Hi Anthony, I don't know Patrizio Barbieri's article. I will look it up and read it. But the fact that there was an industry of ropemaking in every port city, and nearly every large city, is not evidence that this technology extended to the art of making music strings from lamb gut. I know the illustration you attached, and there is a similar one in Diderot's Encyclopedie, but there is absolutely no evidence that one craft borrowed from the other. I experienced the same temptation at one time; to conflate the two. Here in Diderot's ownwords:Si l'on fabriquoit des cordes de coton, de crin, de brins, &, on ne s'y prendroit pas autrement pour celles de chanvre; ainsi on peut rapporter à cette main d'oeuvre tout ce qui concerneroit celle de ces cordes. Mais il n'en est pas de même des cordes qu'on tire des substances animales, comme les cordes à boyau, les cordes de nerfs, les cordes d'instrumens de musique, &. Celles-ci demandent des préparations & un travail particuliers;nous en allons traiter séparément.I'm sorry that I don't have time to provide a translation for the list, but you get the gist of it.DDDamianI suppose you do know the work of Partizio Barbieri, and I assume you do not agree with his findings about Roman and Neapolitan gutstring ropes.Patrizio Barbieri: Roman and Neapolitan gut strings, 1550-1590, GSJ, May 2006, pp 176-7. PB appears to have shown that roped strings were already in use on musical instruments as from mid of the 15th century (Ugolino of Orvieto: 'Declaratio musicae disciplinae' Liber quintus, Capitulum IX: 'De cordarum seu nervorm instrumentaliumsubtilitate et grossitie'. 1430-40 ca.)This seems to be confirmed by the presence of orditori (i.e. wheels with three or four rotating hooks used to make ropes) in some 16thcentury roman stringmakers workshop inventories.See this etching of such a machine, I suppose, here, it is not one for making a gut rope, but they would be basically the same.http://www.aquilacorde.com/orditori.jpgIndeed, I made such a gut rope as the one at the front, with Charles Besnainou. I played the role of the middle man, that you can see onthe etching above.I looked at the illustrations in the SyntagmaMusicum and saw roped strings. Likewise I saw ropes when I cameupon J B Oudry's'Basse de viole et Cahier de Musique.' Even helical tile pattersin the 72nd St IRTsubway station looked like roped strings to me. But now I amconvinced thatthe artists were merely depicting the natural refraction of lighton a well twisted string.Charles showed me paintings that really do look like ropes on musical instruments, including one in which the rope is not tied to the bowedinstruments string hole, but fixed with a hook.It is easy to understand how a rope might be hooked in this way (even if it is a little strange), but much more difficult to explain if itis a high twist.Now, my father-in-law taught me to recognize edible fungi; and I was surprised later to notice that I saw many more in the woods and fields than I did previously. I began to have an expert eye. On the other hand, I also did spy delicious mushrooms that turned out to be autumn leaves. I agree that ropes on paintings, might turned out to be like those "Autumn leaves", if we were able to seethe original.The human mind does look for patterns, and a man with a theory does often try to fit everything he sees into the pattern of his thoughts, but that does go for us all, you, Damian, just as much as me,or any other person interested in this topic.In historical linguistics, a linguist will, frequently, hypothesize a form that he has never seen or heard in the language. Generally, this form will be shown starred in historical studies, as you will see inthe OED, for Early Germanic forms postulated for that early languages. The form (or rather set of forms) in question ispostulated through a comparative study of the patterns of forms in related languages. The starred form will probably never be observed, but the more data that the linguist can gather that can only be accounted for by this form having existed, the better we consider the analysis. Historical reconstruction is perhaps, not quite like that; but the more indirect evidence we can find to back-up the hypothesis the safer it is, short of actually finding the thing itself. I agree, that just a few paintings of red strings, or rope-like shapes, would not make a hypothesis safe. The more indications we discover that tie up with the hypothesis, the safer it becomes.Perhaps, loaded strings should still be considered as starred forms, but that does not make the topic uninteresting and unworthy of discussion. Like Alexander B. I have just tried one of the new loaded strings, and very much liked it; but this is no proof of its historic authenticity. Although it does mean that there is positive fall-out from all this research, from which, I for one, am very glad to beable to profit.I have not had the good fortune to try one of your high twist strings, but I don't doubt that they are excellent. You also consider that this is as close as you can get at present to an authentichistoric string.Yours may very well be the most authentic string around at themoment. Even then, we know that they are necessarily yourinterpretation, and different from actual historical strings. I would hope that historical string research will bring more openness to new- old sounds and string types, and not just turn into a politically- historically correct game from which none of us will gain very much.Of course, just as Darwinism does not show that everything new is better than everything old, we would not necessarily expect the inverse proposition to be any truer. I do just have the intuition that during the great period when intense lute-making and string- making coexisted, evolving together, and dragging each other along,surely some very interesting sympathetic formulas must havedeveloped, on both sides of this artisanal divide. Perhaps the old ones do have a thing or two to teach us about an instrument they knewso much better than we can ever hope to do. Regards Anthony Le 7 juin 08 =E0 19:34, damian dlugolecki a ecrit :Thirty years ago, when I became curious about historical strings, NRI was already making what seemed like a roped string, and although the torsions were not balanced, they worked poorly but for a while became the new thing to try. I looked at the illustrations in theSyntagmaMusicum and saw roped strings. Likewise I saw ropes when I cameupon J B Oudry's'Basse de viole et Cahier de Musique.' Even helical tile pattersin the 72nd St IRTsubway station looked like roped strings to me. But now I amconvinced thatthe artists were merely depicting the natural refraction of lighton a well twisted string.We've made a number of leaps of logic in our zeal to discover someholy grail oflute sound. We're sort of like the character Belbo in Eco's novelwho begins tosee maps to the lost treasure of the Knights Templar in what turnsout ultimatelyto be a laundry list. We have to ask the right questions. And wehave to be much more strict about what we consider 'evidence.' DD DamianI deliberately changed the heading, from 12c lutes to [dyeing and loading] to show that the topic had left the precise area of the 12clute raised by Matthias, and to which I contributed also.However, the 12c lute developed in a context to accommodate a certain type of string, and thus the topic of historic string types is not unrelated to this question. It is not by chance that certain lute makers who like using pure gut strings, also like making 12 c, andlong string length lutes in general.I would understand your wish to constrain this topic, if you just stuck to saying that you don't need Pistoys or Venice ropes, or loaded strings to play music on a 12c lute. However, the topic had moved on, and to say that ropes never existed seems a little strange to me. I have seen paintings of what certainly do look like rope strings. I also saw a close up of the diagram of a catapult showing what certainly did look like a rope, and the explanation was that this was the same as those used on bass bowed instruments. The question of whether loaded strings ever existed is more difficult, as there is no direct evidence, but why should we want to put a sort oftaboo on research into this question.You must know that the more we look for historic proof, even for a false presupposition (as you think the loaded string never did exist) the more we are likely to turn up interesting facts about what reallyexisted.I fail to see what worries you in this debate, unless you have made a final decision about how you think historical strings were, and you prefer to keep this fixed idea as it appears to you now, so as to be able to use this to the maximum for your present day string construction, going to the logical conclusion of this view, and trying to make the perfect string in agreement with this. I seenothing wrong with this way of doing things.That is your right, and you may have come up with a very satisfactory string construction that works better than either loaded or ropes canever hope to do.I don't think anyone would want to prevent you from carrying on your research as you wish to do. Each string maker probably does need to stabilize his view of what type of string he wants to make, in order to perfect it, and not have constantly shifting targets. However, I do feel that others must be free to to carry on in their way too.Hopefully this will lead eventually to a better understanding of historical strings, but also to a greater variety of gut sounds, thanif everyone adopted exactly the same approach.Someone may come up with the "ideal" high-twist, another with the "ideal" Pistoy, yet another with a superb loaded string. Lutists canchoose from all this; and we may also findthat certain string types work better with certain lute types,whether or not they developed historically together.I can understand some lutists considering the historic question unimportant. I am thinking of what Jaroslaw said in an earliermessage.Indeed, Charles Besnainou told me he set out simply to improve on present strings with no care whatsoever about historical correctness. He found that wirewounds drowned the midrange and impeded the resonances at the bridge. He found that twisted gut and Pistoys at equal tension have poor high frequency performance (inharmonicity) and set out to solve that problem. I saw and heard spectrograms, of the same diameter string, hightwist plain-gut, Pistoy, and his own toroidal string, and you can observe and hear the difference in the high frequency behaviour of these strings. The worst spectrogram is given by the high twist and the best by his own strings the Pistoy inbetween.It seems that inharmonicity is related to loss of flexibility at the nut and at the bridge. Briefly the ripples of the sound waves encounter impedance and some return, out of phase. These out of phase returning waves, rapidly cancel the high frequency content and damp the wave (sorry, you will all be able to find fault in my explanationwhich is really a metaphor).I imagine that dropping the tension of the hightwist string is going to lower that impedance and improve its behaviour (low tension theory). I do not know whether, Charles made comparisons of the same string types at varying tensions. This could be very interesting.Anyway, Charles actually thought he had discovered something completely new, but then discovered that such ropes had existed, and had been used on musical instruments. When trying to solve a particular problem, we are highly likely to find that the ancients were confronted with the same problems, and came up with similar ifslightly different solutions.Nevertheless, for Charles the historic question remains quite secondary, and most of the ropes he now makes are in pure carbon. I still would prefer the gut ones, but his approach, open to history, but also applying science to find new solutions, may make it possible for synthetics users to stop using wirewounds. I for one am notagainst that.I don't see any terrible problem in these different approaches coexisting, and musicians making the best of the string types that result from this. Let us not even want to close off some axis of discussion, because it is different from our own. Now whether, it is better to pick up one's lute and to play instead of discussing, is quite another question, and I think that is what I am juts about todo. regards Anthony Le 6 juin 08 =E0 17:38, damian dlugolecki a ecrit :Dear Lutists, I first joined this topic to contribute what Icould to Mathias Rosel's understanding of the design of the 12c he was considering (may 30). I didn't think my comments would be so controversial, but I soon became aware that there were a number of serious historical errors being made, and a whole raft of assumptions about the manner in which contemporary lutes were strung that are entirely wrong. I offer my own historical overview of what we actually do know, (june 4) which I propose asa better way of commencing research. I also propose that youdiscard all of your assumptionsabout string loading, roped strings of various types, halfwound strings--because I believe they are warrantless and have no evidential basis. There were simply, strings in varying rates of torsion. If you or someone you know is using some imaginary reconstruct like those mentionedabove and they work, then that is fine. You don't need anyhistorical justification for the wayyou string your lute. But the fact that they work is not an apriori historical validation that theyexisted during the distant past. That would be like seeingall those fat men in red suits with fake white trimming around Christmastime and deciding you do believe in Santa Claus after all. DD It seems to me that several different questions are being raisedabout the loading process and dyeing processes at the sametime. One of these can be answered fairly easily:Q Is the material used for loading strings metal filings, asDamian has mentioned?- Well, I suppose it depends what you call metal filings, butI thinkit would be better to call it a powder of some form of copper(perhaps some sort of copper oxide). I don't think it is obtained by using a file on a piece of copper."Modern loaded Bass strings (...) can present different shadesofdark red, brown or blackish colour, but also light yellow -dependingon the oxides or sulfides employed. Also metal powders likemetallic-copper (which is what we use on our loaded strings because itis nottoxic) achieve the same goal: we still have ancient recipes describing how to produce the finest copper powder (we triedthemquite successfully), like the one by Don Alessio Piemontese 'I secreti...', printed in Venice in 1555: the resulting colour,too,looks very much like what we see on iconographical sources."MPWe may note that MP's recipe for loading is certainly not theonly way one that could achieve loading, and, if we admit that stringloading did indeed exist, there would have been a number ofdifferent competing recipes, with varying results.Q Another question is not historic: What difference is therebetween a dyeing and a loading process, as this would be defined today? Isthere any overlap in these two types of process that couldlead from one to the other, - Well, I made a search and I found it very difficult to understandwhat I came up with, but it seems that metal oxides are mainlyused as some sort of fixing agent for dyes (mordants) in some modern dyes See here, for example: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5320647.htmlI am no chemist, so most of the document goes completely overmyhead. I don't think the metals are the colouring agent, butsomehowhelp to fix the dye, but I could be quite wrong, and I don'tknow whether they effect the density of the material they are applied to. However, this is the wrong question. It is irrelevant how scientists would consider the two processes today, or how they would designate them, perhaps never confusing the two.The valid question seems to me to be whether, around 1570,colouring leathers, wool etc, with metal oxides would have been considered asdyeing, or whether they would have been given a completelydifferent name, such as "loading". I found this site which helps me to find an answer which satisfies me, but possibly not you. http://www.geocities.com/anne_liese_w/Dyeing/dyemordants.htm Here, I read, "Metals are among the earliest of dyes for textiles. Most commonly,early people from all over the world discovered that certainsoilswould impart color to cloth if the cloth were buried in it forsomeduration. Extant examples of such a technique can be found intextiles of the Swiss Lake Dwellers, approx. 3000 BC and modern use of the practice can be found in Africa, where the natives treat thecloth with a pattern of tannins and then bury it in iron-richsoil, producing a black and tan design."Thus, as I understand it, for thousands of years the problemwithwhich the "dye trade" (don't take that too literally) musthave beenconfronted, was how to make these dyes more permanent, how tofixthem on wool, leather, etc. This fixing process would surelylead to"loading" the material, but the aim was to make the "dye" orcolourfast, not to load the material. Loading would just have been asecondary effect."Several ancient recipes could have been easily employed for 'loading' gut (see, for instance, Giovanventura Rossetti'srecipesfor dyeing fabrics, silk and leather in his 'Plichto de l'artedetentori che insegna tenger pani, telle, banbasi et sede si perlarthemagiore come per la comune', Venezia, 1568). Some of thesedescribe how to incorporate cinnabar (red mercury sulphide) or lithargyrum(yellow lead oxide) into wax, leather, silk, wood, hair, inks&c.: indeed, only a short step away from gut." MP Thus this process most probably would have been strongly associatedwith the dyeing trade. If the string trade was centred in anarea ofItaly where sheep were at one time abundant, perhaps therewere very close links between these various trades (wool, leather-tanning,dyeing, and also the gut string trade). I think this centre ofthe string trade was also at a point from which trade routes spread-out.It would not be surprising if other trades were assoicatedwith theseroutes, but I admit that I don't know how close the relationsmight have been between these different guilds.I am not suggesting that all dyeing of gut was loading, justthatplaying around with dyeing processes could have lead to thediscovery of loading.Damian is right, I think in considering this socio-economichistoryof the gut string trade and their relations with the otherguilds, as being of great importance to our understanding of gut technology.In the light of what I have said so far, when Mace mentionsthequality of the dark red Pistoys, this is not proof that suchstringswere loaded; however, if they were loaded, should we expectMace touse this term rather than the term "dyed"? I don't think weshouldexpect that when modern texts continue to refer to loading ofcloth with oxides, as "dyeing" (see above). In relation to this general question of how string makers might havecome across the use of metal oxides in relation to leather, asearchwith google also brought up the fact that at least some metaloxides have been used in the tanning process of leather, in particularchromium salts, but no doubt others have been used, in thetanning process."Chrome Tanning: A tanning process using salts of chromium tomakeleathers that are especially supple and suitable for bags,garments, etc. "It is possible that similar tanning processes were attemptedwith gut. There is no direct relation to loading with a metal oxide, butany experimentation, dyeing, and tanning, using metal salts,could have made such a discovery more likely.Don't let us forget that "dyeing" with metal salts is not theonlyway to load gut, and around 1650, a new way of loading gut,the demi- file was discovered. This is clearly mentioned in several texts(Playford, Perrault), and we do have the Mest sample to proveit.Thus we do know that some string makers must have been lookingfor ways of loading strings.Incidentally, the way loaded strings behave, make me think ofthe pendulum, rather than a spring. Some have suggested that Galileo'sstudy (around 1600) of the behaviour of the pendulum came from experiments he made with his father weighting lute strings. NoI amnot suggesting that Galileo discovered the loaded string, butperhaps this sort of question was not all that new, just well formulated by Galileo.Claude Perrault's description of the demi-file loaded strings,seems to be referring to its being similar to the pendulum-like swinging motion of a bell. http://www.aquilacorde.com/im16.htmAgain, no proof is implied in what I have just said, only thatstring- makers clearly did not ignore such experimentation. Please do not consider that I think I have successfully answeredthese questions. I have written down the questions raised, asI have understood them, and I have given a number of remarks as replies, which in no way are attempts to close the issue. There are other questions that have been raised, such as Jaroslaw'sgeneral questions about whether we should not just get on with playing music on the strings we have, rather than hunt fornew-oldmaterials, I will try to respond with a few remarks, later.Anthony Le 6 juin 08 =E0 01:37, howard posner a ecrit :On Jun 5, 2008, at 2:44 PM, Eugene C. Braig IV wrote:I don't think you are mistaken; however, that still wouldnot involve a chemical change of the gut material itself.Does dyeing? The question, if I am again unmistaken, waswhether a process used for dyeing might incidentally increase the density/weight of a string. As far as I can see, adding anything tothestring's innards is going to increase its density, thoughthe increase may be negligible. Anyone who uses gut strings knows they get denser from absorbing water when the humidity rises. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html--
- [LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading Anthony Hind
- [LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading Anthony Hind
- [LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading demery
- [LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading damian dlugolecki
- [LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading Jarosław Lipski
- [LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading Martin Shepherd
- [LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading Jarosław Lipski
- [LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading damian dlugolecki
- [LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading Anthony Hind
- [LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading Anthony Hind
- [LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading damian dlugolecki
- [LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading damian dlugolecki