Hi Tim, I have no experience with EMS lutes. I would recommend either to buy a used lute or a new student lute which several builders offer. In any case you should try to find a lute player to come along for good advice about the instrument.
The late Walter Gerwig played all the music on his 10-course renaissance lute. It surely is possible but early music is about to play the music of the time on the instrument of that time, isn't it? What makes a good beginner lute? The most common renaissance lute would be tuned in renaissance tuning (top: g-d-a-f-c-g :deepest - and then the basses diatonically) and would have 7 or 8 courses. 10 course instruments are popular because you can play the complete music from the early beginnings of printed lute music up to the latest (italian) music. What we usually call abaroque lute is the lute tuned based on a d-minor chord ahich was used nearly all over europe (except italy) in the baroque. It's a very different instrument starting with 11 courses up to 13 courses and occassionally even 14 courses because some of Bach's so called lute works require a 14th course (contra G). I hope this helps Thomas Am Freitag, 25. März 2005 18:22 schrieb Tim Beasley: > Hi. I thought I posted this earlier, but I never got a copy (and I assume > that the listserve would have forwarded me a copy.) > > I'm an amateur classical guitarist and I'm getting tired of playing lute > music in transcription. I'm going to be selling one of my guitars in the > next week or two, and one possible use of the money is a lute. > > When I started with CG, I got a student instrument that served me well; I > finally decided I liked CG and it liked me, so I upgraded to a "real" > instrument. If the relationship hand't worked out, yippee, no great > financial loss. I think I'd like to do the same with lute. > > I've heard that the cheap S. Asian (Pakistani?) lutes on ebay are > trash. More trouble to make them into a lute than they're worth. > > But I haven't heard anything at all about the EMS lutes (Early Music Shop, > England). They're within my price range. But are they playable lutes, > with a reasonable--for a student lute--sound? Has anybody assembled one of > their kits? (If I'm overlooking an obvious source of student lutes, let me > know.) > > A second question deals with the difference between Renaissance/Baroque > lutes. Apparently the most common varieties of the two differ by a single > string (7 versus 8 strings). I have to assume that there's more of a > difference between the two, however, than that one string. Is it fairly > standard to play Baroque music on a Renaissance lute, or is the sound > difference really significant? > > If there's a handy website discussion the differences, just point me to it. > > Thanks for any advice and suggestions. > > Tim Beasley > Houston > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- Thomas Schall Niederhofheimer Weg 3 D-65843 Sulzbach 06196/74519 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
