Lute

The lute is a plucked string instrument with a fretted neck and a deep round back. It evolved from an instrument originally developed in the Middle East, which was also the ancestor of the superficially similar oud. The words 'lute' and 'oud' are both derived from Arabic al‘ud, "the wood". The player of a lute is called a lutenist, and a maker of lutes (or guitars) is called a luthier.

Tuning conventions

Lutes were made in a large variety of sizes, with varying numbers of courses, and with no universal standard for tuning. However, the following seems to have been generally true of the Renaissance tenor lute, and has been adopted as the modern standard.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A 6-course Renaissance tenor lute would be tuned to the same intervals as a tenor viol, with intervals of a perfect fourth between all the courses except the 3rd and 4th, which differed only by a major third. The tenor lute was usually tuned "in g", named after the pitch of the highest course, yielding the pattern from the lowest course to the highest. (Lute music can be played on a guitar by tuning the guitar's third string down by a half tone and then putting a capo at the third fret.)

Related Topics:
Tenor viol - Capo

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For lutes with more than six courses the extra courses would be added on the low end. Due to the large number of strings lutes have very wide necks, and it is difficult to stop strings beyond the sixth course, so additional courses were usually tuned to pitches useful as bass notes rather than continuing the regular pattern of fourths, and these lower courses are most often played without stopping. Thus an 8-course tenor Renaissance lute would be tuned to , and a 10-course to .

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

However, none of these patterns were de rigueur, and a modern lutenist will occasionally be seen to retune one or more courses between performance pieces. Manuscripts sometimes bear instructions for the player, e.g. 7e choeur en fa = "seventh course in fa" (= F in the standard C scale).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The first part of the seventeenth century was a period of considerable variability in the tuning of the lute, particularly in France. However, by around 1670 the scheme known today as the http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~lsa/aboutLute/Baroque.html"Baroque" or "d-minor" tuning became the norm, at least in France and northern Europe. In this case the first six courses outline a d-minor triad, and an additional five to seven courses are tuned generally scalewise below them. Thus the 13-course lute played by http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~lsa/aboutLute/SLW.htmlWeiss would have been tuned , or with sharps or flats on the lower 7 courses appropriate to the key of the piece.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Modern lutenists usually tune to A=415 for performance with viol consorts, or to the modern standard of A=440 otherwise. No such standards existed in the Medieval and Renaissance periods, when instructions sometimes called for tuning the top string "as high as you can without breaking it".

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~