6-course lutes

Bartolomeo Veneto, c.1520, Milan

For most of the 15th century lutes commonly had five courses, but six courses are often shown in paintings from the second half of the century, and the first published music (Spinacino, 1507) is for six courses. There are very few surviving six-course lutes, none in original condition, and none from before about 1550, therefore modern reconstructions involve a degree of guesswork, especially in the thicknessing and barring of the soundboard. In surviving lutes, often all that is left of the original lute is the back.  The soundboard, if it is original, has been rebarred several times and probably thinned as well.  Paintings provide some useful information about the external appearance of these lutes. They usually have 11 or 9 ribs, and there are usually 8 tied frets. Pegs are almost always heart-shaped, pegboxes have a shallow taper and are more or less at right angles to the neck. Many of the instruments shown in paintings are very blond in appearance, made of light coloured woods (e.g., sycamore) with a pale golden varnish, with fingerboards (if separate from the neck, which may not have been usual) much the same colour as the soundboard (boxwood or sycamore?). The earliest surviving bodies (e.g., Maler, Frei) are usually made of rippled sycamore or ash, or a kind of maple which looks like “birdseye” maple but must be a European timber. Some paintings show darker woods which look like fruitwoods (plum?), or even alternate dark/light ribs (walnut and sycamore?).  As with lutes of later periods, there are surviving instruments with ivory backs, but one suspects that this was more for ostentation than for acoustical reasons (Thomas Mace was of this opinion in 1676) and in any case elephant ivory is unavailable to the modern maker.

Carpaccio: Presentation at the temple (detail), Venice 1510

In many examples the fingerboard seems to overlap the neck joint (see the Carpaccio painting, left), but I now think it most probable that the colour is actually a protective varnish which covers the fingerboard and extends onto the soundboard for a short distance where the left hand fingers might cause wear (see the Marziale and van Scorel paintings, below).  Wooden body frets seem not to have been used, notes above the tied frets being played directly with the fingers.  John Dowland credits Mathias Mason with inventing three wooden body frets, which in England would coincide with the first evidence of their use in the Marsh lute book (c.1595), where “m” is used for the twelfth fret rather than the eleventh – the implication being that the three wooden frets were on the 9^th, 10^th and 12^th fret positions (“diatonic” fretting).

Marziale: Virgin and Child with Saints (detail), 1507, Cremona

Another interesting feature of six-course lutes is that the bridge is sometimes very low on the instrument (see the Marziale painting, right), perhaps about 1/8^th of the body length from the bottom (rather than the more usual 1/6^th recommended in the Henri Arnault of Zwolle treatise of c.1450 and widely found on surviving lutes).  This feature is also attested by marks of earlier bridges on some surviving lutes, the obvious example being the Maler lute in Nuremberg.   I have not yet tried this bridge position but I imagine it would involve not using any bars below the bridge – and I then wonder whether the lutes with the higher bridge position had a J-bar like later lutes, or perhaps even a straight bar going all the way across the soundboard, of which the Hans Frei lute in Warwick provides an example (as does the modern Arabic lute).  The acoustic implications of this observation remain to be tested.

Another feature is that roses sometimes appear dark in colour (as in the three paintings below), possibly painted or gilded.  The implications here are purely cosmetic.

Master of the Half-Lengths, Flemish,  c.1530

Jan van Scorel (1495 - 1562), Utrecht

Master of the Half-Lengths, Flemish,  c.1530

 

My instruments:

1. This is my own design (1983), incorporating some features from surviving lutes and iconography.  String length 53.5 cm.  £3250.  Hear this lute in a short piece by Francesco da Milano (Recercar 4):

[plum back, beech neck and pegbox, rose after Maler]

2. This is my own design (1993), an attempt to reproduce the shape of the lute in Holbein’s famous painting, The Ambassadors, which dates to about 1533.  The unusual shape of the ends of the bridge seems to be what is shown in the painting – but it is very hard to tell. Some other paintings also show very wide bodies (e.g., Costa below). String length 56cm.  £3250

[sycamore, with boxwood bridge and fingerboard, rose after Magno Dieffopruchar]

   Holbein: The Ambassadors (detail)   Lorenzo Costa: The Concert (detail)

 
3. After Georg Gerle (Vienna, A35)
The original lute was built in Innsbruck in about 1580, perhaps in imitation of an earlier style of lute.  It has an ivory back and a neck decorated with ivory, ebony and a greenish coloured bone.  It has become a commonly-chosen model by modern makers, partly because it is one of the few surviving six-course lutes in original or near-original condition.  String length 59.7cm.  This example is in figured ash with a rose from an anonymous early 16th century lute.  £3350.  Hear a lute of this model in a Recercar by Francesco da Milano (Ness no.15).
 

 Here is another one in European walnut with holly spacers, the neck and pegbox veneered in holly and ebony, rose after Laux Maler:

[Thanks to Francesco Tribioli for the photos, taken when the lute was two years old.  In September 2011 he also sent me a sound file of his playing of a Recercar by Francesco da Milano]

4. After Magno Dieffopruchar (Beare collection)
Another ivory-backed lute which survives in six-course form.  This lute was described by Stephen Barber in The Lute, Vol. XXII Part 2, 1982, pp.47-53.  Nine ribs, 64cm string length.  £3350.

5. After Hans Frei (Warwick County Museum)
Hans Frei was a famous maker of Bologna who flourished in the early sixteenth century.  Only four of his lutes appear to have survived, and even some of these may be fakes, the famous master’s label having been applied to another instrument to increase its value.  The Warwick Frei, in its present state, is an 11c lute with an elaborate neck veneer which seems to be of Italian origin, suggesting that the conversion to an 11c lute was done in Italy.  It has, as mentioned above, traces of a straight bar having been glued right across the soundboard below the bridge, in the same place as the J-bar of later lutes (which only projects a little more than halfway across the soundboard, starting from the bass side).  The soundboard is also quite thick, up to 2.8mm near the endclasp – suggesting that early soundboards were commonly rather thick, and have been thinned by later makers when converting them into later styles of lute.  String length 69cm.  £3450.  Hear this lute in a Preambel (prelude) by Hans Judenkönig (1523).

6. After Hans Frei (Vienna, C34)
In its present state this is an 11-course lute, though originally it would have had only six courses.  The body is smaller than the Warwick Frei – shorter, shallower, and more or less semicircular in section.  String length 67cm.  £3450.

7. After Laux Maler (Prague, No.654)
Laux Maler was the most famous and sought-after of the 16^th century Italian lutemakers, whose instruments commanded huge prices more than a century after they were built (by which time they were being converted into 11c lutes).  Some 17^th C writers attributed the fame of these instruments to the varnish, some to the age of the wood.  Of the thousand lutes and parts of lutes present in the Maler workshop in Bologna when the master died in 1552, only four appear to have survived.  One of them (in the V&A) is only a back, the others are only backs and soundboards, and a recent discovery (now in Paris) appears to have its original soundboard, albeit with more recent barring.  All of the surviving Maler lutes have the long thin body shape (like a pear, as the author of the Burwell lute tutor says, or the “pearl mould” as Thomas Mace has it) which is a great contrast to the more rounded shape of the Venetian and Paduan lutes of the late 16^th century.  In modern times this shape has been associated with Bolognese lutes, but in fact this shape was used by many early-mid 16^th century makers elsewhere (Laux Bosch in Schongau, for example).   £3450.  Hear a lute of this model in an anonymous English Dump.

And another one in figured ash, with a cherry neck and pegbox:

8. After Laux Maler (Nuremberg, MI 54)
This is a slightly larger lute than no.7 above but with a similar body shape and nine ribs of Hungarian Ash.  Currently this instrument is in pieces and the upper third of the soundboard is missing.  The current bridge relates to a conversion to a 13-course instrument but there are clear marks of an earlier bridge lower down on the soundboard which could well show the original bridge position.  With this bridge position the string length would be about 74cm, with a higher bridge position (approx 1/6 of the body length) the string length would be about 70cm.  The recently discovered Maler lute in Paris is reportedly practically identical in size and shape to the Nuremberg Maler.  £3500.  

9. Own design based on Maler.  This lute was designed for someone who wanted a bass lute in D but with a smaller body than the Paduan lutes such as those by Harton.  It was built in a seven-course version, so the pictures are in the 7-9 course section of the catalogue, but the design is ideal for a six-course bass lute.  £3550.

 

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