East Meets Old: The Many Lives of the Lute
The lute brings to mind an ancient intrument whose golden age was the Renaissance and Baroque. In its heyday, it was everywhere: played in the streets and taverns, as well as in royal courts and private homes. Music publishers produced countless printed collections for the instrument, despite the fact that printing music was still an expensive, labour-intensive undertaking. Clearly, demand was high enough to justify the cost. Yet by the late eighteenth century, the lute had fallen out of favour, and its story seemed to fade from view.
But this is only one chapter of the lute’s history. There are many different types of lute, including the Arabic oud. The word lute itself comes from the Arabic al-ʿūd, meaning “the wood”, and the oud was the inspiration for its European counterparts. The oud and related instruments, such as the Turkish saz, remain very much alive today. China has its own lute, the pipa, for which a wealth of subtle, delicate music has been composed. Chinese cultural influence also helped shape related instruments in neighbouring countries, including Japan’s biwa.
The International Lute Festival of 2004 brought together a remarkable range of Eastern and Western traditions. It took place at RASA, the now-defunct world music venue, where three days of performances explored Berber, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Renaissance and Baroque music, among other traditions. We recorded nine concerts, and today we revisit two of them, with selections from a third.
The first concert introduces us to Chinese pipa player and singer Min Xiao-Fen. She opens with traditional repertoire, ranging from lyrical music to pieces associated with warfare. These are ancient traditions, passed down over centuries and intended to remain largely unchanged. But Min Xiao-Fen also demonstrates that tradition can evolve. The pipa lends itself surprisingly well to jazz, as we discover in versions of pieces with Far Eastern connections, including “Satin Doll” and “North of the Sunset”.
Our second concert transports us to around 1400, when the Middle Ages were giving way to the Renaissance and musical styles were undergoing profound changes. Paris was losing its former dominance as English and Italian music gained ground. Out of this competition between different influences emerged a new style, in which triads became widely accepted as consonant and the upper melodic line grew increasingly prominent. Music from this period is generally performed by singers or ensembles of melodic instruments. Here, however, the polyphonic music is played on string instruments: the lute and the dulcimer. Crawford Young performs on both the medieval lute and the gittern, a small, pear-shaped instrument with a gentle sound that evokes the world of medieval troubadours.
Our final selection takes us to around 1700, at the height of the Baroque. By then, a more complex lute with many additional strings had become fashionable, requiring considerably more skill than the lute once heard in taverns. Its larger counterpart was the theorbo, a strikingly large instrument with an extended bass range. Although traditionally used for accompaniment, it can make an impressive solo instrument in the hands of a virtuoso. Robert de Visée was one such musician, composing works for the theorbo that included both arrangements of opera arias and original compositions.
Playlist
- Traditional lyrical music for pipa
- Traditional war music for pipa
- Serenade of the Min River
- Thelonious Monk – Ask Me Now
- Tian Wu Wu
- Thelonious Monk – North of the Sunset
- Duke Ellington – Satin Doll
- Shanghai Doll
- Anonymous / Ugolino d’Orvieto / Andrea Stefani – Contre dolour / Se videar / L’ senti matutino
- Anonymous / Guillaume de Machaut – La prison amoureuse / De toutes floures
- Johannes Ciconia / anonymous – Non avrà ma pietà / La fiamma / Così pensoso
- Aler m’en veus / Bonne et bele / Amor per ti sempre
- Anonymous / Walter Frye / anonymous – Enavois / Vier hundert jar / Ave regina
- Guillaume Dufay / anonymous – Karl Ernest Schroeder / Guglielmo da Ebreo – Le serviteur / Pizochara / Agwilare / Tyling
- Jean-Baptiste Lully / Robert de Visée – Assez de pleurs (from Bellérophon)
- Jean-Baptiste Lully / Robert de Visée – Entrée d’Apollon (from Le triomphe de l’Amour)
- Jean-Baptiste Lully / Robert de Visée – Heureux qui peut plaire (from Cadmus et Hermione)
- Jean-Baptiste Lully / Robert de Visée – Les Échos d’Atys (from Atys)
- Robert de Visée – Pièces de théorbe en ré: Prélude, allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue, gavotte, menuet, passacaille
Performers
Min Xiao-Fen (pipa, vocals) (1–8)
Crawford Young (lute, gittern), Margit Übellacker (dulcimer) (9, 14)
Fred Jacobs (theorbo) (15–19)
