Posted on January 10, 2010May 29, 2025 by Dale Phillips Letter: Remembering Robert Lundberg Letter: Remembering Robert Lundberg by Clive Titmuss Originally published in American Lutherie #71, 2002 Dear Jonathon: I has been several weeks since Historical Lute Construction by Robert Lundberg arrived. I wanted to really absorb it before showering you with well-deserved praise for your great work of lutherie documentation. I have read the whole book several times. It’s a great work. Bob built my two lutes during his early period, while I was a student in Basel, a time which also saw the beginnings of my attempts at lutherie. I once played my Bach suite program with Susan at Reed College in Portland, partly arranged by Bob’s first wife Ellen. One of the works I played that day was my own Tombeau for Glenn Gould, a piece for lute and harpsichord. Bob liked that, I remember. We had borrowed a Flemish double by Byron Will for Susan to play, and he and Byron seemed to get a real charge out of a couple of very determined musicians trying to play in a cafeteria full of hungry students on a Sunday evening, with the smell of frying fish heavy in the air. The 300 or so students were perfectly behaved, as they listened to a French Suite, Prelude Fugue and Allegro, the Chromatic Fantasy, and works by Weiss and Hagen, played on some of the best early instruments made by American crafters. But they seemed not to notice, as if this were normal, or perhaps such a smoothly executed event that it was no more to them than a violin and piano recital. Bob was happy to hear his own lute played in such demanding circumstances. My last memory of Bob is of his kindness, his gentleness, and his understanding of my struggle with the hardest music anyone could ever write for a lute. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 8, 2010May 22, 2025 by Dale Phillips Ivory Lute: Questions Remain Ivory Lute: Questions Remain by Robert Lundberg Originally published in American Lutherie #32, 1992 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 See also, 6-Course Ivory Lute labeled Magno dieffopruchar a venetia, ca. 1550 in the collection of J. & A. Beare Ltd. by Ken Sribnick and Gayle Miller Ivory Lute: Picture This by Ken Sribnick and Gayle Miller The paucity of historical 6-course lutes is well known, so lute makers were understandably excited when the beautiful ivory lute labeled Magno dieffoprucher a venetia surfaced at Christie’s auction house for their May sale in 1981. It sold for ₤4500, which was well below the estimate, and ended up in the collection at Charles Beare’s violin shop (J. & A. Beare Ltd., 7 Broadwick Street, London W1) where I was unsuccessful in getting access to examine it on two subsequent occasions. In July of 1982, while the lute was open in the Beare workrooms, the English lute maker Stephen Barber (11a Peacock Yard, London S.E. 17) published a nicely detailed and informative set of measured drawings consisting of two sheets with interior and exterior views plus notes. These were a welcome addition to a very short list of really complete museum-quality lute drawings. We are shown a nine-rib, somewhat shallow ivory body with dark spacers. The body, counter cap, neck block, and neck dimensions and materials conform to expectations. However, there are also depicted many unusual or unexpected features. The construction of the belly, particularly in the thicknessing, is not at all what one would expect. Also some, if not all, of the bars must be replacements. The bridge, pegbox, and nut are certainly not original. I should add that over the years there has been considerable discussion as to whether or not this lute (together with several others sharing the same provenance) is really from the mid-16th century, or whether it is a composite, or a complete fake. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 8, 2010May 22, 2025 by Dale Phillips Ivory Lute: Picture This Ivory Lute: Picture This by Ken Sribnick and Gayle Miller Originally published in American Lutherie #32, 1992 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 see also, 6-Course Ivory Lute labeled Magno dieffopruchar a venetia, ca. 1550 in the collection of J. & A. Beare Ltd. by Ken Sribnick and Gayle Miller Ivory Lute: Questions Remain by Robert Lundberg These photographs prove that any luthier — right or left handed — can contribute to our Guild and its journal. Though early music is a favorite at our house, neither of us has ever met a lute we fell in love with. It’s all played on guitar. Robert Lundberg didn’t know us when he asked for some shots of what may be the only surviving 6-course Renaissance lute in original condition. We were to be in London the following month. So it was that we found ourselves using the hallway pay phone in our little tourist hotel to call Mr. Charles Beare of John & Arthur Beare Violins. He owns the lute. You’ve read his name in the New York/Los Angeles/London Times when there’s an auction at Sotheby’s/Christie’s of a Strad/Amati/Not Electric violin for over $1/2/3 million. Write ahead? Hey, we don’t even sharpen the chisels before we start! Her job is to answer the phone. She tells people not to bring in granddad’s fiddle even if it does say Stradivari. She filters for the real calls. For some reason we told it all to her instead of asking for Mr. Beare’s secretary. “I’ll ring you back,” she said. She didn’t sound committed. Our hotel didn’t even have a switchboard, just that hall phone. We paid too much airfare to bet on her call so we went out for the day. Returning that night, we found a little note by the phone. We were amazed to discover that Mr. Beare would be happy to have us photograph his lute and could we plan to spend some time to chat as well? Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 6, 2010May 20, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Geometry, Proportion, and the Art of Lutherie by Kevin Coates Review: Geometry, Proportion, and the Art of Lutherie by Kevin Coates Reviewed by R.E. Bruné Originally published in American Lutherie #4, 1985 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 Geometry, Proportion, and the Art of Lutherie Kevin Coates Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1985 Out of print (1999) I have avoided reviewing books on the subject of lutherie in the past since most of them didn’t really merit reviewing. Books of the how-to type on the subject seem to find their market in spite of poor writing and illustration, lack of scholarship, and/or incompetence on the part of their authors. This book by Kevin Coates deserves mention for its total lack of any of the above shortcomings and really sits in a class by itself in terms of scholarship in lutherie in the English language. The book is a study of the application of geometry and proportion as understood by the makers of the Renaissance and Baroque Eras to their instruments. While this seems at face value to be a rather elementary endeavor, in fact it requires more than a superficial understanding of the principles of Euclidian geometry and the historical background of their application in the West, especially as they relate to lutherie. Consequently, one is very hard pressed to encounter ideas and writing on the subject in English from other sources, aside from a few articles on lutes and related instruments in the Galpin Society Journal by Friedman Hellwig and perhaps a handful of others. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 6, 2010May 21, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Lutes, Viols and Temperaments by Mark Lindley Review: Lutes, Viols and Temperaments by Mark Lindley Reviewed by Edward L. Kottick Originally published in American Lutherie #2, 1985 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 Lutes, Viols and Temperaments Mark Lindley Cambridge University Press, 1984 Out of print (1999) This book represents a landmark of scholarship that cannot be ignored by those who deal with fretted string instruments, whether scholar, maker, or player. Mark Lindley, one of the world’s experts on this complex subject, summarizes everything that can at present be said about the ways in which theorists and performers viewed the problem of temperament on fretted string instruments between ca. 1520 and ca. 1740. He does a brilliant job of sorting out the writers. He explains how some of them misunderstood the mathematical principles involved in reckoning temperament, and he shows how many of them, in turn, have been misinterpreted by modern scholars. The information is laid out clearly. Quotations from original sources have the English translation in parallel columns: thus, if Lindley draws an inference from the primary material, you are free to disagree and draw your own. The mathematics of temperament are presented clearly and, in many cases, masterfully, as in his explication of the distinction between the ratio of 18:17 and 12th root of 2. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
