Seven reasons to play a Liuto forte

If you are a guitarist:

• Liuti forti are considerably easier to play than classical guitars. They produce more sound with less effort but do not require any fundamental changes in playing technique. Due to the medium string tension they are equally amenable to fingernail and fingertip plucking styles.
• a Liuto forte provides you with access to an enormous and under-exploited repertoire of lute music of the highest quality, which can only be less than satisfactorily performed on the guitar. These pieces can be read directly from the original tablatures or from transcriptions into conventional score.
• whether guitar music or lute music comes into question, the Liuto forte can comfortably surpass all the restrictions imposed in the bass range by the 6-string guitar. There is now no need to resort to massive, multi-stringed guitars, hard to hold and clumsy to play, and whose brightness in the deep basses leaves a lot to be desired.
• the prevailing clarity of the Liuto forte allows your participation in performances with large musical forces, in churches or the opera. At the same time it improves the conditions for taking part in every kind of chamber music.
• with a lute instrument to hand, your compatibility in the baroque and classical field is immediately enhanced.
• it is a clear market advantage, and certainly more attractive to an audience, for you to be able to present a performance using both guitar and lute, particularly with a lute that opens up totally new sound worlds.
• you are investing in an instrument on the ascent, possessing great potential for dealing with future developments, and not subject to the long stagnation and loss of prestige which the classical guitar has had to suffer in the last two decades.

If you are a historical lutenist:

• a Liuto forte frees you from the restrictions of particular musical epochs.
• the liuto forte enables your access, beyond all nostalgia, to a broad field of new sound possibilities and playing techniques. These will add a scarcely imaginable richness to all the pieces you interpret – including the traditional lute repertoire.
• you can now approach and master – in addition to music for the lute – the whole repertoire for classical guitar, of six or more strings – without having to change instruments or alter your fingertip right hand style.
• you can perform in larger halls, audibly, and participate in all kinds of music making beyond the bounds of historical performance practice. The voice nightmare of historical lutes comes to an end with the Liuto forte.
• Johann Sebastian Bach’s compositions for the lute, which were envisaged for a modified version of the Angelique, can now be played in their entirety, note for note and in their absolutely original form, using a Liuto forte in d (“Bach-Laute”), which has been especially developed from this instrument. (see also bach-lautenwerke.de)
• it proves rather easier to inspire contemporary composers to write for the Liuto forte than to fire their enthusiasm for a historical lute.
• you are investing in an instrument full of a future, unlimited in repertoire and appealing to a wider and younger public than the historical lute.