Scan 107
The American history and encyclopedia of music, 1908
8 lines. Read by computer on 11 September 2026. Printed page 74. See the scan on archive.org.
1the rest being an absurd hybrid compound; nevertheless it has been reproduced many times, and is even given as an illustration in one dictionary of music.
3A careful examination of the lutes so frequently to be met with in old pictures would be a safer guide to the understanding of the various forms of this instrument; for the older masters well understood its beauties, and, unlike their descendants, their paintings were technically accurate. Who has not admired these exquisite angels playing the lute, sometimes a very little angel struggling with too large a lute, which form such a charming incident in early Italian pictures? The drawing of the hands, especially the left one, in the difficult positions necessitated by the performance, is so precise, that in most cases one could tell the very chord that is being played. Undoubtedly the painters were themselves lute players, otherwise they could not have made their meaning so clear.
5During the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and greater part of the Seventeenth Century, the lute was considered the best and most perfect of musical instruments; all the musicians played it. It was the foundation of instrumental music as well as the indispensable companion of vocal music. In some form or other it is as old as the art of music, that is to say as old as civilization itself. It was in use in ancient Egypt and in the East, its name being derived from the Arabic "Al'ud." It attained its greatest perfection in Western Europe between 1500 and 1650, then quickly lost its popularity, and only left with us a degenerate offspring — the mandolin.
7The finest lutes were made in North Italy, principally in Venice, in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. These instruments were prized in the halcyon days of lute playing, just as we now prize beautiful violins. In the Seventeenth Century they fetched very high prices, as the following quotation will show. It is taken from a delightful book of great interest for our subject:
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