[LUTE] Re: dyeing/loading

[damian dlugolecki]

Hi Anthony
Stringmakers use machines to add torsion to strings as they 
dry.  There are illustrations
of these in Bachmann, Alberto 'Encyclopedia of the Violin' 
1925.  But they are not the
same as the machines used to make rope.

I don't know what more evidence you don't need.   Here is 
Diderot, who set out to describe
and define the different 'Arts et Metiers' of his time, 
drawing a clear distinction between the
technology used to make rope and that which is used in making 
music strings, saying in plain
language, that they are totally distinct in their technologies 
even though they are both labelled
'cordes'.  I really don't think there is anything more to 
discover.  If roped strings were so
great they would have lasted through the 19th century when all 
of the orchestral instruments
still used gut.  There was really nothing to disrupt a 
tradition or method of this distinct type.
if it was truly successful, yet no evidence at all exists.

DD

Hello Damian
But what about those machines that were in the inventory of 
the
string makers?

You are right that Diderot says that cordes à boyau are not 
made in
the same way as those made of cotton etc,
but can we take that to mean that there absolutely were no 
type of
ropes?

I am open to the argument, but I think there is more to 
discover.
Someone also mentioned the existence of a
Portuguese text that contains description of gut rope making.

Perhaps there were no ropes that were not somehow smoothed, in 
the
case of lutes, but I have seen paintings of bowed instruments 
that do
seem to have ropes.
If Charles allows me I will send you one, but I need his 
permission,
I don't know where he got it from.
AH


Le 8 juin 08 à 23:27, damian dlugolecki a écrit :

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 own
words:

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.

DD

Damian
I suppose you do know the work of Partizio Barbieri, and I 
assume
you do not agree with his findings about Roman and 
Neapolitan gut
string 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 
instrumentalium
subtilitate 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 16th
century 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.jpg

Indeed, 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 on
the etching above.

I looked at the illustrations in the Syntagma
Musicum and saw roped strings.  Likewise I saw ropes when 
I came
upon J B Oudry's
'Basse de viole et Cahier de Musique.'  Even helical tile 
patters
in the 72nd St IRT
subway station looked like roped strings to me.   But now 
I am
convinced that
the artists were merely depicting the natural refraction 
of light
on 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 bowed
instruments 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 it
is 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 
see
the 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 in
the OED, for Early Germanic forms postulated for that early
languages. The form (or rather set of forms) in question is
postulated 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 be
able 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 
authentic
historic string.
Yours may very well be the most authentic string around at 
the
moment. Even then, we know that they are necessarily your
interpretation, 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 have
developed, on both sides of this artisanal divide. Perhaps 
the old
ones do have a thing or two to teach us about an instrument 
they knew
so 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 the
Syntagma
Musicum and saw roped strings.  Likewise I saw ropes when 
I came
upon J B Oudry's
'Basse de viole et Cahier de Musique.'  Even helical tile 
patters
in the 72nd St IRT
subway station looked like roped strings to me.   But now 
I am
convinced that
the artists were merely depicting the natural refraction 
of light
on a well twisted
string.

We've made a number of leaps of logic in our zeal to 
discover some
holy grail of
lute sound.  We're sort of like the character Belbo in 
Eco's novel
who begins to
see maps to the lost treasure of the Knights Templar in 
what turns
out ultimately
to be a laundry list.   We have to ask the right 
questions. And we
have to be much
more strict about what we consider 'evidence.'

DD

Damian
I deliberately changed the heading, from 12c lutes to 
[dyeing and
loading] to show that the topic had left the precise area 
of the 12c
lute 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, and
long 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 of
taboo 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  really
existed.
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 see
nothing 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  can
ever 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,  than
if 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 can
choose from all this; and we may also find
that 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 
earlier
message.

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 in
between.
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 
explanation
which 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 if
slightly 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 not
against 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 to
do.
 regards
Anthony


Le 6 juin 08 =E0 17:38, damian dlugolecki a ecrit :


Dear Lutists,   I first joined this topic to contribute 
what I
could 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 as
a better way of commencing research.  I also propose that 
you
discard all of your assumptions
about string loading, roped strings of various types, 
half
wound 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 mentioned
above and they work, then that is fine.  You don't need 
any
historical justification for the way
you string your lute.  But the fact that they work is not 
an a
priori historical validation that they
existed during the distant past.  That would be like 
seeing
all 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
raised
about the loading process and dyeing processes at the 
same
time. One
of these can be answered  fairly easily:

Q Is the material used for loading strings metal filings, 
as
Damian
has mentioned?

- Well, I suppose it depends what you call metal filings, 
but
I think
it 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 
shades
of
dark red, brown or blackish colour, but also light 
yellow -
depending
on the oxides or sulfides employed. Also metal powders 
like
metallic-
copper (which is what we use on our loaded strings 
because it
is not
toxic) achieve the same goal: we still have ancient 
recipes
describing how to produce the finest copper powder (we 
tried
them
quite 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."
MP

We may note that MP's recipe for loading is certainly not 
the
only
way one that could achieve loading, and, if we admit that
string
loading did indeed exist, there would have been a number 
of
different
competing recipes, with varying results.

Q Another question is not historic: What difference is 
there
between
a dyeing and a loading process, as this would be defined
today? Is
there any overlap in these two types of process that 
could
lead from
one to the other,

- Well, I made a search and I found it very difficult to
understand
what I came up with, but it seems that metal oxides are 
mainly
used
as some sort of fixing agent for dyes (mordants) in some
modern dyes
See here, for example:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5320647.html
I am no chemist, so most of the document goes completely 
over
my
head. I don't think the metals are the colouring agent, 
but
somehow
help to fix the dye, but I could be quite wrong, and I 
don't
know
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 as
dyeing, or whether they would have been given a 
completely
different
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 
certain
soils
would impart color to cloth if the cloth were buried in 
it for
some
duration. Extant examples of such a technique can be 
found in
textiles of the Swiss Lake Dwellers, approx. 3000 BC and
modern use
of the practice can be found in Africa, where the natives
treat the
cloth with a pattern of tannins and then bury it in 
iron-rich
soil,
producing a black and tan design."

Thus, as I understand it, for thousands of years the 
problem
with
which the "dye trade" (don't take that too literally) 
must
have been
confronted, was how to make these dyes more permanent, 
how to
fix
them on wool, leather, etc. This fixing process would 
surely
lead to
"loading" the material, but the aim was to make the "dye" 
or
colour
fast, not to load the material. Loading would just have 
been a
secondary effect.

"Several ancient recipes could have been easily employed 
for
'loading' gut (see, for instance, Giovanventura 
Rossetti's
recipes
for dyeing fabrics, silk and leather in his 'Plichto de 
l'arte
de
tentori che insegna tenger pani, telle, banbasi et sede 
si per
larthe
magiore come per la comune', Venezia, 1568). Some of 
these
describe
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
associated
with the dyeing trade. If the string trade was centred in 
an
area of
Italy where sheep were at one time abundant, perhaps 
there
were very
close links between these various trades (wool,
leather-tanning,
dyeing, and also the gut string trade). I think this 
centre of
the
string trade was also at a point from which trade routes
spread-out.
It would not be surprising if other trades were 
assoicated
with these
routes, but I admit that I don't know how close the 
relations
might
have been between these different guilds.
I am not suggesting that all dyeing of gut was loading, 
just
that
playing around with dyeing processes could have lead to 
the
discovery
of loading.

Damian is right, I think in considering this 
socio-economic
history
of the gut string trade and their relations with the 
other
guilds, as
being of great importance to our understanding of gut
technology.

In the light of what I have said so far, when Mace 
mentions
the
quality of the dark red Pistoys, this is not proof that 
such
strings
were loaded; however, if they were loaded, should we 
expect
Mace to
use this term rather than the term "dyed"? I don't think 
we
should
expect that when modern texts continue to refer to 
loading of
cloth
with oxides, as "dyeing" (see above).

In relation to this general question of how string makers
might have
come across the use of metal oxides in relation to 
leather, a
search
with google also brought up the fact that at least some 
metal
oxides
have been used in the tanning process of leather, in
particular
chromium salts, but no doubt others have been used, in 
the
tanning
process.
"Chrome Tanning: A tanning process using salts of 
chromium to
make
leathers that are especially supple and suitable for 
bags,
garments,
etc. "
It is possible that similar tanning processes were 
attempted
with
gut. There is no direct relation to loading with a metal
oxide, but
any 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 
the
only
way 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 
prove
it.
Thus we do know that some string makers must have been 
looking
for
ways of loading strings.

Incidentally, the way loaded strings behave, make me 
think of
the
pendulum, rather than a spring. Some have suggested that
Galileo's
study (around 1600) of the behaviour of the pendulum came 
from
experiments he made with his father weighting lute 
strings. No
I am
not suggesting that Galileo discovered the loaded string, 
but
perhaps
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.htm

Again, no proof is implied in what I have just said, only 
that
string-
makers clearly did not ignore such experimentation.

Please do not consider that I think I have successfully
answered
these questions. I have written down the questions 
raised, as
I 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's
general questions about whether we should not just get on 
with
playing music on the strings we have, rather than hunt 
for
new-old
materials, 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 
would
not
involve a chemical change of the gut material itself.

Does dyeing?  The question, if I am again unmistaken, 
was
whether a
process used for dyeing might incidentally increase the
density/
weight of a string.  As far as I can see, adding 
anything to
the
string's innards is going to increase its density, 
though
the
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











--