Dear Alan,
According to Robert Spencer's article in New Grove:
"Sturt's seven extant lute solos were written for a ten-course lute in
aEUR~old' tuning with the lowest course lowered to B a(TM) A for two of
the pieces."
Fret material (and strings for that matter) would have been gut. We
can't know for sure the exact size and pitch to which Sturt's
instrument would have been tuned - this is arguably less crucial in any
case, since lutes in all manner of different sizes survive from the
period, and would no doubt have been tuned accordingly. If there was
ever such a thing as "concert pitch" at that time in England, Bruce
Haynes has suggested that it might have been about a tone lower than
modern pitch. Since Sturt was employed at court and was involved in
masque entertainments, one might assume that he sometimes played at
this pitch. Assuming he thought of his lute in G, this corresponds to a
string length of about 66cm. Assuming (again) that he had 8 or possibly
9 frets tied on the neck, one can then work out the body size
(roughly). Or one can examine surviving instruments with this string
length. Lot's of assumptions I'm afraid - I wouldn't get too bogged
down in the dogma!
Good luck!
Sam
On 28 February 2013 21:17, Alan Sturt <[1]alanst...@gmail.com> wrote:
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A A A A I am interested to know what kind of lute would have
been played by
John Sturt in England (1610-1625) - see attached.
A A A A I am a guitar player and would like to get involved with
the lute -
and I would like to play John Sturt's music on an instrument he
would have
used. I have not yet proved that he is part of my family tree but
Sturt is
an uncommon name - even in England.
A A A A I would like to know string number, body size, fret
material and
any other details that would help define the instrument.
A A A A A Thanks in advance A A A A Alan Sturt
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Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
A A A A I am interested to know what kind of lute would have
been played by John Sturt in England (1610-1625) - see
attached.<div>A A A A I am a guitar player and would like to get
involved with the lute - and I would like to play John Sturt's
music on an instrument he would have used. I have not yet proved
that he is part of my family tree but Sturt is an uncommon name -
even in England.</div>
<div>A A A A I would like to know string number, body size, fret
material and any other details that would help define the
instrument.</div><div>A A A A A Thanks in advance A A A A
Alan Sturt</div>
--f46d0408395de054f104d6ce93f3--
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Sam Chapman
Oetlingerstrasse 65
4057 Basel
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References
1. mailto:alanst...@gmail.com
2. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
