Introducing: The Renaissance Lute

[Music] hey everyone welcome back for another episode of introducing where i show you all sorts of beautiful and rare instruments from the past as long as they go pluck so today we're going to talk about one of the most important if not the most important instrument of the musical period be called the renaissance and that is the loot now you might actually be familiar with this instrument a little bit already you might have seen it in paintings at museums or even in video games like skyrim or you know netflix series like the witcher everybody wants me to cover songs from the witcher now but the renaissance loot has a really fascinating history and we're going to learn all about it today [Music] the loot was one of the most important instruments of the renaissance which took place roughly between the 14th to early 17th centuries it was used in shakespeare's plays kings and queens adored its magical sound every day people played it on street corners and in pubs and even galileo's father vincenzo galilei played the loot because of the loot's ability to play polyphony meaning several independent moving voices it was considered the ideal solo instrument as well as an ideal instrument for accompanying the voice now the loot is a likely descendant of the oud this instrument arrived in europe likely in the 8th century when the moors conquered the iberian peninsula and oods are usually teardrop shaped or pear shaped they have round backs bow backs long necks and friction pegs so each peg is kind of like a violin you just have to push and turn to get it to stay they were played with plectrums probably something like a quill an eagle's feather or other materials each string was doubled and they were fretless so you can play a variety of notes in between the sort of western 12 tone system [Music] over time europeans adapted the ood to meet their own musical needs and they kept basically the same shape teardrop shape ball back bent backward neck friction pegs all that but they ended up adding frets and for those frets they use the same material as the strings which were made of at the time uh gut so sheep intestine and that's what we we have here this is uh these are sheep intestine gut frets which are just tied around and are movable now it seems that by the time we get to the 14th century the europeans had a loot which generally had four pairs of strings and then in the 15th century they added a fifth and by the time we get to the 16th century six course loots were common that's six pairs of strings for hundreds of years in the medieval period lutonis still played with a plectrum just like food players but in the late 15th century they began dropping the pick in favor of using the fingertips to pluck and the advantage of that new technique is that you can play several independent voices simultaneously two three or even four parts at the same time this is what we call polyphony and with this new technique the golden age of the loot began and during this golden age the loot was considered one of the most loved instruments throughout europe for over 150 years now as i mentioned in the early 16th century six course loots were common but as we get closer to the end of the 16th century people began experimenting with adding more and more bass strings to increase the base range of the instrument so you start seeing loots with an extra seventh string then an extra eighth string nine and even ten courses in the renaissance this loot here is an eight course it has eight pairs of strings in terms of the technique of playing the loot the left hand is rather similar to a modern guitar it's pretty much the same same but the right hand is where things get uh really interesting as i mentioned before lutness played with a plectrum for hundreds of years and they did so by holding the loot more horizontally and wrapping their arm around the bottom of the loop like this they put their pinky down on the top and move from the arm to play up and down with the pick which is not too far away from what electric guitar players do today but when they dropped the pick when they abandoned the pick for playing with the fingers uh they retained this position so pinky down and they moved the arm and instead of playing down and up with a pick they began playing down the thumb and up with the index finger so you get this really nice strong weak strong weak sound by using those fingers and moving from the arm rather than just the fingers lutonists in the early 16th century developed this thumb and index alternation technique to such a high level writing some of the most beautifully virtuosic music playing rapid scales up and down the instrument [Music] now this thumb under alternation technique uh was used a lot in the early 16th century but as we get later and later and add more bases to the loot it seems that loot players went from this sort of playing position which we call thumb under and gradually morphed into this playing position which we call thumb out and you can see it in so many paintings especially in the early 17th century loot players played still with their pinky down but with the thumb rather to the left of the fingers and they did this to accommodate the low bass strings when it comes to the tuning loots are actually not so distant from the tuning of modern guitars they're mostly tuned in fourths with one major third and for solo loots they seem to have generally been tuned to uh g or a meaning that so for example if you had a loot in g like this one you would get on a six course loot g c f a d g now if you have perfect pitch or you're checking out a tuner you might notice that the notes that i just said don't match with a piano or maybe even your tuner and that's because we have to remember that pitch in the renaissance was relative there was no absolute a equals 440 hertz uh this is a more modern idea so basically bigger loots were tuned lower and smaller loots were tuned higher in fact there's even a quote from a treatise that says take your high string the first string tune it as high as it can go before breaking stop then tune the rest of the instrument proportionally to that and whatever you get to on the top you might just call g but to our modern ears that g could be a whole step lower or maybe even a half step higher currently my g is a whole step lower than the modern g and you'll see that just like the ood each string is doubled so i have two of each note except for the very first string so the first string was called the chantohell which means the singing string it was often single every other course every other string is doubled the higher strings tend to be more in tuned in unisons and as we get deeper in the bass range often you would find that there'd be one thick gut string tuned to the low note in this case c but they be reinforced with a higher octave so they sound simultaneously as one pitch but actually i'm hearing two distinct notes and that will just go on for the all the bases [Music] now the notation for this instrument is actually very clever it's tablature which guitarists today know tablature very well and they consider it sort of the easiest way of learning the instrument and luton is not the same it is very intuitive very clever and in fact it functions basically as coordinates for where to put your finger so the way it worked is there are six lines representing the strings and then depending on which type of tablet you're using there's either numbers or letters which tell you which fret to play so for example if you're on the highest line which is the first string if it said zero that would mean play the open string if it says one play the first fret two three four all the way up the neck very easy there's another system where you use letters instead so a b c d e so a is open b c d e f the letter system is referred to as french tablature and the numbers are italian tab be careful when reading italian tab though because the lines are flipped around in orientation i personally love to play from tablature and especially from facsimiles you know the pictures of the manuscripts from the 16th century it's such a beautiful aesthetic experience and also some loot books like the italian capirola loot book from 1520 are actually adorned with beautiful paintings apparently that specific loot book was covered in these really elaborate paintings around the perimeter of the tab to ensure its survival and it worked [Music] compared to our modern classical guitar loots can seem rather small lightweight and with very low tension strings for me the sound difference is mainly that the loot can seem soft very intimate but actually i think it has a magical soft silvery sound that really is what the charm of the loot is all about you'll also notice that loots generally have a beautifully decorated sound hole which we call a rose which is a pattern very intricate pattern carved directly into the wood and it's just purely aesthetic as far as i know it serves no acoustic purpose just it's just beautiful besides that it still has its teardrop shape just like the ood the bowl back this instrument has a particularly beautiful back made of flamed maple wood and these are individual strips of wood we call ribs that are heated up and bent into shape and then they're they're glued together [Music] the loot in its day was considered quite the versatile instrument and in fact because it was so popular throughout europe it was used for a wide array of musical styles very much like the guitar today the loot was used to play in ensembles for dance music it could be used as a really ideal instrument to accompany a voice or many voices and it has one of the largest solar repertoires of any instrument so to hear the loot in action let's listen to how it sounds when it accompanies the voice versus when it plays solo and to do that we can listen to some music by john dowland one of the most renowned loot composers and virtuoso lutenists of his day downland often set the same piece in many versions and in fact in his manuscript you can see printed uh next to each other you have a version for just four voices and then you have a version for loot and one voice and in another version he often published those same pieces but in a solo loot version so he was totally okay adapting his pieces uh many times so let's listen to one of those pieces this is now oh now i needs must part by john dowland sung by soprano caitlyn foley [Music] and here is dowling's version of the same song but for solo loot which in this case he retitles the frog galliard [Music] so [Music] let's listen to one more example this is a very melancholic text by john dowland flow my tears which is perhaps his most famous piece first with voice again through my tears [Music] and now for the solo loot version which he calls the la creme pavone [Music] do [Music] now as you heard the solo loot versions had a lot of extra notes right these were embellishments on the original tune and basically loot players at the time would be able to improvise this sort of ornamentation on an original tune and they used this technique called division playing where they would elaborate on the the melody so for example if you saw a simple melody like this [Music] that could become or or maybe even [Music] there's infinite possibilities and it seems from the treatises that this was a very common practice and often people write that to play gracefully you are meant to add a lot of embellishments a lot of ornaments to the music which means that the piece that you have is really shorthand and you are meant to take part in the act of composition itself by adding more music as i mentioned earlier the solar repertoire for the loot is vast besides dance movements like galliards and pavans you have in tabulations or arrangements of vocal works so any uh acapella piece for say for four voices could become a solo loot piece uh which means that there are just endless you know chances for the loot to play solo music besides that uh two other types of songs which were very common were fantasias and richer cars these were very contrapuntal pieces maybe very virtuosic using a lot of imitation so to finish our introduction to the loot and his music let's listen to a richer car by francesco de milano who was so influential and well regarded that he was referred to as il divino or the divine one [Music] so [Music] so [Music] thanks so much for watching please do subscribe if you haven't already and check out my patreon if you want to support this channel see you next time [Music]

Channel: Brandon Acker

Views: 313,675

Keywords: lute, renaissance, dowland, flow my tears, sting, paul o dette, hopkinson smith, xavier latorre, theorbo, baroque, early music, historical, guitar, classical guitar, milano, facsimile, lute tablature, tablature, music history, guitar history, rob scallon, john williams, julian bream, brandon acker, tonebase, gamba, harpsichord, bass, organ, sackbut, bard, witcher, toss a coin

Id: GZB3_dZCy74

Length: 20min 49sec (1249 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020