In a message dated 3/19/2006 10:07:48 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
apart from the article by joseph baldassare, mentioned earlier, is there any early european documentation relating to how the lute was played prior to the advent of thumb over plucking and strumming: instructions for making plectrum; hand positions, etc.? ---------------------------------------- Here is the text from the last part of the chapter by Vladimir Ivanoff on the "Pesaro" ms. in "Performance Practice on Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela" (edited by Victor Coehlo) pp14-15: PLAYING THE CORRECT INSTRUMENT The pieces in Tablature A call for a six-course lute in relative A-tuning. The left-hand fingering of some of the larger chords can be comfortably executed on a lute with a rather short string length (approximately 50=E2=80"5 cm between bridge and nut). Unfortunately, there is only one extant lute from the first third of the sixteenth century that has come down to us in a presumably original state. This lute was most probably built in Venice and was in the collection of Laurence C. Witten II that is now at the Shrine to Music collection in South Dakota. Friedemann Hellwig has dated this instrument to shortly after 1500.37 Other than the fact that the instrument has only five courses, it is perfectly suited to play the pieces in Tablature A. It has a string length of 50 cm and the ribs are made from ivory. The distance between the lowest and highest strings is 2.6 cm at the nut and 6.8 cm at the bridge. The wide distance between the courses at the bridge is an advantage for plectrum technique, while the narrow span at the nut allows the use of the left-hand thumb for fingering; this technique furthermore makes the fingering of the widely stretched five- and six-note chords in Tablature A a bit easier. In the absence of any relevant European descriptions, information concerning the appropriate lute plectrum is offered by the partly still-living tradition employed by al- 'ud players in the Islamic world. According to tradition, the 'ud player Ziryab (d. 852), introduced a new type of plectrum (midrab al-'ud) made from an eagle's feather. This type of plectrum is still made in the following way: the upper (softer) end of the feather is spliced with a sharp knife to a length of about 8-10 cm; the surface of one half of the spliced piece is then smoothed and cleaned from the spongy substance in the interior part; finally, the tip of the plectrum is rounded and smoothed again. 37 Friedemann Hellwig, 'Lutemaking in the late 15th and 16th Century', LSJ16 (1974), pp. 24-38. Kenneth Be -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
