names that immediately pointed to the place of provenance, as a clear
sign of
quality.
This
particular aspect, in a historical period where copyright did not
exist,
explains the utter severity with which the corporations of string
makers
prosecuted commercial frauds, including string makers within the same
corporation if they were caught cheating.
Giving
the client absolute guarantee that
Another
point to underline is the manufacturing specialization typical of
different
geographical areras: in some regions, for instance, string makers would
devote
themselves to bass strings, in other regions to treble strings,
reaching
astonishing commercial successes.
This
does not mean that
Sources
from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries specifically describing the
production
of strings for plucked and bowed instruments are scanty, mostly
concerning the
Lute, which was the most difficult instrument to string.
Regarding
the Age of Enlightenment we have an interestig paradox: at a time when
the
Encyclopedists started for the first time to describe in detail the
string
making art (together with some important aspects of stringing for bowed
instruments, mandolin and especially five course guitar) we know
virtually
nothing about the Lute in S. L. Weiss’ time: our instrument had
already fallen
in a dark corner of history which no Light of Reason could illuminate
anymore.
Let
us now examine the historical sources:
15th
century
We
have no commercial denomination whatsoever for Lute strings.
16th
century
The
earliest mention of different types of strings come from the manuscript
of the
Venetian nobleman Vincenzo Capirola (c. 1517): for the first
time we
have a description of strings of superior quality from Munich
(Bavaria); a
type of string called ‘Ganzer’ is also mentioned,
whose origin is not
quite clear, although it might hint at a roped structure (see below).
Unfortunately Capirola does not specify where on the instrument the
strings he
mentions were employed.
Another
known source is Adrien Le Roy (A Briefe and plaine
instruction...,
After
this interesting start he goes on to describing how to tell a good
string from
a false one. He, too, gives no further information about where on the
instrument the strings he mentions were employed.
This
scanty information is all we have from the 16th century.
17th
century
The
first author who finally throws a bit of light on the question of Lute
strings
is John Dowland, 1610 (Varietie &c...)
He
divides strings as follows:
-
Trebles:
‘from Rome
and other parts of Italy’;
‘from
Monnekin and Mildorpe’
-
Small and Great Meanes: Gansars
-
Base:
Nuremburge &c. (the best Basses, according to Dowland, are
made in
In
Dowland’s work we can see a certain tendency to confusion when
describing the Meanes
as string typology: it is not quite clear, for instance, whether the smaller
strings made in
Next
comes Michelangelo Galilei who on 6 August 1617, from
In
the Mary Burwell Lute tutor (c. 1670) we read: ‘The
good stringes are made at Rome or about Rome and none that are good
are made in any other place except the great strings and octaves that
are made
in Lyons att Fraunce and noe where else’.
Here,
too, no particular novelties: it confirms what already stated by
Mersenne
(1636), that the best strings came from
Thomas
Mace
(1676) is definitely our most exhaustive and valuable source. Like
Dowland, he
describes three typologies of strings:
-Trebles: top three courses and octave 6th: Minikins;
-Meanes: 4th and 5th and all remaining octaves:
-Basses: Pistoys and Lyons.
Mace,
like Dowland, also mentions coloured strings, but is also not clear
whether
they were used as Trebles or Meanes (or both).
This
sums up all the information we have about string typologies in the 17th
century.
Romans,
Venice Catlins and Lyons appear again in James
Talbot’s manuscript (c. 1695), as strings
for violin and bass violin.
18th
century
We
have no specific terminology about Lute strings.
In
conclusion, the names given to Lute strings in the 17th century always
refer to
their place of origin, with two exceptions: Catlins (or Catlines) and
Gansars.
The former were produced, at least in Dowland’s time, in
All-gut
bass strings made by string makers gave way to wound basses, which were
wound
up by the lute maker or even by the player himself.
An
era had thus come to an end.
The
history of the lute (meant as
family of
instruments),
seen in relation to the string making technologies which were developed
in then
course of the 17th
and 18th
centuries, can be
divided in
three basic
periods,
which, generally speaking, are essentially connected to the types of
available
bass strings:
- Lutes from about the mid-15th
century to
about
1570-80 (6
course lute and vihuela).
- Lutes from about 1580 to
the end of the 17th
century (7,
8, 9, 10 course lutes, long and short extended archlutes, theorbos, 11
course
and 13 course d-minor lutes with no, or short, extension and baroque
guitars).
- 18th
century lutes (11 and 13 course
d-minor lutes
without
extension, 13 course d-minor lutes with swan-neck extension, archlutes,
theorbos, mandoras and baroque guitars).
We
know that
as from the early 17th century
(i.e.
the time when the lute had an open string range of 2 octaves and a
fourth) the
ancients felt the necessity to identify three Sorts
of strings (see Dowland, 1610): Trebles,
Meanes
and
Basses.
After
a long period of study and
practical
experimentation
we came to the conclusion that, far from being a simple commercial
description,
the scope of such distinction was to achieve some kind of switch
thorough the registers from trebles to lower bass.
The acoustical and mechanical problems in the lower
registers increase with the increasing string diameters and can only be
solved
by switching, at the right point, from one type (i.e.Sort) of string to
the next.
In other
words, since it was not possible to unlimitedly increase the diameters,
it was
necessary to employ different types of strings, each able to
overcome the
limits reached in the previous register.
Just
like today
when we have to work out a complete
range of
strings for the lute, we assume that ancient string makers followed,
from the
late 16th
century on, three
different manufacturing processes in
order
to
produce:
- Treble strings
(Dowland’s and Mace’s
Trebles; i.e. Romans, Minikins
etc), i.e. the
first three courses of both Renaissance and Baroque lutes.
- Mid register
(4th
and 5th
courses, Dowland’s
Meanes, which
he divides in Small and Great Meanes; i.e. Gansars).
- Low register (from the 6th course down, the Basses; Lyons, Pistoys, Catlins).
That
different manufacturing processes were not interchangeable is evident
both in Dowland (1610) and in Mace (1676): the former says that
Gansars (which in
his opinion made
excellent Meanes) could not be used as
Trebles since they
would immediately
break under stress. On the other hand, had the Meanes been
manufactured the same way
the Trebles were, we
believe they would have
presented serious acoustical performance problems, since they would
have been much too stiff: Trebles as described
by Dowland were
rather stiff and prickly to the flesh of the thumb pressing against the
string's tip.
Also Thomas Mace, 66
years after
Dowland, underlines the fact that the thin Minikins (treble
strings) are so strong that if you pull them with your hands they
'will
many times endanger the cutting into your flesh, rather
than it will break, although it be a small Treble-Minikin string'.
On the contrary, 'your Venice-Catlins
(i.e
suitables for the 4th
and 5th courses)
will scarcely
be broken, by a mans (reasonable) strength', in
spite of being
thicker.
Research in the old sources and practical experience in the field of historical string making technologies prompted some hypotheses on what should be today (and probably were in the past) the mechanical and acoustical qualities of each Sort - the qualities we successfully obtained with our tests through three different manufacturing approaches. On top of that we also employ reckoning criteria strongly biased towards feeling, rather than kilograms, in selecting the lute set-up.
At the end of the day, working out gut stringing for the lute looks more like a narrow path than a roomy highway, and therefore we believe that the solutions we adopted must probably be the same as in the past.
(Romans, Minikins)
In
order to
achieve this we must sacrifice the elasticity. We find trace of
this in
some old sources: Dowland (1610), to quote him once again, stated that
a good
treble must feel stiff and prickly to the thumb; Baron (1727) claims
that a
good Roman treble can last up to 4 weeks. Could, say, a couple of weeks
playing
life have been the rule?
We
believe that this term was only reserved to strings that
underwent particular treatments (as reported in some historical
sources, like
Skippon’s description of a stringmaking workshop in
Michelangelo Merisi (1596 ca): detail on the (stiff-straight) thin gut strings
(Ganzer, Gansars, thin Venice catlins)
By
increasing
its thickness, string length remaining equal, a
string will
gradually lose its acoustical qualities, until it becomes completely
dull. This
is due to the inner damping effect, called Inharmonicity. On the
Renaissance
lute the problem begins to appear as from the fourth course, becoming
increasingly serious as we move down the registers. Pairing octave
strings on
the lower courses was the expedient the ancients employed to retrieve
the lost
harmonics (see Virdung, 1511).
In
order to remedy
this loss of acoustic capacity it is necessary to
achieve the highest possible degree of elasticity, which is here the
most
important parameter. This is obtained, no doubt, at the cost of tensile
resistance
but it is no real problem, since we are far away from the Breaking
Frequency (faq 14).
The way we accomplish this is:
1.
By specifically
treating the fresh gut in order
to reduce
its stiffness as much as possible, before twisting.
Here
is what we could find on this subject:
---------------------------------------
1) roped strings were already in use on musical instruments as from mid of the 15th century (Ugolino of Orvieto: 'Declaratio musicae disciplinae' Liber quintus, Capitulum IX: 'De cordarum seu nervorm instrumentalium subtilitate et grossitie'. 1430-40 ca.)
2) the presence of orditori (i.e. wheels with three or four rotating hooks used to make ropes) in some 16th century roman stringmakers workshop inventories.
The Orditori
(from Patrizio Barbieri: Roman and Neapolitan gut strings, 1550-1590, GSJ, May 2006, pp 176-7.)
However, roped strings were probably already in use well before that
time:see
here an
example
from the late Roman imperial period:
.
Had the lute bass strings from the first half of the 16th century been of the ordinary high twist type we should expect the intonation to be rather critical (it would vary a lot by a minimum turn of a peg) and, by fretting, a noticeably higher frequency increase on the thick string than on the thin octave; a thick string, being stiffer, would also manifest a remarkable frequency instability, depending on amount of pressure and side pull exerted by the fretting finger.
So we can assume that, at least from the string manufacturing point of view, only two Sorts of string were used on the 6 course lute.
The vihuela case: unissons or octaves?
4.
Fuenllana (1554) prescribes
playing only one the
two
strings in the couse in some passages (as does Dalza): this artifice is
only
limited to the 2nd,
3rd
and 4th
course, though, another hint
that at
least the
4th would be strung with unisons. We know nothing about the 5th
and
6th.
5.
Bermudo (1555) states that
the guitar’s 4th
course has an
octave, like the fourth of the lute, or Flemish vihuela. Here can be
inferred
that the 4th of the vihuela was a unison while the lute
wasn’t,
since he needs
to refer to the lute, an instrument less familiar to him, while it
would have
been natural to refer to the vihuela. Again, we know nothing about the
5th
and
6th.
7.
On top of that Bermudo also
discusses slanting
the bridge
(ch. LXXXV), in order to compensate for the amount of space taken by
the large
knot of the 6th
string, which is always referred to in
the singular,
never in
the plural. So the course must have had a paired octave. The larger
amount of
space taken by the knot
(not
by the knots!) and the resulting need to
slant the
bridge in order to keep the length of all strings equal, clearly
indicate that
the string must have been pretty thick.
If
the basses were that thick,
they
could not, owing to their high Inharmonicity Index, have had such a
good acoustical
performance.The stringent consequence is that it needed an octave.
8.
The
only source clearly
mentioning
unison stringing on
the
vihuela dates back to 1611, a fairly long time after the instrument had
fallen
into disuse. This source (Sebastian de Covarrubia’s Tesoro de
la
lengua
castellana, 1611) does not specifically treat musical matters.
It is a
dictionary compiled at a time where the progress made in the string
making
technology already allowed to dispose of octave strings on the lute. So
it is
an anacronism to apply a piece of information from the early 17th
century to an
instrument that was in use in the mid 16th
century. Applying
the same
principle
we could assume, reading Dowland, that Francesco da Milano’s
lute
was strung
with all unisons!
9.
Double treble and unison
courses: the fact that
the
vihuela was generally (but not always) strung with a double treble led
some
scholars to take that as evidence in favour of all courses having been
strung
with unisons. We fail to grasp the logic of it. There is, on the other
hand,
evidence proving that the vihuela could have a single treble, whereas
most
Renaissance lutes where strung with double trebles.
In the light of all the
information we
have so
far,
we suggest that the Spanish vihuela de mano was
not strung with
unison
courses
throughout.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to some documents we could examine, as from about 1570-75 a seventh course was added on lute, tuned a 4th or 5th below the sixth course: ‘The Lutes of the newe invention with thirtene strynges, be not subiecte to this inconvenince, where of the laste is put be lowe: whiche accordyng to the maner now abaies, is thereby augmented a whole fowerth’, remarks Adrien Le Roy in his 'A briefe and plaine instruction...' in 1574.
The problem
If, as by now proven, rope-like strings were already in use in the mid 15th century, and the 6 course lute needed paired octaves in the bass register to compensate for the poor sound, what made it possible to extend the basses down another 4th or 5th?
Maybe
at the
beginning the acoustical quality of the new basses
was
not
excellent ('...and God knows
how well
one can hear them... and
...although they
are perceived by the ear as not very sweet, because of their poor
sound...'
comments Vincenzo Galilei in 1568, in his Fronimo),
Vincenzo Galilei "Fronimo", Florence 1568
but things improved quite rapidly, implying an important manufacturig development: Michele Carrara’s ‘manifesto’, printed in Rome in 1585, already describes an 8 course lute with the 7th course tuned one 4th, and the eight course one 5th, below the 6th course.
The
new basses were probably developed to their best
in a
region between
In Alfonso II d'Este's expense list for the period 1587-97 we read: '210 dozens thin strings sent from Rome to serve Music...' and: ' denari 4 four buckets of thick strings specially made in Florence...' (see Elio Durante & Anna Martellotti 'Un decennio di spese musicali alla corte di Ferrara', Schena Ed, 1982). In the ten years covered by the expense list , the associations 'Rome' to thin strings and 'Florence' or 'Bologna' to thick ones are repeated many times.
What can we say in matter of the new basses?
Here are our considerations
1) Lute bridgeholes: we found consistently small diameters of string holes in bridges regarded as original: over a period of ten years we carried out a thorough survey on some sixty lutes (and on some bowed instruments) from several European collections. About half of them have bridges we thought we could trust to be original.
'Joan.
Seelos 1699'. Bridge X-ray. Paris, Musèe
Instrumental E.540 C.216.
The measuring of the bridge-holes was carried out with accuracy, using rods of increasing exact diameters thus we have verified the maximum passing diameter. It will be worth mentioning that by so doing we do not obtain the actual string-diameter but that of the hole, which was obviously drilled with a certain empirical oversize.
6th bass bridgehole on the Gerle Lute,Wien 1991 4th 2,3 mm hole on the Charles IX Andrea Amati's viola. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 2007
Natural gut
bass strings fitting such small diameters would have to work under a
mean
tension of about 1.2-1.3 kg ( see the string-
formula): this
is the equivalent of a
modern lute strung with a tension of 3.0 kg per string and then tuned
down 8 or 9 semitones (see
Ephraim
Segerman: 'On Historical lute
Strings Types and
Tensions', FOMRHI bull
77, October 1994 pp54-7; in this
work the actual
maximum string diameter was considered equal to the 85% of the maximum
passing
string hole-diameter).
A
critical re-examination of
these
calculations, though, indicate that the resulting working tensions
for historical lute basses may still be overestimated: those
calculations were made on the assumption that the string's diameter remain, under tension, unaltered and the
specific weight of gut be 1.3 gr/cm³: a condition
applying only to a low twist string,
which
allows for minimal stretching while keeping its maximum possible
compactness and, indeed, density.
In conclusion, where the result of theoretical calculation (unstretchable string and 1.3 gr/cm³ density) is a tension of 1.2 kg, the actual tension will only be between .9 and 1.0 kg, for rope-like strings. Thus, given a theoretical estimate of 1.5 kg, the actual tension will result in 1.1 - 1.2 kg.
Just try it once on your all gut strung-lute!.
If we consider the
traditional gut strings, there
are only two options
for
such small string-holes:
a) Only the basses worked at a much lower tension
This is historically not tenable:
it clashes against all 16th
and 17th
century treatises we know of, where the concept of equal
feeling is always
insisted upon (which is broadly
speaking
a light scaling tension).
-Thomas Mace (Musik's Monument, London 1676):
-The
Mary Burwell
lute
tutor (ca. 1670):
“When
you stroke all the stringes with
your thumbe you must feel an even stiffnes which proceeds from the size
of the
stringes".
-John Dowland ('Varietie of Lute Lessons', di Robert Dowland, 1610):
"But to our purpose: these double bases likewise must neither be stretched too hard, nor too weake, but that they may according to your feeling in striking with your thombe and finger equally counterpoyse the trebles".
b) Lutes were
generally very low strung throughout
It is likewise not tenable: with a mean tension of 1.2 kg or less, the first two or three courses would require such small diameters as to be technically impossible to produce (for example, the first three courses on D-minor baroque lute with a 70 cm string length at a-415 Hz pitch would be: 1st = .25 mm, 2nd = .30 mm, 3rd = .40 mm).
In
other worlds they are much more thinner than allowed by a fundamental
string making rule in the 16th
century, i.e. one single
whole lamb's gut must be employed to produce a treble string as
described, for
instance,
by Athanasius
Kircher in his ‘Musurgia
Universalis’ (Rome
1650).
Our
tests shows out
that, starting from one single whole lamb gut (as A.Kircher suggested),
gauges had just an average of .45-.48 mm, not less.
It
has to be borne in mind that with a tension of
about 1.2
kg or less, gut basses not only hardly give any sound at all, but
also
feel more like
rubber
bands and are very
hard to control by the thumb of the right
hand.
However, the spontaneous question is: for what plausible reason should they string the basses only at such low tension? Why did they not simply drill slightly bigger holes?
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2) The remarkable performance of all-gut basses in use towards the middle of the 17th century as opposed to the poor quality of bass strings in use in the first half of the 16th century (see Virdung, 1511, and Galilei, 1568): here is what we read in the Mary Burwell lute tutor (c.1670), about the all-gut basses on the lute with short extension: ‘...the confusion that the length of sound produce it alsoe..’ and ‘...every basse sound make a confond with every string...’ and, talking about the eleventh course ‘...the lutemasters have taken away that great string because the sound of it is too long and smothis the sound of the others’.
Thomas
Mace (Chap.
XLII, p. 208): "This inconvenience
[i.e.
the
power and persistence of sound of the basses which causes confusion and
dissonances
with the higher registers]
is
found upon French Lutes, when their
heads
are
made too long; as some desire to have them...".
Our tests pointed out that, on short extended necks, no any modern roped or high twist gut string was able to reach such high performances.
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3)
Mersenne
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