Lute
The lute (from Arabic العود al-'ūd) is a plucked string instrument, whose origin dates back to the Middle Ages and whose introduction into Europe began in the Iberian Peninsula by the Muslims and influenced the chordophones that already existed in the peninsula at that time. By extension, lute can designate any instrument in which the strings are located in a plane parallel to the box, along a protruding neck.
Today, in a technical field, the term is also used to designate any generally Western chordophone with a non-flat soundboard (as opposed, for example, to the guitar).
It was an instrument widely used between the 14th and 18th centuries. Since the XX century, it has experienced a new rise in popularity.
History and evolution of the lute
The first lutes
Curt Sachs defined lute in the terminology section of The History of Musical Instruments as "composed of a body, and a neck that serves both neck and middle to stretch the strings beyond the body". His definition focused on the characteristics of the body and neck and not on the way to sound the strings, so the violin counted as a "bow lute". Sachs also distinguished between the "long-necked lute" and the short-necked variety. The short-necked variety contained most of our modern instruments, "lutes, guitars, strings, and the whole family of violas and violins".
Long lutes were the oldest lutes; the "Arabian tanbūres... faithfully preserved the outward appearance of ancient Babylonian and Egyptian lutes". In addition, he classified long lutes with a "perforated lute" and a "long-necked lute." gunbrī). The long lute had an attached neck, and included the sitar, tanbur, and tar (dutār 2 strings, setār 3 strings, čārtār 4 strings, pančtār 5 strings).
Sachs's book is from 1941, and the archaeological evidence he had placed the first lutes around 2000 BC. Discoveries made since then have pushed the existence of the lute back to c. 3100 B.C. C.
Musicologist Richard Dumbrill today uses the word lute more categorically to speak of instruments that existed millennia before the term "lute" was coined. Dumbrill documented over 3,000 years of iconographic evidence of lutes in Mesopotamia, in his book The Archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East. According to Dumbrill, the lute family included instruments in Mesopotamia before 3000 BC. C. he Points to a cylindrical seal as proof; dated around 3100 BC. C. or before and now in the possession of the British Museum, the stamp depicts on one side what is believed to be a woman playing a "lute" stick. Like Sachs, Dumbrill considered length to distinguish lutes, dividing Mesopotamian lutes into a long and a short variety. His book does not cover the shorter instruments that became the European lute, beyond showing examples of shorter lutes in the ancient world. It focuses on the longer Mesopotamian lutes, various types of neck chordophones that developed throughout the ancient world: Greek, Egyptian (in the Middle Kingdom), Iranian (Elamite and others), Jewish/Israelite, Hittite, Roman., Bulgarian, Turkish, Indian, Chinese, Armenian/Cilicia. He names among the long lutes, the pandura and the tanbur
The line of short-necked lutes developed further east to Mesopotamia, in Bactria and Gandhara, into a short, almond-shaped lute. Curt Sachs discussed depictions of Gandharan lutes in art, where they are presented in a mix of "North West Indian Art" under "strong Greek influences". The short-necked lutes in these Gandhara artworks were "the venerable ancestor of the Islamic, Sino-Japanese, and European lute families." pear-shaped tapering towards a short neck, front stringing, side pegs and four or five strings".
Persian barbat, Arabic oud
Bactria and Gandhara became part of the Sasanian Empire (224-651). Under the Sasanians, a short, almond-shaped lute from Bactria became known as a barbat or barbud, which developed into the later oud or ud' of the islamic world. When the Moors conquered Andalusia in 711, they brought their ud or quitra to a country that had already known a lute tradition under the Romans, the pandura.
During the 8th and 9th centuries, many musicians and artists from across the Islamic world flocked to Iberia. Among them were Abu l-Hasan 'Ali Ibn Nafi' (789-857), a noted musician, who had trained under Ishaq al-Mawsili (d. 850) in Baghdad and who went into exile in Andalusia before 833. He was a teacher and is credited with adding a fifth string to his oud and the establishment of one of the first music schools in Córdoba.
By the 11th century, Muslim Iberia had become a center of instrument making. These products gradually spread to Provence, influencing French troubadours and trouvères and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. As Europe developed the lute, the oud remained a central part of Arabic music, and more broadly of Ottoman music, undergoing various transformations.
In addition to the introduction of the lute to Spain (Andalusia) by the Moors, another important point of transfer of the lute from Arab to European culture was Sicily, where it was brought by Byzantine musicians or later by Muslims. There were singer-lutinists at the court of Palermo after the Norman conquest of the island from the Muslims, and the lute is heavily represented in the ceiling paintings of the Royal Cappella Palatina of Palermo, dedicated by the Norman King Roger II of Sicily. in 1140. His grandson Frederick II Hohenstaufen (1194-1250) continued to integrate Muslims into his court, including Moorish musicians. Frederick II made visits to the Lech Valley and Bavaria between 1218 and 1237 with a "retinue of Sicilian Moors". By the XIV century, the lute had spread throughout Italy and, probably due to The cultural influence of the Hohenstaufen kings and emperor, based in Palermo, the lute had also made significant inroads into German-speaking lands. Around 1500, the valley and Füssen had several families of luthiers, and in the following two centuries the area was home to "famous names of 16th and 17th century luthiers".
Although the greatest entry of the short lute was in Western Europe, giving rise to a variety of lute styles, the short lute entered Europe in the East as well; As early as the VI century, the Bulgars brought the short-necked variety of the instrument called the komuz to the Balkans.
From the Middle Ages to the Baroque
Medieval lutes were instruments of four and five courses, plucked with a feather as a plectrum. There were various sizes, and by the end of the Renaissance seven sizes (up to the great bass octave) are documented. Song accompaniment was probably the main function of the lute in the Middle Ages, but very little music securely attributable to the lute survives from before 1500. Medieval and early Renaissance song accompaniments were probably improvised, hence the lack of written records.
In the last decades of the 15th century, to play Renaissance polyphony on a single instrument, lutenists gradually abandoned the pen in favor of plucking the instrument with the fingers. The number of orders grew to six and more. The lute was the main solo instrument of the 16th century century, but it also continued to accompany singers.
Around 1500, many Iberian lutenists adopted the vihuela de mano, a viol-shaped instrument tuned like the lute; both instruments continued to coexist. This instrument also reached parts of Italy that were under Spanish rule (especially Sicily and the Papal States under the Burgundian Pope Alexander VI who brought many Catalan musicians to Italy), where it was known as the viola da mano.
By the end of the Renaissance, the number of orders had risen to ten, and during the Baroque the number continued to grow to 14 (and occasionally as many as 19). These instruments, with up to 35 strings, required innovations in the structure of the lute. Late in the evolution of the lute, the archlute, theorbo, and torban had long extensions attached to the main tuning head to provide greater resonant length for the low strings, and since human fingers are not long enough to stopping the strings across a neck wide enough to hold 14 courses, the low strings were placed outside the fingerboard, and played open, that is, not pressed against the fingerboard with the left hand.
Over the course of the Baroque era, the lute was increasingly relegated to continuo accompaniment, eventually being replaced in that role by keyboard instruments. The lute fell into virtual disuse after 1800. Some types of lute continued to be used for a time in Germany, Sweden, and the Ukraine.
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Parts
Oriental, medieval, renaissance and baroque lutes have a bulging sound box; instead, the Chinese lute (pipa) is carved from a block of wood. The tenor range instrument, used in the tuna and rondallas and called the Spanish lute, has a flat bottom and side rings and, despite its name, is not related to the lute but to the bandurria, which in turn would come from the zither..
It consists of the following parts:
- Clavijas: Elongated wooden pieces, with a light conicity, in which the rope is rolled to tense it.
- Trast: knotted rots around the mast. They shorten the rope to the desired length when the interpreter steps between two of these frets.
- Moretile: An elongated handle that arises from the body of the instrument, on which the strings are tended and the positions of the hand used are executed.
- Diapas: Lamina that covers the mast to protect it from wear and to give it stiffness, because on it the fingers of the performer are supported by stepping on the ropes. It's usually ebony.
- Resonance Fund: Abombada, built from longitudinal ribs, with a medium pear shape.
- Boca: In the ludes there is a finely carved decorative rosette.
- Pills: Six double ropes tuned to unison by pairs, like those of the bandurria. As the sharp and core of the casing and metal clogging are the serious ones.
- Bridge: Also called bar-cordal.In it, the strings vibrate directly from the knot, without relying on any sheet, as on current guitars.
- Cordal: Only a few medieval laúdes had a separate piece to nest the ropes, since from the Middle Ages and until the eighteenth the bridge and the lanyard coincided in a single piece, the bar-cordal.
Techniques
Although the technique has undergone important changes over time, the performer takes the instrument in a similar way to the guitar. The expressive possibilities are given by the way of playing the instrument. In the West, the use of fingers and nails is privileged, to enable the harmonization of notes[1]; the Arabs prefer the plectrum, since they give more importance to the melody.
Like the theorbo, archlute, and baroque lute, the modern lute may have bass strings called snares, which are placed outside the box and are used to achieve sounds outside the range of the lute.
Great composers and performers of the Renaissance and Baroque periods included Shakespeare's contemporary John Dowland, Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger, Silvius Leopold Weiss and Robert de Visée.
The Renaissance Lute
During the Renaissance, the lute enjoyed great popularity among the European nobility. However, in Spain "the prominence of the lute will be displaced in courtly music by the vihuela". Although there is a theory that the lute was not played in Spain due to prejudices, when remembering the Muslim instrument of the which it came from, this is not true. Numerous documentary sources can be found such as inventories of cargo on ships that traveled to the Americas, of the deceased, etc., where many lutes are numbered, which at the time were known as "vihuelas de flandes".
The lute during the first half of the XVI century generally had six double orders and the reading was used for musical notation of the same.
The tuning and technique of the instrument were similar to those of the vihuela, so the repertoire of both instruments could be interchanged, as even the title of some of the publications of the time proves.
Among the most outstanding composers and performers we find Francesco Spinacino, Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger, Francesco da Milano (who composed a collection of pieces that he published under the title Intavolatura de viola o vero lauto. Libro primo /secondo de la Fortuna), Adrien Le Roy, Albert de Rippa and John Dowland. The compositional technique was fundamentally contrapuntal, as was the vocal music of the time.
During the second half of the XVI century the lute began to increase the number of orders, reaching the lute of 10 orders to the first decades of 1600, transition period between the Renaissance and the Baroque.
The baroque lute
During the Baroque, the instrument increased the number of strings, up to ten or more orders —13 in the case of the German lute— that were used to play lower notes that could support the harmonies of the new functions that they were entrusted to the instrument.
Among the most famous interpreters, Silvius Leopold Weiss and Robert de Visée stand out. The lute suites written by J. S. Bach are well known.
The Arabic lute or oud
The word lute derives from the Arabic word `ūd (عود), one meaning of which is 'wood'.
According to tradition, the greatest lute player that ever existed was the Persian musician, but resident of Córdoba, Abú al-Hasan Ali ibn Nafi, better known as Ziryab (789-857). He introduced some organological (addition of strings) and technical changes (playing with a plectrum made of a bird's feather, instead of the commonly used wooden one). The lute used in Arab countries and the Middle East lacks frets[2], as these would prevent playing quarter tones, necessary for oriental music. It has a shorter neck than the European one and a larger sounding board. Usually it only has a staff and four double strings, however, lutes of up to seven courses can be found. Its register is usually two and a half octaves.
It is used in classical and popular music in all Arab countries, as well as Morocco, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Armenia, Georgia.
The Chinese lute or pipa
The body, carved from a block of wood, is shaped like a flattened pear and has four strings. There are references that date its existence to the 2nd century BC. C. Accompanies the singing of poems, often epic, that describe battles or relevant historical events. Also, it is used in musical groups to perform solos. The pipa repertoire consists of traditional Chinese works, mostly anonymous, and contemporary music by composers with both Chinese and Western influences.
It is played using a technique of spectacular dexterity in the fingers, to achieve characteristic sounds. Liu Fang is an accomplished player of the instrument.
Cretan lute
The Cretan lute or Cretan lute is a chordophone instrument from Crete. It is a metal string instrument that is played with an elongated plastic plectrum and has four double strings tuned by fifths: ÉÉ, ÁA,´DD, GG´ from high to low. It arrived in Crete during the Venetian occupation, in the Middle Ages, evolving very little until today.
The lute in the modern world
Since 1930, its popularity has been increasing. Driven by the movement in favor of early music (Renaissance and Baroque). Julian Bream, superb English guitarist, became famous for his lute and violin concertos.
Other prominent performers were: Hans Neemann, Walter Gerwig, Suzanne Bloch and Diana Poulton.
Modern lutes are replicas of historical instruments Archived March 8, 2018, at the Wayback Machine models belonging to museums and private collections; however, some craftsmen design models with more current features. Both one and the other can be purchased second-hand in a very limited market. The difficulties involved in their construction make them more expensive than mass-produced instruments, such as the guitar, sometimes exceeding the price of the violin.
Unlike what happened in other times, today there are many types of lute: medieval, Renaissance, the archlute for baroque works, theorbos for basso continuo parts in baroque ensembles, and others. There are lutes of regional diversity in Greece: laouto, and outi, both related to the Arabic ud or oud.
World famous lutenists include Konrad Ragossnig, Robert Barto, Desmond Dupré, Eduardo Egüez, Edin Karamazov, Luca Pianca, Edmund Spencer, Hopkinson Smith, Axel Wolf, Nigel North, Eligio Quinteiro, Stephen Stubbs, Richard Stone, Pascal Monteilhet, Ariel Abramovich, Evangelina Mascardi, Luciano Contini, William Waters, Paul O' Dette, Rolf Lislevand, Anthony Rooley, Eugène Ferré.
Artist Sting plays lute and archlute, occasionally in collaboration with Edin Karamazov. The Colombian singer Shakira also uses the lute in her song "Ojos así", with the collaboration of the musician Tim Mitchell.
The Spanish lute
The so-called Spanish lute is essential, like the bandurria, in the popular formations of Spanish music. The pulse and plectrum orchestras and the instrumental rondallas, made up of families of plucked string instruments of different heights and which were also known as estudiantinas, or in its university version as tuna. It is important to emphasize that this instrument has absolutely nothing to do with true lutes, and is a historically recent invention. Actually, it is a bandurria tenor.
There is also a Cuban lute, whose most famous performer is Barbarito Torres, from the Buena Vista Social Club. It has the same appearance as the Spanish lute, but the tuning is different.
Iconography
In the visual arts, the lute is often represented as a symbol of harmony. When this does not exist, it is represented with a broken string.
It is also considered an attribute of Saint Cecilia of Rome.
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