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As almost all of the approximately one thousand lutes of the 16th to the 18th century still surviving today1<\/sup> are either completely tone-dead, or at best half dead,2<\/sup> it is appropriate to say that lute makers who receive requests from customers for copies of these instruments can have little certainty on what it is, exactly, they are expected to copy.<\/p>\nEvery instrument manufacturer well knows that instruments made of the same tree, and with identical measurements scrupulously exact, may sound utterly dissimilar; whereas the sound of instruments of quite distinct construction can be so alike as to be indistinguishable. Since the sound itself is the only trustworthy criterion for the success of a copy \u2013 and since 98% of surviving lutes, let\u2019s say, have no sound at all left to be judged \u2013 neither lute players nor lute makers have any yardstick with which really to orient their discrimination. The reconstruction of original sound quality by means of the exact physical copy and measurements of a model is an illusion.<\/p>\n
We are able without difficulty to ascertain, today, the characteristic differences between a violin by Stradivari and Guadagnini, despite the modernisation and rebuilding which has been carried out. But who would dare to determine the factors which distinguished the sound of a lute by Leonardo Tieffenbrucker from one by Vendelio Venere?<\/p>\n
In the catalogues of today\u2018s lutemakers the customer is offered copies of instruments from 16th<\/sup>-century workshops, like those of Frey, Tieffenbrucker or Venere. The offer would suggest that buyers are being given the choice between distinct tendencies in sound \u2013 not merely the keeping up of appearances \u2013 as the trademark of each respective, named historical lutemaker. The offer would be better accompanied by a disclaimer along the lines of: \u201cThe manufacturer is able to give no guarantee for similarity of sound\u201d \u2013 simply because the sound originally made is as unknown to the maker as it is to the purchaser.<\/p>\n The extreme scarcity of playable historical lutes can give only the vaguest of indications, in comparison with the many surviving bowed string instruments, of what the specific tendencies and sound characteristics of each of the celebrated lutemaker dynasties in the 16th century actually were, or what ideal it was that they were striving for.3<\/sup> Players confidently ordering a \u201cFrey\u201d copy, or a \u201cTieffenbrucker\u201d or \u201cVenere\u201d today, are procuring little more than a historical chassis into which the maker has installed, at best, his picture of the appropriate sound.<\/p>\n It is therefore time to admit that, at least in acoustic respects: the lute can only be \u201creinvented\u201d.<\/p>\n As for the reconstruction of \u201coriginal playing techniques\u201d it is likely that today\u2018s exponents of the Renaissance lute will have come the closest. Baroque lutenists of the present, however, hold their plucking hand thoroughly differently to the way in which it is visibly represented in the old iconography. It would appear that, due to the serious consequences in sound, not even the most radical apologists for original practice are prepared to adopt the authentic position of the playing hand: supported by the little finger just in front of or behind the bridge, as it is unmistakably described in the treatises of the 17th and 18th centuries.4<\/sup> Admittedly, however, this historical hand position has a lot to do with the nature of the string material earlier in use. This differed appreciably from today\u2019s in several important respects.<\/p>\n