Città:
Venezia
Year:
1603
Liutaio:
Anonymous
From “
Il Museo della Musica” by Artemio Versari
Plucked instruments are the ancient of all the string instruments. They are actually the most elementary, insofar as they can be directly made to vibrate with man's fingers, without requiring the use, in order to do so, of special objects such as the bow or any other percussion instrument. Among the oldest specimens of this category we can cite the Egyptian harp, the Greek lyre, the monochord, the psaltery, and the lute. The latter was probably derived from the Arabic instrument named ùd meaning wood. The Portuguese called it alaude, the Spanish laud, the Germans laut, the English lute, the French luth, and the Italians lauto, leuto, liuto. During the Middle Ages and the Rennaisance the instrument was of great relevance. Its history is usually divided in two periods: the first from XI to the XV century, with a slow, gradual diffusion, in which it kept its original features with hardly any alterations; the second, widely-spread, in which a number of varieties were made (archlute, theorbo, gittern, etc.) which lasted until the definitive primacy of bow and fingerboard instruments, that replaced it. The conquest and the occupation of Spain by Moors is considered the origin of the introduction of the instrument in the old continent as well as Venice, which as "gateway to the East" must have later contributed to its diffusion. It is intersting to observe that the lutes still used today in the Arabic countries offer remarkable similarities with those figuring in paintings of the Middle Ages and, in part of the Renaissance. The lute is composed of a convex belly, made of strips of wood (staves) and closed by a table in the middle where there is a "rose", a round soundhole often finely pierced. To the belly is attached a neck with a fingerboard ending in a peg box, originally bent back at a straight angle. At first the lute was equipped with four paired or double strings. In the course of the XV a fifth choir was added in the high register and after a while, from the four original pairs, the number increased to ten or eleven. As regards pitch, it varied notably not only from one country to another, but even from one region to another. The Eastern lute was played, and still is, with a plectrum. Its essential role was as a melodic instrument, basically playing a single melodic line with the probable addition of chords in the presence of cadenzas and other important passages. A lot of room was left for elaborate improvisations. In the second half of the XV a significant change took place: the evolution of the technique of the right hand, which slowly led to giving up the use of plectrum. This change was higly important because it led to the invention of that particular system of musical notation which was then called "tablature". This is the clear definition that Tommaseo gives for the tablature of the lute: " A particular system of tabling the music for the lute, theorbo, guitar and other such instruments, used in the past centuries, which consisted in ruling the paper with the strings of the instruments and upon this indicating with numbers and letters the frets that should be struck to obtain the sounds and chords". And it is precisely tranbscribed in the tablatures for the lute that many instrumental compositions, among which delightful songs, arias and dances have reached us. The principal notation systems used in Europe were the Italian, French and German ones. Not a single written composition of the Middle Age has reached us.