Scan 116
The American history and encyclopedia of music .., 1908
8 lines. Read by computer on 9 September 2026. Printed page 84. See the scan on archive.org.
1teenth Century, when it was discovered that by twisting or gimping round a gut string a fine silver wire its weight could be increased at will and consequently its pitch proportionately lowered without increasing its bulk, the theorbo and archlute fell into disuse, the old form of lute with a greater number of strings being preferable. Thus transformed, the lute remained in use, at any rate in Germany, until the middle of the Eighteenth Century. Bach admired it, and wrote beautiful music for it.
3Lute music was written in a special system of notation, quite different from the ordinary one, and called "tablature." Few people understand the tablature nowadays; it is sometimes translated with the help of a key, much as people translate a foreign language with the dictionary, but with what satisfaction I leave the reader to guess.
5The tablature is written on a series of six parallel lines, which represent the six principal strings, or rather pairs of strings of the lute, instead of the scale of music. In the English, French, and German tablature the letter "a" on the top line indicates that the treble string, whatever its pitch, is to be played open; the letter "b" indicates the same string, but stopped at the first fret; "c," or rather a Gothic form of "c" resembling a modern quarter rest, refers to the third fret, and so forth. The same figures on the other lines apply to the other strings according to their respective order. The bass strings are noted below the stave, the number of ledger lines before a letter indicating the particular string intended. For ease in reading, instead of four ledger lines, the figure 4 is used and so on for 5, 6, etc.
7The duration of the notes is shown by characters placed above the lines. In the Italian and Spanish tablatures the principle is the same; but the treble string corresponds with the lowest line, the order being thus inverted. Figures are used instead of letters, 0 corresponding to a, 1 to b, 2 to c, and so forth.
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