[1] Maimacteria does not actually occur in ancient authorities as the
name of a festival.
LUTE (Arabic _al'ud_, "the wood"; Fr. _luth_; Ital. _liuto_; Span.
_laud_; Ger. _Laute_; Dut. _luit_), an ancient stringed musical
instrument, derived in form as well as name from the Arabs. The complete
family consisted of the pandura, tanbur or mandoline as treble, the lute
as alto or tenor, the barbiton or theorbo as bass, and the chitarrone as
double bass. The Arab instrument, with convex sound-body, pointing to
the resonance board or membrane having been originally placed upon a
gourd, was strung with silk and played with a plectrum of shell or
quill. It was adopted by the Arabs from Persia. Instruments with vaulted
backs are all undoubtedly of Eastern origin; the distinct type,
resembling the longitudinal section of a pear, is more specially traced
in ancient India, Persia and the countries influenced by their
civilization. This type of instrument includes many families which
became known during the middle ages of western Europe, being introduced
into southern Europe and Spain by the Moors, into southern Russia by the
Persians of the Sassanian period, into Greece from the confines of the
Byzantine Empire. As long as the strings were plucked by fingers or
plectrum the large pear-shaped instrument may be identified as the
archetype of the lute. When the bow, obtained from Persia, was applied
to the instrument by the Arabs, a fresh family was formed, which was
afterwards known in Europe as rebab and later rebec. The largest member
of the ancient lute family--the bass lute or theorbo--has been
identified with the barbiton.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Post-Mycenaean terra-cotta figure, with ancient
lute (1000 B.C.) from the cemetery at Goshen.]
Until recently the existence of these ancient stringed instruments was
presumed on the evidence of the early medieval European instruments
and of the meagre writings extant, such as those of Farabi.[1] But a
chain of plastic evidence can now be offered, beginning with the Greek
post-Mycenaean age (c. 1000 B.C.). A statuette of a female musician
playing upon a large lute with only an embryonic neck, on which
nevertheless the left hand is stopping strings, was unearthed in Egypt
in a tomb of the XXth Dynasty in the cemetery of Goshen by the members
of the British School of Archaeology in Egypt,[2] under the direction
of Professor Flinders Petrie, to whose courtesy we owe the photograph
(fig. 1) here reproduced. It is difficult to form a conclusive opinion
as to the number of strings the artist intended to represent, owing to
the decorative figures following the direction of the strings, but,
judging from the position of the right hand plucking a string, there
may have been seven. Among a number of terra-cotta figures of
musicians, brought to light during the excavations in a Tell at Suza
and dating from the 8th century B.C.,[3] although there is no
instrument that might be identified with the alto lute, the treble
lute or tanbur is represented with a long, curved neck and a head bent
back to increase the tension, and there is also an instrument having a
smaller and more elongated body than the lute. On one of the friezes
from Afghanistan presented to the British Museum by Major-General
Cunningham, which formed the risers of steps leading to the tope at
Jumal Garhi, dating from the 1st century A.D. are represented scenes
of music and dancing. Here the archetype of the lute appears several
times; it had four strings, and the head was bent back at right angles
to the neck. In the 6th century A.D. illustrations of this early lute
are no longer rare, more especially on Persian silver-work of the
Sassanian period[4] and in the paintings of the Buddhist cave-temples
of Ajanta.[5] Several representations of the barbiton are extant from
the classical Roman period.
The modern Egyptian 'ud is the direct descendant of the Arabic lute,
and, according to Lane, is strung with seven pairs of catgut strings
played by a plectrum. A specimen in the Victoria and Albert Museum,
given by the khedive, has four pairs only, which appears to have been
the old stringing of the instrument. When frets (cross-lines dividing
the neck or finger-board to show the fingering) are employed they are
of catgut disposed according to the Arabic scale of seventeen
intervals in the octave, consisting of twelve limmas, an interval
rather less than our equal semitone, and five commas, which are very
small but quite recognizable differences of pitch.
The lute family is separated from the guitars, also of Eastern origin,
by the formation of the sound body, which is in all lutes pear-shaped,
without the sides or ribs necessary to the structure of the
flat-backed guitar and cither. Observing this distinction, we include
with the lute the little Neapolitan mandoline of 2 ft. long and the
large double-necked Roman chitarrone, not infrequently 6 ft. long.
Mandolines are partly strung with wire, and are played with a
plectrum, indispensable for metal or short strings. Perhaps the
earliest lutes were so played, but the large lutes and theorbos strung
with catgut have been invariably touched by the fingers only, the
length permitting this more sympathetic means of producing the tone.
Praetorius,[6] writing when the lute was in universal favour, mentions
seven varieties distinguished by size and tuning. The smallest would
be larger than a mandoline, and the melody string, the "chanterelle,"
often a single string, lower in pitch. Praetorius calls this an octave
lute, with the chanterelle C or D. The two discant lutes have
respectively B and A, the alto G, the tenor E, the bass D, and the
great octave bass G, an octave below the alto lute which may be taken
as the model lute cultivated by the amateurs of the time. The bass
lutes were theorbos, that is, double-necked lutes, as described below.
The accordance of an alto lute was [musical notes] founded upon that
of the original eight-stringed European lute, to which the highest and
lowest notes had, in course of time, been added. A later addition was
the [musical notes] also on the finger-board, and bass strings, double
or single, known as diapasons, which, descending to the deep C of the
violoncello, were not stopped with the fingers. The diapasons were
tuned as the key of the piece of music required. Fig. 2 represents an
Italian instrument made by one of the most celebrated lute makers,
Venere of Padua, in 1600; it is 3 ft. 6 in. high, and has six pairs of
unisons and eight single diapasons. The finger-board, divided into
approximately equal half tones by the frets, as a rule eight in
number, was often further divided on the higher notes, for ten,
eleven, or, as in the woodcut, even twelve, semitones. The head,
bearing the tuning pegs, was placed at an obtuse or a right angle to
the neck, to increase the bearing of the strings upon the nut, and be
convenient for sudden requirements of tuning during performance, the
trouble of keeping a lute in tune being proverbial.
The lute was in general use during the 16th and 17th centuries. In the
18th it declined; still J. S. Bach wrote a "partita" for it. The
latest date we have met with of an engraved publication for the lute
is 1760.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Lute, by Venere of Padua.]
The large double-necked lute, with two sets of tuning pegs, the lower
for the finger-board, the higher for the diapason strings, was known
as the theorbo; also, and especially in England, as the arch-lute;
and, in a special form, the neck being then very long, as the
chitarrone. Theorbo and chitarrone appear together at the close of the
16th century, and their introduction was synchronous with the rise of
accompanied monody in music, that is, of the oratorio and the opera.
Peri, Caccini and Monteverde used theorbos to accompany their
newly-devised recitative, the invention of which in Florence, from the
impulse of the Renaissance, is well known. The height of a theorbo
varied from 3 ft. 6 in. to 5 ft., the Paduan being always the largest,
excepting the Roman 6-ft. long chitarrone. These large lutes had very
deep notes, and doubtless great liberties were allowed in tuning, but
the strings on the finger-board followed the lute accordance already
given, or another quoted by Baron (_Untersuchung des Instruments der
Lauten_, Nuremberg, 1727) as the old theorbo or "violway" (see Mace,
_Musick's Monument_, London, 1676):--
[Illustration]
We find again both these accordances varied and transposed a tone
higher, perhaps with thinner strings, or to accommodate local
differences of pitch. Praetorius recommends the chanterelles of
theorbos being tuned an octave lower on account of the great strain.
By such a change, another authority, the Englishman Thomas Mace, says,
the life and spruceness of airy lessons were quite lost. The theorbo
or arch-lute had at last to give way to the violoncello and double
bass, which are still used to accompany the "recitativo secco" in
oratorios and operas. Handel wrote a part for a theorbo in _Esther_
(1720); after that date it appears no more in orchestral scores, but
remained in private use until nearly the end of the century.
The lute and the organ share the distinction of being the first
instruments for which the oldest instrumental compositions we possess
were written. For the lute, however, they were not written in our
present notation, but in tablature, "lyrawise," a system by which as
many lines were drawn horizontally as there were pairs of strings on
the finger-board, the frets, distributed at intervals of a semitone,
being distinguished by the letters of the alphabet, repeated from A,
representing the open string, for each line. This was the English and
French manner; the Italian was by numbers instead of letters. The
signs of time were placed over the stave, and were not repeated unless
the mensural values changed. (A. J. H.; K. S.)