Scan 106
The American history and encyclopedia of music .., 1908
16 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Piano-makers knew nothing about harpsichords and clavichords; violin-makers were just as ignorant about lutes and viols.
3Intending players were unable to direct the restoration of their instruments, not understanding themselves their possibilities and idiosyncrasies.
5Now lutes and viols, harpsichords and clavichords as beautiful and good as the old ones can be obtained as easily as violins and pianofortes.
7SECTION I.
9THE LUTE.
11The name of the lute is very familiar. We find it in the Bible, although it merely stands there as a convenient translation for some Hebrew instrument, perhaps very unlike a lute. It often recurs in Shakespeare and the early English literature. Even modern poets use the word on account of its poetical associations, though they hardly understand what it means.
13Though the name be common, the thing itself has become very rare. There are some lutes in museums: in Bologna, Brussels, Paris, and other places, and a few in private collections; but spurious "property" lutes manufactured by unscrupulous Italians for latter-day collectors, are far more numerous than genuine specimens, even in public museums.
15The modern painter who wishes to introduce a lute into one of his works, a fashionable thing nowadays, has every chance of reproducing some impossible model, perhaps a complete forgery, or, worse still, some partly genuine instrument, which through the successive "restorations" and "improvements" of ignorant admirers has become completely transformed. There is such a lute in the South Kensington Museum in London: its back only is original,
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