A History of the Lute from Antiquity to the Renaissance (review)

Few musical instruments have had such a history of both favor and neglect as the lute. Plucked string instruments of various sorts were popular in much of Europe beginning in the Middle Ages; iconographical and archival sources indicate that the lute was well established in Spain from the ninth century A.D. on, spreading into southern Italy and from there northward. The written repertoire begins around the year 1500 and from that time the lute enjoyed a period of nearly 250 years of intense creative activity throughout Europe —Douglas Alton Smith calculates that there are some forty thousand independent compositions for the lute in manuscripts and printed tablatures from the Renaissance and baroque (p. 301). By my estimate there are nearly five thousand individual pieces, not counting reprints, in the printed repertoire for lute in the sixteenth century alone (see Appalachian State University Libraries, Music Library, "Sixteenth-Century Lute Tablatures," www.library. appstate.edu/music/lute/lutelst.html, accessed 27 February 2003). In addition to the solo literature, the use of the lute and related instruments in ensembles and as an accompaniment to the voice was common, especially in the baroque, and there is hardly a genre of music during the period that lutenists did not influence. One thinks especially of the lute's role in stylized dance music and in the development of monody and opera. Yet in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries—at precisely that period where the historical canon of European music was being formed—the lute had become a museum piece and its formative roles overlooked or misunderstood. At times during the past century, art historians would have had more familiarity with the lute than their musical counterparts, since the instrument is featured so prominently in early modern paintings.

The revival of interest in early music in the last forty to fifty years carried the lute out of the museum and back onto the concert stage, although in a much more limited role than it had enjoyed previously. Its peculiar notation and technique kept most nonperformers at bay. Even those who have acquired facility with any of the various types of lute tablature (it is not nearly as difficult as the uninitiated generally imagine) were still intimidated by the vastness of the repertoire, unfamiliar with the composers and styles, and outsiders to the musical culture within which the music was produced. Most lute scholarship to this point has thus been narrowly nationalistic or biographical. What few general surveys there are have been flawed by a lack of knowledge of the entire repertoire, of the instrument, or of musicological research techniques. Douglas Alton Smith's long-awaited monograph fills a gaping need in the literature on plucked-string instruments, for what has been needed for many years is a readable, authoritative study of the lute and its music throughout Europe. Lutenists and guitarists have felt the need most severely, yet this book is just as important for scholars and performers of other instruments who wish to explore the vast repertoire and the instrument's early history. "Early history" is the operative term here for, as Smith freely admits, the story is only partially told, leaving off at the beginning of the baroque era.

The book begins with three chapters constituting a chronological survey of the lute to 1500, including a great deal of recent research on the early forms of the instrument and their dissemination. Chapter 4 follows with a focused look at lute making and surviving lutes from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This chapter will be especially valuable to performers in choosing an appropriate instrument, since it covers the instruments now most commonly copied by modern luthiers. The core of the book consists of chapters 5-8 which treat the lute, lutenists, and lute music in Italy, Central and...