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87-644: More specifically, the term "lute" commonly refers to an instrument from the family of European lutes which were themselves influenced by Indian short-necked lutes in Gandhara which became the predecessor of the Islamic , the Sino-Japanese and the European lute families. The term also refers generally to any necked string instrument having the strings running in a plane parallel to the sound table (in

174-413: A luthier . Curt Sachs defined lute in the terminology section of The History of Musical Instruments as "composed of a body, and of a neck which serves both as a handle and as a means of stretching the strings beyond the body". His definition focused on body and neck characteristics and not on the way the strings were sounded, so the fiddle counted as a "bowed lute". Sachs also distinguished between

261-540: A viol -shaped instrument tuned like the lute; both instruments continued in coexistence. This instrument also found its way to parts of Italy that were under Spanish domination (especially Sicily and the papal states under the Borgia pope Alexander VI who brought many Catalan musicians to Italy), where it was known as the viola da mano . By the end of the Renaissance, the number of courses had grown to ten, and during

348-401: A "pierced lute" and "long neck lute". The pierced lute had a neck made from a stick that pierced the body (as in the ancient Egyptian long-neck lutes, and the modern African gunbrī). The long lute had an attached neck, and included the sitar , tanbur and tar : the dutār had two strings, setār three strings, čārtār four strings, pančtār five strings. Sachs's book is from 1941, and

435-426: A binder, often shellac and often have inscribed decoration. The scrolls or other decoration on the ends of lute bridges are integral to the bridge, and are not added afterwards as on some Renaissance guitars (cf Joachim Tielke 's guitars). The frets are made of loops of gut tied around the neck. They fray with use, and must be replaced from time to time. A few additional partial frets of wood are usually glued to

522-447: A biological approach to images as forms of life, crossing iconology, ecology and sciences of nature. In an econological regime, the image ( eikon ) self-speciates, that is to say, it self-iconicizes with others and eco-iconicizes with them its iconic habitat ( oikos ). The iconology, mainly Warburghian iconology, is thus merged with a conception of the relations between the beings of the nature inherited, among others ( Arne Næss , etc.) from

609-403: A chordal accompaniment based on the figured bass part, or plays a written-out accompaniment (both music notation and tablature ("tab") are used for lute). As a small instrument, the lute produces a relatively quiet sound. The player of a lute is called a lutenist , lutanist or lutist , and a maker of lutes (or any similar string instrument, or violin family instruments) is referred to as

696-456: A collection of pieces that included 14 voice and lute songs, and three solo lute pieces, alongside organ works. He was not the first important German lutenist, because contemporaries credited Conrad Paumann ( c. 1410–1473) with the invention of German lute tablature, though this claim remains unproven, and no lute works by Paumann survive. After Schlick, a string of composers developed German lute music: Hans Judenkünig ( c. 1445/50 – 1526),

783-487: A decorative knot, carved directly out of the wood of the soundboard. The geometry of the lute soundboard is relatively complex, involving a system of barring that places braces perpendicular to the strings at specific lengths along the overall length of the belly, the ends of which are angled to abut the ribs on either side for structural reasons. Robert Lundberg, in his book Historical Lute Construction , suggests ancient builders placed bars according to whole-number ratios of

870-465: A deep rounded body for the instrument. There are braces inside on the soundboard to give it strength. The neck is made of light wood, with a veneer of hardwood (usually ebony) to provide durability for the fretboard beneath the strings. Unlike most modern stringed instruments, the lute's fretboard is mounted flush with the top. The pegbox for lutes before the Baroque era was angled back from

957-407: A distinctly German style came only after 1700 in the works of Silvius Leopold Weiss (1686–1750), one of the greatest lute composers, some of whose works were transcribed for keyboard by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), who composed a few pieces for the lute himself (though it is unclear whether they were really intended for the lute, rather than another plucked string instrument or

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1044-405: A fruitwood, is attached to the soundboard typically between a fifth and a seventh of the belly length. It does not have a separate saddle but has holes bored into it to which the strings attach directly. The bridge is made so that it tapers in height and length, with the small end holding the trebles and the higher and wider end carrying the basses. Bridges are often colored black with carbon black in

1131-588: A growing number of world-class lutenists: 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 . Singer-songwriter Sting has also played lute and archlute, in and out of his collaborations with Edin Karamazov , and Jan Akkerman released two albums of lute music in

1218-471: A neck wide enough to hold 14 courses, the bass strings were placed outside the fretboard, and were played open , i.e., without pressing them against the fingerboard with the left hand. "The lute is a very fragile instrument and so, although there are many surviving old lutes, very few with their original soundboards are in playable condition," which makes the Rauwolf Lute so notable. Over the course of

1305-450: A postlinguistic, postsemiotic "iconic turn", emphasizing the role of "non-linguistic symbol systems". Instead of just pointing out the difference between the material (pictorial or artistic) images, "he pays attention to the dialectic relationship between material images and mental images". According to Dennise Bartelo and Robert Morton, the term "iconology" can also be used for characterizing "a movement toward seeing connections across all

1392-584: A prominent musician, who had trained under Ishaq al-Mawsili (d. 850) in Baghdad and was exiled to Andalusia before 833. He taught and has been credited with adding a fifth string to his oud and with establishing one of the first schools of music in Córdoba . By the 11th century, Muslim Iberia had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually to Provence , influencing French troubadours and trouvères and eventually reaching

1479-551: A quill as a plectrum . There were several sizes and, by the end of the Renaissance , seven sizes (up to the great octave bass) are documented. Song accompaniment was probably the lute's primary function in the Middle Ages, but very little music securely attributable to the lute survives from before 1500. Medieval and early-Renaissance song accompaniments were probably mostly improvised, hence the lack of written records. In

1566-435: A variety of other symptoms. Interpreting these symbolical values, which can be unknown to, or different from, the artist's intention, is the object of iconology. Panofsky emphasized that "iconology can be done when there are no originals to look at and nothing but artificial light to work in." According to Ernst Gombrich , "the emerging discipline of iconology ... must ultimately do for the image what linguistics has done for

1653-465: Is Italian, from a late 15th-century manuscript. The early 16th century saw Petrucci 's publications of lute music by Francesco Spinacino ( fl. 1507) and Joan Ambrosio Dalza ( fl. 1508); together with the so-called Capirola Lutebook , these represent the earliest stage of written lute music in Italy. The leader of the next generation of Italian lutenists, Francesco Canova da Milano (1497–1543),

1740-465: Is a common design format for instrument interfaces. There are many types of instruments in the keyboard family, such as string , brass (and other metals), woodwind , percussion , electronic , digital , idiophone , and more. Instruments can also be classified by audio generation method. There are chordophones (generate sound with vibrating strings), membranophones (generate sound with vibrating membranes), idiophones (generate sound by vibrating

1827-491: Is a grouping of several different but related sizes or types of instruments. Some schemes of musical instrument classification , such as the Hornbostel-Sachs system, are based on a hierarchy of instrument families and families of families. Some commonly recognized families are: Some less common families are: The keyboard family can also be referenced, though it is not an authentic instrument family. Rather, it

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1914-422: Is a growing number of luthiers who build lutes for general sale, and there is a fairly strong, if small, second-hand market. Because of this fairly limited market, lutes are generally more expensive than mass-produced modern instruments. Factory-made guitars and violins, for example, can be purchased more cheaply than low-end lutes, while at the highest level of modern instruments, guitars and violins tend to command

2001-410: Is almost never finished, but in some cases the luthier may size the top with a very thin coat of shellac or glair to help keep it clean. The belly joins directly to the rib, without a lining glued to the sides, and a cap and counter cap are glued to the inside and outside of the bottom end of the bowl to provide rigidity and increased gluing surface. After joining the top to the sides, a half-binding

2088-481: Is also more susceptible to irregularity and pitch instability owing to changes in humidity. Nylon offers greater tuning stability, but is seen as anachronistic by purists, as its timbre differs from the sound of earlier gut strings. Such concerns are moot when more recent compositions for the lute are performed. Of note are the catlines used as basses on historical instruments. Catlines are several gut strings wound together and soaked in heavy metal solutions to increase

2175-481: Is derived from synthesis rather than scattered analysis and examines symbolic meaning on more than its face value by reconciling it with its historical context and with the artist's body of work – in contrast to the widely descriptive iconography, which, as described by Panofsky, is an approach to studying the content and meaning of works of art that is primarily focused on classifying, establishing dates, provenance and other necessary fundamental knowledge concerning

2262-451: Is exemplified by composers such as Ennemond Gaultier (1575–1651), Denis Gaultier (1597/1603–1672), François Dufaut (before 1604 – before 1672) and many others. The last stage of French lute music is exemplified by Robert de Visée ( c. 1655–1732/3), whose suites exploit the instrument's possibilities to the fullest. The history of German written lute music started with Arnolt Schlick ( c. 1460–after 1521), who, in 1513, published

2349-457: Is modulated by one personality and condensed into one work. According to Roelof van Straten, iconology "can explain why an artist or patron chose a particular subject at a specific location and time and represented it in a certain way. An iconological investigation should concentrate on the social-historical, not art-historical, influences and values that the artist might not have consciously brought into play but are nevertheless present. The artwork

2436-488: Is mostly avoided by social historians who do not accept the theoretical dogmaticism in the work of Panofsky. Erwin Panofsky defines iconography as "a known principle in the known world", while iconology is "an iconography turned interpretive". According to his view, iconology tries to reveal the underlying principles that form the basic attitude of a nation, a period, a class, a religious or philosophical perspective, which

2523-447: Is now acknowledged as one of the most famous lute composers in history. The bigger part of his output consists of pieces called fantasias or ricercares, in which he makes extensive use of imitation and sequence, expanding the scope of lute polyphony. In the early 17th century Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger ( c. 1580–1651) and Alessandro Piccinini (1566–1638) revolutionized the instrument's technique and Kapsberger, possibly, influenced

2610-622: Is primarily seen as a document of its time." Warburg used the term "iconography" in his early research, replacing it in 1908 with "iconology" in his particular method of visual interpretation called "critical iconology", which focused on the tracing of motifs through different cultures and visual forms. In 1932, Panofsky published a seminal article, introducing a three-step method of visual interpretation dealing with (1) primary or natural subject matter; (2) secondary or conventional subject matter, i.e. iconography; (3) tertiary or intrinsic meaning or content, i.e. iconology. Whereas iconography analyses

2697-449: Is the "integral iconography which accounts for the changes and development in the representations". In Iconology: Images, Text, Ideology (1986), W.J.T. Mitchell writes that iconology is a study of "what to say about images", concerned with the description and interpretation of visual art, and also a study of "what images say" – the ways in which they seem to speak for themselves by persuading, telling stories, or describing. He pleads for

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2784-399: Is the title of a book by Erwin Panofsky on humanistic themes in the art of the Renaissance, which was first published in 1939. It is also the name of a peer-reviewed series of books started in 2014 under the editorship of Barbara Baert and published by Peeters international academic publishers, Leuven , Belgium, addressing the deeper meaning of the visual medium throughout human history in

2871-465: Is used in a great variety of instrumental music from the Medieval to the late Baroque eras and was the most important instrument for secular music in the Renaissance . During the Baroque music era, the lute was used as one of the instruments that played the basso continuo accompaniment parts. It is also an accompanying instrument in vocal works. The lute player either improvises ("realizes")

2958-468: Is usually installed around the edge of the soundboard. The half-binding is approximately half the thickness of the soundboard and is usually made of a contrasting color wood. The rebate for the half-binding must be extremely precise to avoid compromising structural integrity. The back or the shell is assembled from thin strips of hardwood (maple, cherry, ebony, rosewood, gran, wood and/or other tonewoods) called ribs , joined (with glue) edge to edge to form

3045-469: The Hornbostel–Sachs system). The strings are attached to pegs or posts at the end of the neck, which have some type of turning mechanism to enable the player to tighten the tension on the string or loosen the tension before playing (which respectively raise or lower the pitch of a string), so that each string is tuned to a specific pitch (or note ). The lute is plucked or strummed with one hand while

3132-591: The Islamic , the Sino-Japanese and the European lute families". He described the Gandhara lutes as having a "pear-shaped body tapering towards the short neck, a frontal stringholder, lateral pegs, and either four or five strings". Bactria and Gandhara became part of the Sasanian Empire (224–651). Under the Sasanians, a short almond-shaped lute from Bactria came to be called the barbat or barbud, which

3219-650: The Lech valley and Bavaria between 1218 and 1237 with a "Moorish Sicilian retinue". By the 14th century, lutes had spread throughout Italy and, probably because of the cultural influence of the Hohenstaufen kings and emperor, based in Palermo , the lute had also made significant inroads into the German-speaking lands. By 1500, the valley and Füssen had several lute-making families, and in the next two centuries

3306-530: The Sanskrit rudrī (रुद्री, meaning "string instrument") and transferred to Arabic and European languages by way of a Semitic language . However another theory, according to Semitic language scholars, is that the Arabic ʿoud is derived from Syriac ʿoud-a , meaning "wooden stick" and "burning wood"—cognate to Biblical Hebrew ' ūḏ , referring to a stick used to stir logs in a fire. Henry George Farmer notes

3393-413: The archaeological evidence available to him placed the early lutes at about 2000 BC. Discoveries since then have pushed the existence of the lute back to c.  3100 BC . Musicologist Richard Dumbrill today uses the word lute more categorically to discuss instruments that existed millennia before the term "lute" was coined. Dumbrill documented more than 3,000 years of iconographic evidence of

3480-421: The cor anglais as a member of the oboe family, because its narrow bore and piriform bell give it a distinctly different tone quality from the oboe. Iconology Iconology is a method of interpretation in cultural history and the history of the visual arts used by Aby Warburg , Erwin Panofsky and their followers that uncovers the cultural, social, and historical background of themes and subjects in

3567-614: The lautenwerk ). Of other European countries, particularly important are England and Spain. English-written lute music began only around 1540; however, the country produced numerous lutenists, of which John Dowland (1563–1626) is perhaps the most famous. His influence spread very far: variations on his themes were written by keyboard composers in Germany decades after his death. Dowland's predecessors and colleagues, such as Anthony Holborne ( c. 1545–1602) and Daniel Bacheler (1572–1619), were less known. Spanish composers wrote mostly for

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3654-814: The vihuela ; their main genres were polyphonic fantasias and differencias (variations). Luys Milan (c. 1500 – after 1560) and Luys de Narváez ( fl. 1526–1549) were particularly important for their contributions to the development of lute polyphony in Spain. Finally, perhaps the most influential European lute composer was the Hungarian Bálint Bakfark ( c. 1526/30–1576), whose contrapuntal fantasias were much more difficult and tighter than those of his Western European contemporaries. Ottorino Respighi 's famous orchestral suites called Ancient Airs and Dances are drawn from various books and articles on 16th- and 17th-century lute music transcribed by

3741-410: The "long-necked lute" and the short-necked variety. The short-necked variety contained most of our modern instruments, "lutes, guitars , hurdy-gurdies and the entire family of viols and violins". The long lutes were the more ancient lutes; the " Arabic tanbūr  ... faithfully preserved the outer appearance of the ancient lutes of Babylonia and Egypt ". He further categorized long lutes with

3828-417: The 16th and 17th centuries: numerous composers published collections of their music, and modern scholars have uncovered a vast number of manuscripts from the era—however, much of the music is still lost. In the second half of the 17th century lutes, vihuelas and similar instruments started losing popularity, and little music was written for the instrument after 1750. The interest in lute music was revived only in

3915-592: The 1970s while he was a guitarist in the Dutch rock band Focus . Lutenist/Composer Jozef van Wissem composed the soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch film Only Lovers Left Alive . Lutes were in widespread use in Europe at least since the 13th century, and documents mention numerous early performers and composers. However, the earliest surviving lute music dates from the late 15th century. Lute music flourished during

4002-501: The Baroque era the number continued to grow until it reached 14 (and occasionally as many as 19). These instruments, with up to 35 strings, required innovations in the structure of the lute. At the end of the lute's evolution the archlute , theorbo and torban had long extensions attached to the main tuning head to provide a greater resonating length for the bass strings, and since human fingers are not long enough to stop strings across

4089-412: The Baroque era, the lute was increasingly relegated to the continuo accompaniment, and was eventually superseded in that role by keyboard instruments. The lute almost fell out of use after 1800. Some sorts of lute were still used for some time in Germany, Sweden, and Ukraine. The words lute and oud possibly derive from Arabic al-ʿoud ( العود   - literally means "the wood"). It may refer to

4176-740: The Mesopotamian lutes into a long variety and a short. His book does not cover the shorter instruments that became the European lute, beyond showing examples of shorter lutes in the ancient world. He focuses on the longer lutes of Mesopotamia, various types of necked chordophones that developed throughout the ancient world: Indian ( Gandhara and others), Greek , Egyptian (in the Middle Kingdom ), Iranian ( Elamite and others), Jewish/Israelite , Hittite , Roman , Bulgar , Turkic , Chinese , Armenian / Cilician cultures. He names among

4263-585: The Neusidler family (particularly Hans Neusidler ( c. 1508/09 – 1563)) and others. During the second half of the 16th century, German tablature and German repertoire were gradually replaced by Italian and French tablature and international repertoire, respectively, and the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) effectively stopped publications for half a century. German lute music was revived much later by composers such as Esaias Reusner ( fl. 1670), however,

4350-646: The area hosted "famous names of 16th and 17th century lutemaking". Although the major entry of the short lute was in Western Europe , leading to a variety of lute styles, the short lute entered Europe in the East as well; as early as the sixth century, the Bulgars brought the short-necked variety of the instrument called komuz to the Balkans. Medieval lutes were four- and five- course instruments, plucked with

4437-400: The awakening of interest in historical music around 1900 and throughout the century. That revival was further boosted by the early music movement in the twentieth century. Important pioneers in lute revival were Julian Bream , Hans Neemann, Walter Gerwig, Suzanne Bloch and Diana Poulton . Lute performances are now not uncommon; there are many professional lutenists, especially in Europe where

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4524-403: The body of the instrument, to allow stopping the highest-pitched courses up to a full octave higher than the open string, though these are considered anachronistic by some (though John Dowland and Thomas Robinson describe the practice of gluing wooden frets onto the soundboard). Given the choice between nylon and gut, many luthiers prefer to use gut, as it conforms more readily to the sharp angle at

4611-415: The complex polyphony of de Rippe. French lute music declined during the second part of the 16th century; however, various changes to the instrument (the increase of diapason strings, new tunings, etc.) prompted an important change in style that led, during the early Baroque, to the celebrated style brisé : broken, arpeggiated textures that influenced Johann Jakob Froberger 's suites. The French Baroque school

4698-658: The court in Palermo after the Norman conquest of the island from the Muslims, and the lute is depicted extensively in the ceiling paintings in the Palermo's royal Cappella Palatina , dedicated by the Norman King Roger II of Sicily in 1140. His Hohenstaufen grandson Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor (1194–1250) continued integrating Muslims into his court, including Moorish musicians. Frederick II made visits to

4785-414: The edge of the fingerboard. Strings were historically made of animal gut, usually from the small intestine of sheep (sometimes in combination with metal) and are still made of gut or a synthetic substitute, with metal windings on the lower-pitched strings. Modern manufacturers make both gut and nylon strings, and both are in common use. Gut is more authentic for playing period pieces, though unfortunately it

4872-628: The higher prices. Unlike in the past, there are many types of lutes encountered today: 5-course medieval lutes, renaissance lutes of 6 to 10 courses in many pitches for solo and ensemble performance of Renaissance works, the archlute of Baroque works, 11-course lutes in d-minor tuning for 17th-century French, German and Czech music, 13/14-course d-minor tuned German Baroque Lutes for later High Baroque and Classical music, theorbo for basso continuo parts in Baroque ensembles, gallichons/ mandoras , bandoras, orpharions and others. Lutenistic practice has reached considerable heights in recent years, thanks to

4959-407: The highest pitched, so that the chanterelle is the first course , the next pair of strings is the second course , etc. Thus an 8-course Renaissance lute usually has 15 strings, and a 13-course Baroque lute has 24. The courses are tuned in unison for high and intermediate pitches, but for lower pitches one of the two strings is tuned an octave higher (the course where this split starts changed over

5046-408: The history of the lute). The two strings of a course are virtually always stopped and plucked together, as if a single string—but in rare cases, a piece requires that the two strings of a course be stopped or plucked separately. The tuning of a lute is a complicated issue, described in a section of its own below . The lute's design makes it extremely light for its size. The lute enjoyed a revival with

5133-436: The human mind as conditioned by psychology and world view; he analyses the history of cultural symptoms or symbols, or how tendencies of the human mind were expressed by specific themes due to different historical conditions. Moreover, when understanding the work of art as a document of a specific civilization, or of a certain religious attitude therein, the work of art becomes a symptom of something else, which expresses itself in

5220-709: The instrument body), aerophones (generate sound by vibrating air directly), electrophones (generate sound by modifying circuits or calculating sounds and outputting to a speaker, or potentially arcing electricity or vibrating metal with an electromagnet), plasmaphones (generate sound by exciting air with plasma), and hydraulophones (generate sound by vibrating air with hydraulics). These are typically not used by everyday people or musicians, however. Family relationships are not always clear-cut. For example, some authorities regard families as encompassing only instruments of different pitch range that have similar construction and tone quality. They therefore, for example, do not regard

5307-608: The keyboard music of Girolamo Frescobaldi . French written lute music began, as far as we know, with Pierre Attaingnant 's ( c. 1494 – c. 1551) prints, which comprised preludes, dances and intabulations. Particularly important was the Italian composer Albert de Rippe (1500–1551), who worked in France and composed polyphonic fantasias of considerable complexity. His work was published posthumously by his pupil, Guillaume de Morlaye (born c. 1510), who, however, did not pick up

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5394-472: The language processes" and the idea about "multiple levels and forms used to communicate meaning" in order to get "the total picture” of learning. "Being both literate in the traditional sense and visually literate are the true mark of a well-educated human." For several years, new approaches to iconology have developed in the theory of images. This is the case of what Jean-Michel Durafour , French philosopher and theorist of cinema, proposed to call "econology",

5481-419: The last few decades of the fifteenth century, to play Renaissance polyphony on a single instrument, lutenists gradually abandoned the quill in favor of plucking the instrument with the fingers. The number of courses grew to six and beyond. The lute was the premier solo instrument of the sixteenth century, but continued to accompany singers as well. About 1500, many Iberian lutenists adopted vihuela de mano ,

5568-414: The last survived into the late 17th century. The earliest known tablatures are for a six-stringed instrument, though evidence of earlier four- and five-stringed lutes exists. Tablature notation depends on the actual instrument the music is written for. To read it, a musician must know the instrument's tuning, number of strings, etc. Renaissance and Baroque forms of lute music are similar to keyboard music of

5655-489: The long lutes, the pandura and the tanbur The line of short-necked lutes was further developed to the east of Mesopotamia, in Bactria and Gandhara , into a short, almond-shaped lute. Curt Sachs talked about the depictions of Gandharan lutes in art, where they are presented in a mix of "Northwest Indian art" under "strong Greek influences". The short-necked lutes in these Gandhara artworks were "the venerable ancestor of

5742-721: The lutes in Mesopotamia, in his book The Archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East . According to Dumbrill, the lute family included instruments in Mesopotamia before 3000 BC. He points to a cylinder seal as evidence; dating from about 3100 BC or earlier and now in the possession of the British Museum , the seal depicts on one side what is thought to be a woman playing a stick "lute". Like Sachs, Dumbrill saw length as distinguishing lutes, dividing

5829-457: The midst of other images, past or present, but also future (those are only human classifications), which they have relations with. They self-iconicize in an iconic environment which they interact with, and which in particular makes them the images they are. Or more precisely, insofar as images have an active part: the images self-eco-iconicize their iconic environment . " Studies in Iconology

5916-792: The most employment is found, and new compositions for the instrument are being produced by composers. During the early days of the early music movement, many lutes were constructed by available luthiers, whose specialty was often classical guitars. Such lutes were heavily built with construction similar to that of classical guitars, with fan bracing, heavy tops, fixed frets, and lined sides, all of which are anachronistic to historical lutes. As lutherie scholarship increased, makers began constructing instruments based on historical models, which have proven lighter and more responsive instruments. Lutes built at present are invariably replicas or near copies of those surviving historical instruments that are in museums or private collections. Many are custom-built, but there

6003-521: The musicologist Oscar Chilesotti, including eight pieces from a German manuscript Da un Codice Lauten-Buch , now in a private library in northern Italy. The revival of lute-playing in the 20th century has its roots in the pioneering work of Arnold Dolmetsch (1858–1940); whose research into early music and instruments started the movement for authenticity. The revival of the lute gave composers an opportunity to create new works for it. Family (musical instruments) A family of musical instruments

6090-402: The neck at almost 90° (see image), presumably to help hold the low-tension strings firmly against the nut which, traditionally, is not glued in place but is held in place by string pressure only. The tuning pegs are simple pegs of hardwood, somewhat tapered, that are held in place by friction in holes drilled through the pegbox. As with other instruments that use friction pegs, the wood for

6177-399: The other hand "frets" (presses down) the strings on the neck's fingerboard . By pressing the strings on different places of the fingerboard, the player can shorten or lengthen the part of the string that is vibrating , thus producing higher or lower pitches (notes). The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern oud descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. The lute

6264-502: The pegs is crucial. As the wood suffers dimensional changes through age and loss of humidity, it must retain a reasonably circular cross-section to function properly—as there are no gears or other mechanical aids for tuning the instrument. Often pegs were made from suitable fruitwoods such as European pearwood, or equally dimensionally stable analogues. Matheson, c. 1720, said, "If a lute-player has lived eighty years, he has surely spent sixty years tuning." The bridge, sometimes made of

6351-556: The periods. Intabulations of vocal works were very common, as well as various dances, some of which disappeared during the 17th century, such as the piva and the saltarello . The advent of polyphony brought about fantasias : complex, intricate pieces with much use of imitative counterpoint. The improvisatory element, present to some degree in most lute pieces, is particularly evident in the early ricercares (not imitative as their later namesakes, but completely free), as well as in numerous preludial forms: preludes, tastar de corde ("testing

6438-493: The rest of Europe. While Europe developed the lute, the oud remained a central part of Arab music, and broader Ottoman music, undergoing a range of transformations. Beside the introduction of the lute to Spain ( Andalusia ) by the Moors, another important point of transfer of the lute from Arabian to European culture was Sicily , where it was brought either by Byzantine or later by Muslim musicians. There were singer-lutenists at

6525-467: The scale length and belly length. He further suggests the inward bend of the soundboard (the "belly scoop") is a deliberate adaptation by ancient builders to afford the lutenist's right hand more space between the strings and soundboard. Soundboard thickness varies, but generally hovers between 1.5 and 2 mm (0.06–0.08 in). Some luthiers tune the belly as they build, removing mass and adapting bracing to produce desirable sonic results. The lute belly

6612-582: The second half of the 20th century. Improvisation (making up music on the spot) was, apparently, an important aspect of lute performance, so much of the repertoire was probably never written down. Furthermore, it was only around 1500 that lute players began to transition from plectrum to plucking. That change facilitated complex polyphony, which required that they develop notation. In the next hundred years, three schools of tablature notation gradually developed: Italian (also used in Spain), German, and French. Only

6699-431: The similarity between al-ʿūd and al-ʿawda ("the return" – of bliss). Lutes are made almost entirely of wood. The soundboard is a teardrop-shaped thin flat plate of resonant wood (typically spruce ). In all lutes the soundboard has a single (sometimes triple) decorated sound hole under the strings called the rose . The sound hole is not open, but rather covered with a grille in the form of an intertwining vine or

6786-458: The string mass. Catlines can be quite large in diameter compared to wound nylon strings of the same pitch. They produce a bass that differs somewhat in timbre from nylon basses. The lute's strings are arranged in courses , of two strings each, though the highest-pitched course usually consists of only a single string, called the chanterelle . In later Baroque lutes, two upper courses are single. The courses are numbered sequentially, counting from

6873-405: The strings"), etc. During the 17th century keyboard and lute music went hand in hand, and by 1700 lutenists were writing suites of dances quite akin to those of keyboard composers. The lute was also used throughout its history as an ensemble instrument—most frequently in songs for voice and lute, which were particularly popular in Italy (see frottola ) and England. The earliest surviving lute music

6960-420: The subject matter of an artwork that is needed for further interpretation. Panofsky's "use of iconology as the principal tool of art analysis brought him critics." For instance, in 1946, Jan Gerrit Van Gelder "criticized Panofsky's iconology as putting too much emphasis on the symbolic content of the work of art, neglecting its formal aspects and the work as a unity of form and content." Furthermore, iconology

7047-405: The visual arts. Though Panofsky differentiated between iconology and iconography , the distinction is not very widely followed, "and they have never been given definitions accepted by all iconographers and iconologists". Few 21st-century authors continue to use the term "iconology" consistently, and instead use iconography to cover both areas of scholarship. To those who use the term, iconology

7134-564: The wooden plectrum traditionally used for playing the oud, to the thin strips of wood used for the back, or to the wooden soundboard that distinguished it from similar instruments with skin-faced bodies. Many theories have been proposed for the origin of the Arabic name. Music scholar Eckhard Neubauer suggested that oud may be an Arabic borrowing from the Persian word rōd or rūd , which meant string. Another researcher, archaeomusicologist Richard J. Dumbrill , suggests that rud came from

7221-413: The word." However, Michael Camille is of the opinion that "though Panofsky's concept of iconology has been very influential in the humanities and is quite effective when applied to Renaissance art, it is still problematic when applied to art from periods before and after." In 1952, Creighton Gilbert added another suggestion for a useful meaning of the word "iconology". According to his view, iconology

7308-405: The world of images, stories and allegories and requires knowledge of literary sources, an understanding of the history of types and how themes and concepts were expressed by objects and events under different historical conditions, iconology interprets intrinsic meaning or content and the world of symbolical values by using "synthetic intuition". The interpreter is aware of the essential tendencies of

7395-534: The writings of Kinji Imanishi . For Imanishi, living beings are subjects. Or, more precisely, the environment and the living being are just one. One of the main consequences is that the "specity", the living individual, "self-eco-speciates its place of life" ( Freedom in Evolution ). As far as the images are concerned: "If the living species self-specify, the images self-iconicize. This is not a tautology. The images update some of their iconic virtualities. They live in

7482-563: Was developed into the later Islamic world's oud or ud . When the Moors conquered Andalusia in 711, they brought their ud or quitra along, into a country that had already known a lute tradition under the Romans, the pandura . During the 8th and 9th centuries, many musicians and artists from across the Islamic world flocked to Iberia. Among them was Abu l-Hasan 'Ali Ibn Nafi' (789–857),

7569-449: Was not the actual investigation of the work of art but rather the result of this investigation. The Austrian art historian Hans Sedlmayr differentiated between "sachliche" and "methodische" iconology. "Sachliche" iconology refers to the "general meaning of an individual painting or of an artistic complex (church, palace, monument) as seen and explained with reference to the ideas which take shape in them." In contrast, "methodische" iconology

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