Week 36 - Medieval instruments continued: More on the lute.

1. Stuff done this week:

- Read more from Burkholder et al (2014) about Medieval Music history.

- Mandolin lessons have focussed on arpeggio's. Studied arpeggio's over G, C, D, F chord progressions.

- Wrote a Sixteen bar blues for mandolin called the "Hang Man's Swing", a quaint folky murder ballad. It is a sixteen measure blues.

- Listened to a selection of Medieval instruments (Lejeune, 2009).

- Started practicing a tune on mandolin called "The Star of Munster", in A-Dorian mode. Having read up on Medieval Music I start to understand more about modal music. The Dorian scale has a rather minor quality to it.
- Watched a fascinating documentary about the life of Bob Marley. Here is a Trailer.

2. Listening done this week:

- Hildegard von Bingen
- Listening on repeat to Hildegard Von Bingen - Ave Maria, O Auctrix Vite... Jeees, just easily the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.

Ave Maria, O Auctrix Vite

The poem - a moving tribute to Mary - is written in Latin and translates to this:

Behold, Mary,
you who increase life,who rebuilds the path,You who confused deathand wore down the serpent,To you Eve raised herself up,her neck rigid with inflated arrogance.

You strode upon this arrogancewhile bearing God's Son of Heaven,through whom the spirit of God breaths.

O gentle and loving Mother,I behold you.

For Heaven released into the worldthat which you brought forth.

This one,through whom the spirit of God breaths.

Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.


And to this one,through whom the spirit of God breaths.

The song conveys so much love and serenity, it overwhelming and really moved me.

I can only imagine how dear and inspiring Mary must have been to Von Bingen, who as a woman in a church dominated by men, would not let herself be limited to the servile role Medieval Society allocated to women.

3. What I learned:

Below I made a synthesis of all my physical notes (I keep a notebook) taken from the books I studied the past weeks. My main focus is on music history, continuing to describe medieval instruments.

Medieval Instruments continued from week 35...

3.1 The lute (continued from week 35)

The lute's body is made from several wooden ribs, put together in the shape of a half pear. A fir sound board is glued above this form. The pear-shape flows over into a short fretted neck ending in a peg box with lateral pegs, which is placed at a right angle to the neck (Lejeune, 2009: pages 55-57; Munrow, 1986: pages 24-25). The lute's characteristic round back makes the instrument rather sturdy, for this construction utilizes the principle of the arch. The ribs contribute to the preservation of the rigidity of the body against the pull of the strings (Mathews, 2007). According to Munrow (1986) surviving specimens indicate that the earliest lutes were carved out of the solid wood and that the construction employing separate ribs is typical of the Renaissance lute. Matthews (2007, page 190) states that by that time the lute had come to its full powers and complete form.

Its stringing, size and tuning varied much in different periods. Matthews (2007, page 190-193) Munrow (1986) states that the lute typically has four strings stretched over a fixed bridge on the soundboard. These strings would likely have been tuned in fourths, as is still the regular tuning of the Ud used today. For instance: four open strings tuned C, F, A, D.
Matthews (2007) even mentions instruments with eight to eleven strings; this last instrument being a nuisance to keep in tune.  The pull of the strings would break the sounding board, which had to be taken of and righted every two or three years. I believe he most likely describes the later versions of the lute, for instance of the 17th century.

The fingerboard is marked by frets, indicating the places at which the string should be stopped. The number of frets also varied in time. On some Medieval representations as few as four are seen (Munrow, 1986). Early versions of the instrument probably had no frets at all. The image below (Pittaway, 2015) is a detail from the embroidered Steeple Aston cope (England), shows the earliest image of the oud evolving into a distinct European lute, c. 1300. It can be seen that the instrument has no frets.

Image of a lute playing angle on the
Steeple Aston cope taken from Early Music Muse (Pittaway, 2015)

A later design, for instance by Henri Arnault (ca. 1400 or 1401 - 1466), a court physician and astrologer to the Burgundian court, shows a dozen, according to Munrow (1986, pages 24-25). On some instruments there were 4 or more longer strings, which were not on the fingerboard, and were never stopped. These would be used for bass notes.

The medieval lute was played with the fingers, according to Matthews (2007), though Munrow (1986) states that details of the plectrum are forth coming from many pictorial sources, for instance a quilll.

Christian and Muslim playing lutes in a miniature from
Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X (Wikipedia, 2016)

No music for the medieval lute has survived, but before the advent of polyphony the lute would have suited the monophonic music style. Pittaway (2015) deduces that if medieval lutes were played with a quill, musicians could only play adjacent strings or single line. In polyphonic music, the medieval lute would have been primarily an ensemble instrument, maybe in duos, trios or quartets, according to Lejeune (2009: page 56). It would have played a single line, perhaps doubling sustained parts and for embellishments (Munrow, 1986: page 24). Melodically the instrument had little power, although its tone was gentle and sweet. Its influence was in the direction of simple harmony, mainly restricted to the nearest chords of the key (Matthews, 2007: page 190).

As the Middle Ages ended, polyphonic music became very popular. Lutenists innovated and found a way of playing this music solo by dropping the quill and by using a finger style. Using the thumb and fingers independently, it was possible to play polyphonic counterpoint. This innovation took the popularity of the instrument to even greater heights, bringing it to its full powers in the Renaissance.

3.2 Music Theory

Studied arpeggio's for mandolin.
Nickol (2008) defines them as the notes of a chord played in succession instead of simultaneously.
So these are broken chords, of which the tones are played separately one after the other, for example the first, third and fifth notes.

It is a way of embellishing music. I can discern them in many folk tunes I play. They are useful in creating solo's or during improvisations over chord progressions. I need to put in a lot of time to master them and commit them to muscle memory.

4. Sources

BURKHOLDER, J, GROUT, D. and PALISCA, C. (2014) A history of western music, 9th edition, New York: W.W. Norton.

IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC AND THEATRE (2016) A Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Instruments [Online]  Available from: https://www.music.iastate.edu/antiqua/instrumt.html [Accessed: 14th August 2016].

LEJEUNE, J. & VARIOUS ARTISTS (2009) A Guide to Period Instruments [CD + Book] Belgium: Ricercar (pages 5, 45-47, 55-57, 83)

MATHEWS, W.S.B. (2007) A Popular History of the Art of Music From the Earliest Times Until the Present. Available from: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20293/20293-h/20293-h.htm [Accessed 13th August 2016]

MUNROW, D. (1986) Instruments of the Middle Ages and Reneaissance, 10th edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

NICKOL, P. (2008) Learning to Read Music, 3rd edition, London: Robinson.

PITTAWAY, I. (2015) The lute: a thumbnail history. Early Music Muse [Online Image] Available from - http://earlymusicmuse.com/lutethumbnailhistory/ [Accessed 10th of September 2016].

WIKIPEDIA (2016) Medieval music. Wikipedia [Online Image] Available from - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_music [Accessed: 10th September 2016].