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Scan 851
Dictionary of music and musicians, 1908
12 lines. Read by computer on 5 September 2026. Printed page 785. See the scan on archive.org.
1to be one. Strangely enough the Greeks had it not. The Arabs derived the lute from Persia, and with the instrument a finesse in the division of the octave into smaller parts than our semitones, rendered possible by the use of frets, and still an Asiatic peculiarity; the best authorities assuring us that the modern Arabian ud and tambura are thus adjusted. It is usual to speak of these fractions as 1/2 of a tone. Kiesewetter, however (Musique des Arabes, Leipzig, 1842, pp. 32, 33), gives the Persian-Arab scale as a division of seventeen in the octave; twelve of the intervals being the Pythagorean limma (not quite our equal semitone), and five of the dimension of the comma, an interval, though small, quite recognisable by a trained ear. [See COMMA, vol. i. p. 568.] Carl Engel (Musical Instruments, 1874, p. 60) states that the Arabs became acquainted with the Persian lute before their conquest of the country, and names an Arab musician who, sent to the Persian king to learn singing and performance on the lute, brought it to Mekka in the 6th century of our era. The strings of the Arab lute are of twisted silk, an Asiatic, especially Chinese, material for strings. The same, bound round the neck, has served for the frets. [See FRETS, ante, p. 108.] The modern Egyptian lute, named oud1 or e'oud, of which there is a specimen at South Kensington, and an excellent woodcut in Lane's Modern Egyptians, chap. v., has seven pairs of gut strings, and is, moreover, played with a plectrum of eagle's or vulture's quill.
3The Western lute was a Mediæval and a Renaissance instrument. It flourished during the creative period of Gothic architecture and later, its star beginning to pale as the violin quartet arose, and setting altogether when the pianoforte came into general use. There were publications for the lute as late as 1740—six sonatas by Falkenhagen, Nuremberg; and, 1760, Gellert's Odes by Beyer. The latest use of the instrument in the orchestra seems to have been in Handel's 'Deidamia,' 1741. The great J. S. Bach himself wrote three sets of pieces for the lute, besides introducing the instrument in the St. John Passion. Carl F. Becker has described them in Die Hausmusik in Deutschland, Leipzig, 1840. He gives (p. 54) their titles—'Partita al Liuto, composta del Sign. J. S. Bach' (in C minor), 'Pièces pour le Lut, par J. S. Bach'; lastly, 'Fuga del Signore J. S. Bach' (in G minor), of which the subject—
5is to be found in a violin sonata by the same composer. These lute pieces were in MS. May we think with Becker that it was not improbable that Bach played the lute?
7To proceed to the description of the instrument.
91 Observe the elision of the consonant.
11The pear-shaped or vaulted body of the lute is built up of staves of pine or cedar. The belly is of pine, and has one or more sound-bars for support and to assist the resonance. It is graduated in thickness towards the edges and is pierced with from one to three sound-holes in decorative knots or rose patterns. Great pains were evidently taken in choosing and making this very essential part of the instrument. Attached to the body is a neck of moderate length covered by a finger-board divided by frets of brass or catgut into a measured scale. The strings were entirely of catgut until towards the end of the 17th century, when silver spun bass strings were introduced. There would appear by comparison of old lutes to have been much diversity in the stringing and tuning, and there is a broad division in the large lutes between those notes, generally in pairs of unisons, which lie over the finger-board and frets, and the diapason notes that are not stopped, and serve only to determine the key or modulation. When off
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