Thanks Markus,
I have just re-read Robert Lundberg's article "Weiss's Lutes: The
Origin of the 13-Course German Baroque Lutes" (LSA Journal, Volume
XXXIII, 2000) and I had rather confused dates - thanks for the
correction. According to him, Weiss developed the rider lute - the
"original" 13 course model - in 1718-9 in collaboration with Edlinger
(according to Lundberg, the two likely met in 1718), and the first
pieces he wrote for this new 13 course instrument was in January 1719.
(p. 36) These pieces would then be the first of the 13-course
repertoire.
Lundberg also states that the earliest examples of swan necks are two
Hoffman conversions done in 1732, also likely done at the behest of
Weiss. (p. 47. Incidentally, Lundberg claims the swan neck was
intended mainly for continuo: contentious?)
Have there been any developments or refinements to Lundberg's thesis in
recent years?
All best,
Benjamin
2009/1/10 Markus Lutz <[1]mar...@gmlutz.de>
Dear Benjamin,
indeed the 13-course lute came into sight around 1719/20 probably in
cooperation with S.L.Weiss. The first examples of this extended lute
we have in the London ms.
It was for sure a bass rider lute, because there are few stops on
the lower corses (even on the 11th course).
Later - probably around 1730 - the swan necked baroque lute
appeared, probably in cooperation between Weiss and Hofmann.
Best regards
Markus
Benjamin Narvey schrieb:
Dear Collected Wisdom,
It struck me this week that I really don't know when the
thirteen-course "rider" lute developed. We know from Weiss's
correspondence that he developed the swan-neck lute c.1719-20, but
what
do we know about its rider cousin? I have to now uncritically
assumed
that the rider lute came before the swan neck, presumably thinking so
because it is visually closer to a conventional eleven course, and we
tend to assume today an "evolutionary" paradigm that explains the
lute
as gradually becoming bigger over time
(6c-7c-8c-9c-10c-11c-12c-13c...) I realise this paradigm is by no
means historical or even accurate - it does not account for the huge
renaissance bass lutes such as Hartung's instrument in C in
Nuernberg,
or some smaller baroque lutes that one finds in various collections -
and yet it persists.
But perhaps the rider lute may be a later development than the swan
neck when seen from the point of view of string technology: perhaps
the extended neck was needed in order to accommodate the lower
tessitura of the 12th and 13th courses before the introduction (and
more importantly, the acceptance among players) of wound strings
(initially developed in the 1670's, they seem to have taken a long
time
to catch on) that permitted the same pitches to be played at the
shorter string length of the rider model. So, did the development go
11c -> swan neck -> rider lute, or 11c -> rider lute -> swan neck?
I realise that this is in a sense a bogus question, both because the
11c never went out of fashion, and because the rider lute and swan
neck
model coexisted (i.e., one did not cancel out the other: for
example,
we know that Weiss had both, since he at once developed the swan neck
all while writing pieces that occasionally demand the stopped 9th and
10th courses necessitating a rider model.) That said, the chronology
of the rider lute's development is something we could know about.
When are the first pieces that use 13 courses anyway? I presume
around
1700-1715? Do these early pieces indicate anything regarding lute
type?
Anything anyone on this list may have to say about this subject would
be much appreciated!
As ever,
Benjamin
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2. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/%7Ewbc/lute-admin/index.html
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4. http://www.slweiss.com/
5. http://www.luthiste.com/
