11-course
lutes
|
Jacques
Gaultier(?): Jean de Reyn(?) (1610-1678)
|
A large and very attractive repertory of 17th
century music
survives for the French 11-course lute.
Unfortunately
hardly any French instruments survive.
The
most prized instruments were those of Laux
Maler, made in Bologna in
the second quarter of the 16th century
– Piccinini
(1623) tells us that in his time the French were buying up all the old Bologna
lutes, paying any
price which was asked. These
lutes would
originally have been 6-course lutes, so they would have been fitted
with new
necks, pegboxes and
bridges to accommodate the extra
strings, and usually rebarred
as well. This is
one reason why we have hardly any intact 6-course lutes, even though many surviving lute bodies would
have had
six courses in their original state. Some11-course lutes were converted
from 10
courses by adding an extra peg on a treble rider (and having a single
2nd or
11th course) and extending the bridge and the nut to accommodate an
extra
course, so that the 11th course ran off the fingerboard to an
overhanging nut. This
allowed one extra string to be added with the minimum of rebuilding. The
consequence of this for the modern player
is that one can have a single lute which can serve either as a 10
course lute
(with a double second course and all courses on the fingerboard) or an
11
course lute (with a single 2nd course and 11th course off the
fingerboard). It
was usual for these lutes to have a "ten-fret neck", i.e. the tenth
fret position coincides with the neck/body join, so that it is easy to
tie on
the ninth fret. The French music only uses nine frets.
Lute
player: Anonymous,
French, 17th C
Charles Mouton: Francois le
Troy
By the end of the 17th century, the
French love affair with the
11-course lute seems to have come to an end, and the focus of activity
shifted
to Germany
and Austria.
By
this time, there were very few old instruments, so new lutes were made.
The luthiers
involved were not part of an unbroken tradition of lutemaking – usually
their main work was
making violins – so we see some differences of approach.
We have
excellent surviving instruments from this period of German lutemaking:
lutes by Sebastian Schelle
in Nuremberg and
J.C. and Martin Hoffmann in Hamburg
survive in some
numbers, and mostly in near original condition. However,
it must be said that these
instruments seem less suitable for the 17th
century French music and
more suited to the galant style music of the early
18th
century. Several
of the composers of
this period used only 11-course lutes, and even Sylvius
Leopold Weiss only used a 13-course lute from about 1720, so there is a
large
repertory of music for the “German” 11-course lute.
My instruments:
1.
69 cm, 9 ribs, after Maler
(Prague No. 654)
This lute also features in the 6-course
section
(no.7) of this catalogue. In view of the high
reputation of his lutes in
the17th century it seems the obvious model to choose for a French
11-course lute - and it works very well indeed. In addition
to
the photos below, you can see some photos of the work in progress at www.rmguitar.info/maler.htm
together with a picture of the happy customer and some soundfiles of
the lute in action. £3800.
[figured ash back, pear neck and pegbox, all gut strings]
2.
67.5 cm, 11 ribs, after Frei
(Vienna,
C34 & Warwick)
This is the same lute described in the 10-course
section which I have sometimes built as a dual-purpose 10/11
course lute. £3850.
[Birdseye maple with ebony spacers]
3.
69.5 cm, 11 ribs, after Frei
(Warwick)
This lute was described in the 6-course
section (no.5).
The original (11-course) string length of 69.5cm places the
ninth
fret rather close to the neck/body join, so for an 11-course lute I
might prefer to use a slightly longer string length. £3950.
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