Martyn, since usage of musical instruments has in many cases been uncertain, musicologists tend to define musical instruments by their building structure. As for kastenhals (box-like body + neck) vs schalenhals (shell-like body + neck) lutes, that definition can be traced back to Curt Sachs or Hans Riem, I think. As a musicologist, you will know better than I.
Regarding treatment, I should be curious which evidence there is. Among guitarists, there has been argument e. g. as for nails or not nails. I don't remember any such debate among lutenists of old. I've mentioned string material already. Playing literature of one instrument on another instrument, doesn't mean they are the same. You can play many pages of baroque guitar music on the baroque mandora because the latter has octave strings from 4th to 6th course, but that doesn't make the mandora a guitar. Recently I was given a wandervogel lute that had been used until, say, 1965. When I shook it slightly, there was kind of a little rumble inside, and the former owner explained that it had lain in dust. At home, I turned it and shook it until all of the *dust* fell off. That dust were some twenty or thirty knotted ends of broken gut strings. > Yes, I'm very much aware of the importance of the Mandora/Colachon in the > development of the late 18thC guitar - have you read my mid 1970s monographs > on precisely this subject in the FoMRHI Quarterly? Have you read Pietro Prosser's doctoral thesis on precisely this topic (he _has_ read your monograph)? In a shortened version, it is available on Frederico Marincola's homepage, in LuteBot #5. Cheers, Mathias > "Mathias Rösel" <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Thank you for your critique, Martyn, but: > > as far as I'm aware, guitars are defined as box-neck-lutes, i. e. with a > neck and a box-like body (kastenhalslauten, in German), as opposed to > shell-neck-lutes, i. e. with a neck and a shell-like body > (schalenhalslauten) which are what most of us are used to calling > lutes. > Hybrids of guitars and other instruments in the 19th century were named > according to their components, e.g. cello-guitar, lyre-guitare and so > on. > > Pietro Prosser has plausibly shown that at the end of 18th century the > guitar and the mandora each took elements of the other. The guitar > inherited its 6th course and its modern non-reentrant tuning from the > mandora, whereas the mandora took over the guitar's single strings. > > The rococo mandora perished, but its late heir, the wandervogel lute, > has survived well into the 20th century. Wandervogel lutes are by no > means guitars. The rediscovery of Early music by pioneers like Dagobert > Bruger et al, who played the wandervogel lute, prompted others to state > that wandervogel lutes are no proper lutes. > > I should simply value that a defamation which is still maintained even > by some luthiers, today (but that doesn't add to its truth). While it is > true that wandervogel lutes considerably differ from renaissance lutes, > they are lutes, nevertheless: lutes with a shell-like body and a neck. > None of the contemporaries called them other than lutes. > > Notwithstanding that, it is likewise true that modern guitars and > wandervogel lutes strongly resembled each other in terms of stringing > and tuning (btw steel strings were in use for the guitar, but lutes were > always strung with gut, or nylon after WW II). That is why so many > editions during the fading 19th and starting 20th centuries were made > for the guitar or for the lute, alternatively. > > So much for my unsubstantiated comment. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
