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Why Wood I?

December, 2017

As much as I enjoy working with wood, it’s probably the worst building material on earth. Termites eat it. It rots. The grain always makes cutting it an adventure. If I make a door out of it, it shrinks and expands and never fits. Wood was a living creature—made of living cells. It’s the old cell walls of the tree, still stacked into the same water conduits (xylem) as the living plant. These “cells” still gain and lose water with changing humidity. Parts of my fiddle change sizes every day, and not necessary in proportion to each other. Playing a stringed instrument is likely plucking strings stretched over a slowly pulsating amoeba.

Yet look at all the fine instruments made from wood. Especially stringed instruments. Since wood is so short-lived, the oldest extant wooden instrument is the 13th Century British Museum citole. (It actually was converted to a fiddle in the 16th Century and given to Liz I.)

But in fairness, what’s the alternative. Stone? Metal? Plastic? Other materials just don’t have the practicality or tone of wood. Skilled luthiers work with wood variables because the reward is so sweet. The best luthiers (still looking forward to that day) are such because they have learned how to compensate for wood’s weaknesses. Instrument bodies need to be strong yet light. Sound boards should be brittle and springy, yet not too much. Some woods resonate mellow tones, some sharp. And in the process of achieving a good sound, the instrument should look pretty.

For me as a learning luthier, I enjoy the challenge, but I also appreciate all of those innate variables. When I consider the possible combinations of wood types, grains, shapes, thicknesses, surfaces, and ages, I visualize enough to keep me busy for centuries. Early instruments give me the freedom to experiment with all these parameters and attempt to estimate the true sound that may have been heard a half millennium ago. It may not sound like a Stradivarius, but it might sound just like the rebec in a traveling minstrel’s sack.

John

Classification of Stringed Instruments

October, 2017

John

Simplified Sach-Hornbostel

I. Idiophones (not stringed) – vibrating surface

II. Aerophones (not stringed) – vibrating air column

III. Chordophones – vibrating strings

A. Zithers
 1) Tube zithers
 2) Stick zithers
 3) Board zithers

B. Composites
 1) Harps
  a. Angle harps
  b. Arch harps
  c. Frame harps
 2) Lutes
  a. Lyres
  b. True Lutes
    i. Bowl lute
    ii. Box lute



Classification by Playing Method

Plucked – guitar, banjo, harp, lute, harpsichord
Struck – piano, hammered dulcimer, clavichord
Bowed – violin, cello, vielle, gamba, rebec, hurdy gurdy



John

A Recent Conversation at the Lumber Store

May, 2017

Clerk: That's a nice piece of pine. What are you making?
Me: A crwth.
Clerk: A what?
Me: A crwth.
Clerk: Spell that.
Me: C-R-W-T-H
Clerk: There's no vowels.
Me: It's a folk instrument from Wales. That's the way they spell it.
Clerk: How do they play with those flippery hands?
Me: No, I mean the Wales by England.
Clerk: I thought they played bagpipes.
Me: That's Scotland.
Clerk: At least they use vowels.



John

Can We Trust Art in Researching Medieval Instruments?

March, 2017

I build a few contemporary instruments, in addition to the old ones. The Internet certainly makes it easy. There are thousands luthiers anxious to offer step-by-step instructions. It would be nice if a few medieval luthiers had Facebook accounts. They likely would have left all kinds of specs and instrument selfies. Unfortunately, the first technical drawings of instruments didn't happen until around the 15th Century. For medieval instruments, I rely heavily on artwork for designs, sizes, and other details. Yes, as a scientist that bothers me, but what's the alternative?

All is not futile, however. Let's think about that artwork. For the most part, art has some science deep down somewhere. It's obvious even to us amateur art consumers that some works are intended to be fanciful and others are realistic (Yes, I know there are art terms for this.) This may be intuitive at times. The 17th Century Domenichino painting of King David playing a modern pillar harp is probably not accurate. I believe in angels, but I haven't seen one yet. When I look at all of the angels playing instruments, I have a strong suspicion that the instrument might lean toward the imaginative. One the other hand, a realistic painting of a real human, strumming a gittern... Why would the artist create an imaginary instrument?

And there is a lot of art out there, with lots of musical instruments. Music seemed to be a popular subject for artists. I think the big picture when we consider the bulk of the instruments in artwork, can provide a "generalized" accuracy of sorts. When I see similar instruments with common features across several paintings, I believe we can assume some historicity.

Case in point- the Cantigas de Santa Maria. In the 13th Century, Alfonso X of Castile opened his courts for Christians, Jews, and Muslims to gather and share their cultures. This volume of cantigas he commissioned was illuminated with a variety of images showing people of different cultures playing a diverse array of instruments. The images are simple, yet historians have noted the accuracy of the costumes and accoutrements. If the goal was to present an accurate portrayal, it seems that the instruments would be equally historical. There are some mysteries in the pictures, however. Cantiga 290 shows an unusual psaltery with four courses of four strings each. It isn't clear how something like this would be useful as an instrument. Also, in Cantiga 160, the symphonia has the keys spread the length of the box. This would have been a difficult (though not impossible) engineering feat to make the tangents hit the correct spots on the strings. And you might have noticed on the cantiga illuminations, the instruments are "2-dimensionalized", or rather, the pegboxes are twisted 90 degrees to show them in profile. All of this to say that it seems the artist may have taken some liberties, but generally was attempting to maintain some accuracy.

A highly respected organologist agrees: “By means of the pictures it is possible not only to observe how the fashions changed, so that one instrument, now another, was placed in the foreground, but to see in each kind of instrument the results of the experiments which in the course of time were made to improve the different categories.” Panum, Hortense. (1940) Stringed Instruments of the Middle Ages.


John

King David's pillar harp?

The Instruments in the Cantigas de Santa Maria

November, 2016

Alfonso X (El Sabio in Spanish) is one of my favorite characters in the history of music. King of Castile, León, and Galicia in the latter part of the 13th Century, he created a very diverse court. With an interest in education, he encouraged sharing of cultures among Jews, Muslims, and Christians. In addition to his many accomplishments, Alfonso was a prolific writer and poet. The Cantigas de Santa Maria, are credited to him or his patronage. The poems in this collection are accompanied by illuminations and musical notation, thus we know much about the people of his court, as well as their music and instruments.

Every tenth song in the Cantigas has an accompanying illumination that usually depicts two musicians. The costumes of the musicians are said to be quite accurate in showing ethnicity and social classes. My assumption has always been that the instruments are equally accurate. El Sabio has been a valuable resource for me. I’ve reconstructed many of the stringed instruments illustrated in the Cantigas. I’m also in the ongoing process of recording the music using these period instruments.

The illuminations are obviously meant to reflect the typical goings-on in Alfonso’s court. I’m not certain whether the images are meant to be tied to the particular tenth song with which they are shown. There is quite a diversity in the types of instruments, from wind and percussion to many families of strings. Interestingly, most of the string players seem to be tuning their instruments in the illustration. With gut strings and no precision gears, that likely took more time than playing.


John