Lute
A cylinder seal from Uruk, dated to about 3100 BC and now held in the British Museum, depicts a woman playing what scholars identify as an early lute. This artifact pushes the instrument's history back three millennia before the term itself was coined. Musicologist Richard Dumbrill documented over 3,000 years of iconographic evidence for these instruments across Mesopotamia. He argues that the long-necked lute evolved from the bow-harp and eventually became the tanbur. The short-necked variety found in Gandhara, modern-day Pakistan, served as the ancestor for Islamic, Sino-Japanese, and European families. These ancient forms included the pandura and the tanbur, which appear in cultures ranging from Egypt to India. Curt Sachs defined the category by body and neck characteristics rather than how strings were sounded. His classification distinguished between long-necked and short-necked varieties, noting that the former preserved the appearance of ancient Babylonian lutes.
Abu l-Hasan 'Ali Ibn Nafi' (789, 857) arrived in Andalusia before 833 after being exiled from Baghdad. He taught music there and is credited with adding a fifth string to his oud. By the 11th century, Muslim Iberia had become a center for instrument manufacturing. Goods spread gradually to Provence, influencing French troubadours and trouvères. Sicily served as another transfer point where musicians brought the instrument under Norman rule. King Roger II dedicated the Cappella Palatina in Palermo in 1140, depicting singer-lutenists extensively on its ceiling paintings. Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, integrated Moorish musicians into his court between 1218 and 1237. By 1500, several lute-making families operated in the Lech valley and Füssen. The number of courses grew to ten by the end of the Renaissance and reached 14 during the Baroque era. Some instruments held up to 19 courses and 35 strings. The archlute and theorbo featured long extensions attached to the main tuning head to provide resonating length for bass strings. These bass strings were played open outside the fretboard because human fingers could not span the wide neck.
The soundboard of a typical lute is a teardrop-shaped thin plate made from spruce or other resonant wood. A single or triple decorated sound hole called the rose sits under the strings. This opening is covered with a grille carved directly out of the wood in the form of an intertwining vine or decorative knot. Robert Lundberg suggests ancient builders placed braces according to whole-number ratios of scale length and belly length. The inward bend of the soundboard, known as the belly scoop, affords the right hand more space between strings and board. Soundboard thickness generally hovers around three millimeters. Luthiers tune the belly while building it by removing mass and adapting bracing to produce desirable sonic results. The back shell consists of thin strips of hardwood like maple, cherry, ebony, or rosewood joined edge to edge. The neck features a veneer of hardwood, usually ebony, mounted flush with the top unlike modern instruments. Pegs before the Baroque era angled back at almost 90 degrees to hold low-tension strings firmly against the nut. Matheson wrote in 1720 that a player who lived eighty years spent sixty years tuning. Frets are loops of gut tied around the neck and must be replaced frequently due to fraying.
The earliest surviving lute music dates from the late 15th century in Italy. Petrucci published collections by Francesco Spinacino in 1507 and Joan Ambrosio Dalza in 1508 alongside the Capirola Lutebook. These represent the earliest stage of written lute music in Italy. Francesco Canova da Milano (1497, 1543) stands as one of the most famous lute composers in history. His output consists largely of fantasias or ricercares using extensive imitation and sequence. Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger (1580, 1651) and Alessandro Piccinini (1566, 1638) revolutionized technique in the early 17th century. Pierre Attaingnant began French printed lute music with preludes, dances, and intabulations between 1494 and 1551. Albert de Rippe (1500, 1551) composed polyphonic fantasias of considerable complexity while working in France. Ennemond Gaultier (1575, 1651), Denis Gaultier (1597/1603, 1672), and François Dufaut (before 1604 , before 1672) exemplified the French Baroque school. Robert de Visée (1655, 1732/3) exploited the instrument's possibilities to the fullest in his final suites. Arnolt Schlick published a collection including 14 voice and lute songs in 1513. Conrad Paumann (1410, 1473) is credited by contemporaries with inventing German lute tablature though no works survive. Silvius Leopold Weiss (1686, 1750) created one of the greatest bodies of work transcribed for keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach.
A six-course Renaissance tenor lute was tuned nominally in G yielding intervals of a perfect fourth between all courses except the third and fourth which differed only by a major third. For instruments with more than six courses, extra strings were added on the low end and tuned to pitches useful as bass notes rather than continuing the regular pattern of fourths. An eight-course tenor Renaissance lute would be tuned C-G-C-F-A-D while a ten-course model used C-G-C-F-A-D-G. Manuscripts bear instructions such as 7e chœur en fa meaning seventh course in fa or F in the standard C scale. French lutenists of the early 17th century began increasing the number of major or minor thirds on adjacent open strings of the 10-course lute. These transitional tunings gained popularity across much of continental Europe during the first half of that century. The sharp tuning reads from tenth to first course as C-D-E-F-G-C-F-A-C-E. The flat tuning reads C-Db-Eb-F-G-C-F-Ab-C-Eb. By around 1670 the scheme known today as Baroque or D minor tuning became the norm in France and northern central Europe. This system outlined a d-minor triad for the first six courses with five to seven additional courses tuned generally scalewise below them.
Arnold Dolmetsch (1858, 1940) started the movement for authenticity by researching early music and instruments in the late 19th century. His discoveries were so fruitful that he decided to concentrate on performing early music on original instruments outside private drawing rooms. Julian Bream, Hans Neemann, Walter Gerwig, Suzanne Bloch, and Diana Poulton emerged as important pioneers in the 20th-century revival. Rolf Lislevand, Hopkinson Smith, Paul O'Dette, Christopher Wilke, Andreas Martin, Robert Barto, Eduardo Egüez, Edin Karamazov, Nigel North, Christopher Wilson, Luca Pianca, Yasunori Imamura, Anthony Bailes, Peter Croton, Xavier Diaz-Latorre, Evangelina Mascardi, and Jakob Lindberg represent world-class lutenists today. Singer-songwriter Sting played lute and archlute in collaborations with Edin Karamazov. Jan Akkerman released two albums of lute music in the 1970s while a guitarist in the Dutch rock band Focus. Jozef van Wissem composed the soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch film Only Lovers Left Alive. Akira Ifukube wrote the Fantasia for Baroque Lute in 1980 using historical tablature notation rather than modern staff one. Vladimir Vavilov was a pioneer of the lute revival in the USSR and author of numerous musical hoaxes. Sandor Kallos and Toyohiko Satoh applied modernist idiom to the instrument.
Continue Browsing
Common questions
When was the earliest cylinder seal depicting a lute created and where is it located?
A cylinder seal from Uruk dated to about 3100 BC depicts a woman playing an early lute. This artifact is now held in the British Museum.
Who added a fifth string to the oud and when did this occur?
Abu l-Hasan Ali Ibn Nafi arrived in Andalusia before 833 after being exiled from Baghdad. He taught music there and is credited with adding a fifth string to his oud.
What are the specific tuning intervals for a six-course Renaissance tenor lute?
A six-course Renaissance tenor lute was tuned nominally in G yielding intervals of a perfect fourth between all courses except the third and fourth which differed only by a major third.
Which composer published the earliest surviving lute music collections in Italy during the 16th century?
Petrucci published collections by Francesco Spinacino in 1507 and Joan Ambrosio Dalza in 1508 alongside the Capirola Lutebook. These represent the earliest stage of written lute music in Italy.
When did Arnold Dolmetsch start the movement for authenticity in lute performance?
Arnold Dolmetsch started the movement for authenticity by researching early music and instruments in the late 19th century. His discoveries were so fruitful that he decided to concentrate on performing early music on original instruments outside private drawing rooms.