On Lute Sizes
Ephraim Segerman - May 1999

Introduction

The original sizes of lutes can be observed in paintings and surviving examples, and we have occasional measurements in early written sources. A useful measure of the size of a lute is the strong stop, defined as the distance between nut and bridge. To find the string stop from a painting, one needs to scale the image using an assumption about the original size of another object in it. I use the player’s head and assume that the distance between the eyes or the distance between the line between the eyes and the mouth (whichever the view allows) was 6.2 cm, expecting an uncertainty of perhaps 10%. Here we do know that the neck was at its original length at the time of the painting.

On surviving examples, most necks have been altered. They have been restored (either physically or conceptually) to some presumed early state using assumptions of the appropriate bridge position and of the number of frets needed to be tied around the neck for that state, with the obvious uncertainty about how typical the original was. The surviving instruments are rarely those originally played by serious musicians. A high level of use leads to a higher probability of accidents, and serious musicians are more prone to discard an instrument if it cannot be converted to an up-to-date state when fashions change. The size distribution of surviving instruments is strongly biassed towards those sizes that could be used in altered states in more recent times.

The few actual measurements given in early sources give the most useful historical information because it is most likely that the measured instruments were particularly respected at the time. Thus, any theory about lute sizes must include the lute size shown in Praetorius’s scaled drawing and the sizes given in the Talbot manuscript.

There is another approach that is very useful in approaching the question of typical lute sizes. The string stop can be related to pitch range via the properties of gut strings. That is what most of what follows discusses and uses.

In the Renaissance, it appears that makers produced lutes in large batches of fairly standard sizes for a Europe-wide market. Most players used their lutes for solo performance or to accompany their voices, so the main criteria for size choice seem to have been vocal range and technique aspirations (larger instruments sound more impressive with simple technique while smaller instruments allow more musical inventiveness because of easier fingerboard navigation). A minority of lutes played in ensembles, and their sizes had to be compatible with the other instruments. So at least some of the standard sizes produced needed some consistency with commonly used pitch standards. In the baroque, the market was much smaller and converted old lutes were preferred to new ones, leading to more potential diversity in sizes, but there was more playing with other instruments, making conforming to a pitch standard more important.

Basic Theory of Ranges of Gut Strings

The Mersenne-Taylor Law is an accurate relationship between string stop (vibrating string length) L, pitch frequency f, string tension force T and mass per unit length m. It can be stated as 4f²L² = T/m. When the string is made of one uniform material of density d and cross-sectional area A (equal to ¹ times D²/4, where D is the diameter), then m = dA, so 4f²L²d = T/A = S, with S defined as the force per unit cross-sectional area on the string. It is called ‘stress’, and with good reason. The stress on a string has strict limits: with stress too high the string breaks. Since string stress can be calculated from the pitch frequency, the string stop and the density of the string material, one does not need to know the string diameter or tension.

We are interested in comparing stresses between strings, and the actual figures do not have any particular meaning to us. So comparing the square roots of the stresses would be just as useful. For that matter, comparing the square roots of the stresses divided by twice the square root of the gut density (which can be safely assume to be constant), is just as useful. This latter quantity, according to the Mersenne-Taylor Law, is simply the frequency that the string is tuned to multiplied by the string stop it is stretched over (fL). This frequency-stop product comes out as sensible numbers if we define frequency in Hz and string stop in metres. The units that product comes out in is m/sec, which reflects the fact that it happens to be half the velocity of wave propagation along the string.

If one increases the stress enough on a string, it will break. Breaking stress is the definition of ‘tensile strength’, which is reasonably constant for most materials¹ . Doubling the stretching force while doubling the amount of material to resist that force (i.e. doubling the cross-sectional area) does not change how near to breaking the string is. With materials like gut, when near breaking, the string stretches inelastically over time (i.e. some of the stretch does not recover when one relieves the stress), and so to properly predict breaking, one needs to consider time as well as stress. Practically, the highest working stress one will use on a gut string depends on the shortest but still tolerable time (on average) that one can expect it to last before breaking. This is a judgement that musicians make, and can (and did) vary with changing culture. Only evidence from the relevant musical culture gives an historically valid highest working stress for gut in that period.

Fortunately, when studying historical stringing practices, the highest working stress that people actually used is what we are really interested in, not the stress for immediate breaking (which we now can’t measure), nor how many semitones away from the immediate breaking pitch that the lute player judged was close enough (which we now can’t ask).

As one lowers the stress in a string, the inharmonicity in the sound it produces increases. Moderate inharmonicity involves higher harmonics getting out of tune with the fundamental frequency of a note. This occurs in the sound of a piano, and is an essential characteristic of it. When inharmonicity gets large, most of the harmonics drop completely out of the sound, leaving it dull, devoid of richness and focus. How dull a sound can get and still be worth having is another judgement that the musicians in each culture decided on, and can change as the culture changes.

The maximum tolerable inharmonicity cannot be expressed purely by a minimum stress. At a constant maximum inharmonicity, the frequency is proportional to the string diameter divided by the square of the vibrating length. If we consider families of instruments, the tension-length principle (where the tension is roughly proportional to the string stop) tends to be followed. Combining these relationships with the Mersenne-Taylor Law leads us to conclude that the frequency is proportional to the string stop to the 4/5 power².

Only those instruments with the maximum open-string ranges reach the limits of toleration of rate of string breakage on the highest string and inharmonicity in the bass sound acceptable in that culture. Instruments with a smaller open-string range tended to back off from these limits.

The Praetorius Evidence

Praetorius³ is a marvellous early source to tell us about the limits of gut strings. He drew the dimensions of an octave set of pitch pipes from which (as he intended) we can determine his Cammerthon pitch standard. It was a’ = 430 Hz⁴ . From this, given the nominal pitches given in his pitch table, we can calculate the pitch frequencies of his strings, and from his scaled drawings, we can calculate their string stops.

All of the bowed instruments depicted by Praetorius on scaled drawings and included in his table of string pitches were studied in FoMRHI Comm. 1545⁵, and all of the similarly represented plucked instruments in Comm. 1593⁶. Three of the plucked instruments included were in Praetorius's tone-lower preferred south German Chorthon standard. This was usually indicated by a 'Chor' or 'Chorist' in front of the name. The lute was one of them.

The main centres of lute making then were in southern Catholic Germany and northern Italy. In both of these regions, the prevailing pitch standard (called ‘Chorthon’ in the former and ‘tono corista’ in the latter) was about a tone lower than Praetorius’s Cammerthon pitch standard. Praetorius preferred the lower standard but regretted that it was not practical to promote lowering his own standard to it. In the introduction to his pitch tables, he indicated that all of the pitches listed were in Cammerthon and not in his preferred Chorthon. What he neglected to include was a parenthetical proviso that this was only true if there was no indication otherwise. This omission misled most early lute scholars (including myself), who did not appreciate the meaning of the Chor in the name Chor Laute, and assumed that the lute was tuned a tone higher than it actually was.

The results for gut-strung instruments were that those with the largest open-string ranges and the highest frequency-stop product for the first course were the viola bastarda amongst those bowed, with a 29 semitone range and 209 m/sec highest frequency-stop product, and the lute amongst those plucked, with a 31 semitone range and 211 m/sec highest frequency-stop product. The accuracy of the measurements does not warrant considering the difference between these two figures for the highest frequency-stop product to be significant. Thus, at least in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the oft-stated instruction to tune the highest string as high as it will go can be expressed quantitatively by a frequency-stop product of about 210 m/sec. Mid-19th century orchestral violinists, pushed to higher pitches by the desire of wind players for greater brilliance, had to go up to 225 m/sec.

The historical validity of these conclusions depends on the evidence of string stops, pitches and pitch standards, and the validity of the scholarship analysing it. Theories that early gut was usually stronger than implied here (as some lute theorists have been suggesting) can only have historical validity if their proponents can objectively show how this evidence has been misinterpreted.

We are interested in the string stops of all of the lutes Praetorius mentioned, with different 1st-course pitches and different size names. They were all gut strung, so the same criteria apply. The left half of the Table at the end of this paper expresses the above relationships between the longest string stop and the highest pitches and the shortest string stop for the lowest pitches at the Chorthon pitch standard, which is relevant here.

First let us insist that the highest course of each was as high as it could go. We then get:

string stop	first course pitch and name
41 cm	d” Kleinen Octavlaut
46 cm	c” Kleinen Octavlaut
49 cm	b’ Klein Discant laut
55 cm	a’ DiscantLaut
61 cm	g’ Recht Chorist= oder AltLaute
73 cm	e’ TenorLaute
82 cm	d’ Der Bass Ganant=
123 cm	g Die GrossOctav BassLaute

The largest size is really too large to be practical. If we now insist that all of the lutes used the full 10-course range of the one depicted, the lowest course drifts out of the acceptable range as the lutes get smaller than the one depicted (i.e. the shortest string stops become longer than the longest). I do not know of any surviving 10-course lutes with string stops smaller than Praetorius’s 61 cm. As will be seen below, this is a very likely reason for the invention of the baroque lute tunings. The larger lutes though can get smaller and still keep within the range. Their minimum string stops would then be:

string stop	first course pitch and name
61 cm	g’ Recht Chorist= oder AltLaute
70 cm	e’ TenorLaute
77 cm	d’ Der Bass Ganant=
107 cm	g Die GrossOctav BassLaute

As stated above, the open-string ranges of smaller lutes should be reduced from the 31 semitones of 10 courses to keep the sound of the lowest string acceptable. Such a reduction of open-string range would also reduce the string stops of the larger lutes to make them easier to play. The most common smaller tuning range of lutes in the late Renaissance was 29 semitones. The string stop ranges would then be:

string stop	first course pitch and name
40-41 cm	d” Kleinen Octavlaut
44-46 cm	c” Kleinen Octavlaut
46-49 cm	b’ Klein Discant laut
51-55 cm	a’ DiscantLaut
56-61 cm	g’ Recht Chorist= oder AltLaute
64-73 cm	e’ TenorLaute
70-82 cm	d’ Der Bass Ganant=
97-123 cm	g Die GrossOctav BassLaute

It must be emphasised that these ranges of strings stops for each lute are not arrived at by applying the judgement of any modern specialist. They are calculateded from the pitches of the highest and lowest strings, with players using the same criteria as Praetorius’s lute player had for how close to breaking the first course could be (for the long end of the range), and how much inharmonicity he found tolerable on the lowest string (on the short end of the range).

This set of string-stop ranges provides an objective basis for identifying late Renaissance lutes with less than 10 courses according to their sizes. Robert Lundberg, in his Historical Lute Construction - The Erlangen Lectures listed surviving lutes that he considered to be typical members of the family of Renaissance lutes mentioned by Praetorius. Their string stops are: 30 cm for the Small Octave, 44 cm for the Descant, 58 cm for the Alto, 67 cm for theTenor, 78 cm for the Bass, and 94 cm for the Octave Bass. His string stops for the Alto, Tenor and Bass fit nicely in the theoretical ranges given above. His Octave Bass (the Nuremberg Harton) is somewhat small, so it was probably built as an a lute (g lute in Cammerthon). Lundberg missed Praetorius’s Descant and Small Descant, called one of the larger Small Octave lutes (the Vienna Venere) a Descant, and called the Vienna Venere mandora a Small Octave lute. This illustrates how judgements of lute historians made without using quantitave methods can sometimes be spot on, and sometimes not.

It may be worthwhile to consider the likely 16th century origins of Praetorius’s names. The top strings of the Alto and Tenor lutes were tuned to the pitches of the lighest lines in the alto (C3) and tenor (C4) clefs. It seems that the lute function represented by the name was to play music written in those clefs on their top 4 or 5 courses. Similarly the Bass would play music written in the baritone (F3) and bass (F4) clef on its top 5 or 6 courses. The Descant would play the soprano (C1) and mezzo-soprano (C2) clefs on its top 3 or 4 courses, using the higher fret positions on the 1st. The Small Descant could similarly play the treble (G2) clef. The Small Octave and Octave Bass sizes could (on their own) play the tune, which in Germany was often in the tenor, an octave higher or lower than written.

Renaissance lute size names

There was a Europe-wide market for lutes from the German and Italian making centres, and for the services of lute players, so we have reason to expect international consistency in size names. We can associate the name ‘mean’ in English with ‘mezzano’ in Italian⁷ . Since these sizes were the most popular in these countries, and the ‘Recht Chorist= oder AltLaute’ was the most popular in Germany, that was most probably the same size as the others. In the English and German cases, the pitch of the first course was given as g’. The association of ‘bass’ in English with ‘grande’ in Italian and ‘Der Bass Ganant=’ in German is also highly probable, and in each case, the pitch of the first course was a fourth lower than on the mean size.

Similarly, we can associate ‘treble’ in English with ‘picciolo’ in Italian⁸ and ‘DiscantLaut’ in German. The first-course pitch was a tone higher than the mean size in the Italian and German cases, but the same as the mean lute in the English case. It thus seems most likely that the English treble lute was the same size as elsewhere but usually was tuned a tone lower. Our evidence for it concerns when it was playing with a mean lute in duets and when it played in a Consorte with a treble viol. In these contexts, its pitch was the usual low pitch for lutes and sets of viols, but it was also likely to have tuned all of its strings up a tone to play at the tone-higher pitch standard used by violins and most wind instruments (including the Consorte when playing with a violin and recorder).

During the period of about 1515 to 1575, the kind of bass strings (apparently made of roped gut) that reduced inharmonicity and so allowed an open-string range on lutes of 29 or 31 semitones, were not used enough to influence lute design. Lutes in this period used an open-string range of 26 semitones using only simply twisted bass strings. There is no evidence relating string stops with absolute pitches and size names in this period, but is is very difficult to imagine any reason why these should have changed significantly between then and the later period discussed above.

Mersenne and baroque lute tunings

Mersenne⁹ presented the standard old Renaissance tuning (vieil ton or accord ordinaire) for the 10-course lute, plus a new tuning (nouveau ton or accord extraordinaire) in two versions, with B flat (b mol) and B natural (h quarre). The relative tunings of the three were, respectively, diatonic basses + ffeff, ffded and ffede. In a Table universelle du Luth, the string pitches were given as:

course	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1
old tuning	C	D	E	F	G	c	f	a	d’	g’
Bb new tuning	C	D	Eb	F	G	c	f	g#	c’	d#’
B new tuning	C	D	E	F	G	c	f	a	c’	e’

There is no indication here that could account for tuning names that involve the notes Bb and B. The definition of a tuning concerns relative pitches, and Mersenne considered that the actual pitches of each tuning were arbitrary. This is illustrated by his two versions of the Air ‘Divine Amarillis’ by Boesset, one in B-tuning tablature, and the other in 4-part mensural notation. He wrote that he assumed that [the first bass note] D sol re of the lute was Fa ut of the 4-part version. Actually, the first bass note was the open 5th course, which would be a c, but it didn’t matter. In the transcription, the assumed pitches of the lute strings were a 4th higher than those given in his Table.

We can expect that the names came from lutes that were the right size so that the notes in the names were the actual pitches of some course in a popular pitch standard. In the relative pitches of the 1st , the 3rd and the 8th courses, the two new tunings happen to differ by a semitone in the right direction to justify the names. There are two possibilities, that the names referred either to the 1st or the 3rd course (the 8th was 2 octaves below the first). For the B tuning, the string pitches would then be:

course	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1
B 1st course	G	A	B	c	d	g	c'	e'	g'	b'
B 3rd course	D	E	F#	G	A	d	g	b	d’	f#’.

The Burwell lute tutor (c. 1660-1672)¹⁰ similarly called two tunings of an 11-course lute ‘B flatt’ and ‘B sharp’. Both of these tunings were different from either of Mersenne’s tunings with the same names. The relative tunings of these two were diatonic basses plus, respectively, fdefd and fedfe. As reported in Robert Spencer’s introduction to the facsimile edition of the book, Thomas Salmon¹¹ (1672) discussed these ‘French B flat’ and ‘French B natural’ tunings, and transcribed the latter as D, G, B, d, g, b, associating this tuning with John Rogers (the likely author of the Burwell tutor). Here, it is clear that the tuning names were associated with the pitch of the first course. The course pitches then were:

course	11	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1
B flatt tuning	F	G	A	Bb	c	d	g	bb	d’	g’	bb'
B sharp tuning	F	G	A	B	c	d	g	b	d’	g’	b’.

When fashions change, old names associated with them can sometimes be reused, but the criteria for the kinds of names used are very conservative within any culture. It is therefore likely that for Mersenne’s tunings, the names indicated the 1st-course pitches that the tunings were developed at as well.

The pitches given above are an octave higher than those given by Salmon in Spencer’s report. The report of a Salmon tuning given by Matthew Spring (Lute News 41, pp. 5-6) is ambiguous about the octave of string pitches. I have not seen the original, so do not know whether the octave specification was Salmon’s or Spencer’s. There is no problem though, even if it was Salmon’s. Which octave a tuning is in is usually considered obvious by the person writing it down, and so it was sometimes recorded in the wrong octave purely for notational convenience, expecting that the reader could not possibly be confused. Today, we do find a first string tuned to some B confusing because we expect main-stream lutes to have string stops of between about 60 and 70 cm, and our experience with main-stream lute tunings doesn’t include such a note for the first course.

We may suspect that this 1st course pitch might be the result of some conventional transposition, such as the C key of English organs before the Reformation being called F for playing in ‘Quire pitch’. Organists learned to finger on both pitch assumptions, and since they were expected to be able to transpose up a fourth from the C assumption and down a fourth from the F assumption, they had two fairly-evenly spaced intermediate alternatives within the fifth between the C and the F assumptions to find a appropriate pitch level for the voices they accompanied¹² . There is no evidence that transposition was needed on the baroque lute, nor for any transposition mechanism like that for the organ being used.

That transposition was not an issue becomes apparent in the lute involved in a Bodleian manuscript. In Chelys¹³ , Tim Crawford described a mid-17th century set of 5 part books of ‘ayres’ in the Bodleian Library (Mus. Sch. E410-4), which includes a book for treble (viol or violin), one for 2nd treble or lyra viol (the latter in tablature), one for 12-course lute (in tablature) and two identical unfigured bass parts (one indicating that it was for theorbo). Two tunings were used on the lute part (indicated by tuning diagrams). One is identical with Mersenne’s Bb tuning but with the 1st course at G, and the other with Burwell’s B tuning with the 1st course at B. In this last case, the lute had a B first course at a pitch standard suitable for a treble viol or violin without transposition. We therefore need to take seriously what sizes such a lute might have.

We can reasonably assume that the criteria for how close to breaking a lute player would tune the first course, and the maximum inharmonicity for the lowest course he would tolerate, was the same as in the Praetorius situation. Mersenne’s pitch standard was a’ = 375 Hz¹⁴, and it seems to be the relevant one for the French-dominated 17th century baroque tunings. Praetorius’s limits of acceptability are converted to this standard in the right half of the Table. For a first course at b^b, b, b^b’ and b’, the longest string stop for each pitch would be 105, 99, 53 and 50 cm respectively. The lowest string in Mersenne’s B^b and B tunings was a G, and in Burwell’s B^b and B tunings was an F. We can then conclude that the open string ranges would have been:

tuning	Mersenne’s Bb	Mersenne’s B	Burwell’s Bb	Burwell’s B
high octave assumption	45-53 cm	45-50 cm	50-53 cm	50-50 cm
low octave assumption	79-105 cm	79-99 cm	87-105 cm	87-99 cm

Especially with the Burwell tunings, the low octave implies a string stop that is just too long for purposes other than simple continuo with minimum division and ornamentation. There is another reason why the the high-octave tunings are much more probable, namely that they offer a reason for the change from the 10-course Renaissance tuning. When a lute is smaller than the mean size, one cannot have a full 31 semitone open-string range because inharmonicity on the lowest string gets worse, so tunings with a smaller open-string range were required. Lutes with a b^b’ 1st course needed to be tuned up to b’, so the lutes which provided the B names were small treble lutes with string stops of about 50 cm. In the report about the Bodleian manuscript by Tim Crawford, he was properly hesitant when he presented the lute tunings an octave lower than they most probably were.

These four relative tunings were the most popular in the 17th century. From the tuning names, it seems very likely that they were first developed on small treble lutes with about 50 cm string stops. From the surviving instruments, we assume that most baroque lutes were larger and tuned to lower pitches, but the Bodleian manuscript shows that at least some were at the original size for its tuning. John Rogers apparently played on one, and so probably Mary Burwell did also, and perhaps the French lute masters she referred to did as well. In the Appendix, I show how the two different tunings for the lute in the Bodleian manuscript (one being identical to Mace’s¹⁵ ) work on the same lute, implying (with other supporting evidence) that Mace’s lute was apparently also one with about a 50 cm string stop. It may be significant that the only evidence for larger lutes in baroque tunings before the 1690’s (the Talbot manuscript¹⁶ ) that I am aware of is Mersenne’s retuning of his 10-course Renaissance lute, with a string stop of probably about 63 cm.

Small baroque lutes could have been quite common in the 17th century, and possibly even the most common ones then. Their extremely poor representation amongst the surviving lutes could easily be because of their ready conversion to mandoras in the 18th century, with no subsequent use as guitars.

Appendix: More on 12-course lutes, and Talbot’s 11-course lutes

The two lute tunings in the Bodleian manuscript were for a 12-course lute. Such lutes usually had two pegboxes, the bent-back one tuning the highest 8 courses going over one nut, and the straight-on one tuning the 4 lowest courses, with an individual nut for each. The tunings appear to have been:

course

12

11

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

C

D

E

F

G

A

B

e

a

c’

e’

g’

D

F#

G

A

B

c

d

g

b

d’

g’

b’

There is a lute made in Padua in 1633 that survives in an apparently subsequently unaltered 12-course state in the Library in Linhöping, Sweden¹⁷. The string stop on the main nut is 50.0 cm, and on the 12th course nut, it is 70.7 cm. I assume that this instrument is typical of the 12-course version of the original size of lute on which the four baroque tunings discussed here were developed.

From the Table, we see that the lowest acceptable note on the main nut would be F, and on the 12th course, it would be BB^b. Thus with diatonic basses, it happily can be tuned up to 6 semitones lower than the highest string can go (which is a b’). This shows that there would be no problem with using the same lute of that size for both tunings. In the low tuning (with a g’ first course), the tuning is about in the middle of the range of possible tuning pitches with that relative tuning and string stop. There should be no problem with using the same set of gut strings, and just tuning them up or down between the two tunings.

The first tuning above is identical in string pitches to the main one used by Mace, which he called the ‘Flat-Tuning’. There are several pieces of evidence which indicate that the string stop of his lute was probably much closer to the 50 cm Linhöping lute than to the over 60 cm that is the maximum string stop for the 1st course in g’ at the usual pitch standard for lutes and viols, which he called ‘Consort-Pitch’.

One piece of evidence is that he never indicated that the 1st course should be tuned as high as it could go. This is supported by his specification that the highest catlins were on the 4 course, which was only 10 semitones lower than the highest string, while on Dowland’s lute and Talbot’s violin, the highest catlin(e) was 14 semitones below the highest string, Catlin(e)s had a good reputation, and they were generally used for strings with as high a pitch as they would work on without breaking too often. Then, there is his drawing of the Dyphone, an invention of his which combined the 12-course ‘French’ lute (his usual one in Flat Tuning) with an ‘English’ lute (which was a theorbo that was 3/4 the size of a normal one and didn’t have a reentrant 1st course). Mace specified that the 1st courses of both were tuned to ’G-sol-re-ut’, but in the drawing, the string stop of the ‘French’ lute is about 3 frets shorter than that of the ‘English’ lute. This demonstrates that he expected the string stop of his lute to be rather shorter than the longest for its 1st course pitch.

Mace witnessed the change of fashion towards Burwell’s B flatt tuning becoming the favoured later baroque one. He called it the ‘New Tuning’. The version he used on his instrument kept the 1st course at g’ and the 12th course at C, as in his other tuning. As evidenced by the tuning of the 12-course lute given in the Talbot manuscript, musicians eventually insisted that the instrument should play a tone lower in that relative tuning, with the 1st course at f’ and the 12th course another semitone lower, at AA. With this tuning, the 8th courses of a Linhöping-sized instrument would be at the limit of inharmonicity acceptability, and the 12th course a semitone lower. By then, 12-course lute players had become accustomed to the luxury of more focus in the sound of their lowest strings, and so a rather larger instrument was appropriate. I’ll show below that the relationship between tuning and the limits of gut strings on Talbot’s 12-course lute were similar to that of the Linhöping lute with Mace’s tuning, giving more support to the hypothesis that Mace’s lute was that size..

The 12-course lute Talbot measured (and called ‘English (two headed Lute - vulgo)’) had a string stop of 23 1/2 inches (59.7 cm) for the 8 courses going over the main nut, and 32 1/8 inches (81.6 cm) for the 12th course. The highest acceptable note on the first course would be g^#’ (3 semitones higher than the actual pitch, the lowest on the 8th course would be C^# (4 semitones lower than the actual pitch) and the lowest on the 12th course would be GG (2 semitones lower than the actual pitch). We can see here that Talbot’s version of the 12-course lute was similarly placed in the pitch range for its string stops as Mace’s lute was if that were the size of the one in Linhöping.

The Talbot manuscript also gave measurements of two single-headed 11-course lutes (which he called the ‘French lute’) of a larger size with string stops of around 70 cm (27 and 27 15/16 inches, or 68.6 and 71.0 cm respectively). Except for the missing 12th course, the string pitches were identical to his 12-course lute. On these 11-course lutes, the highest string was at about as high as was tolerable for an f’ pitch, and the lowest string could go down to BB^b. It actually was tuned to C, 2 semitones above that minimum. So the range of acceptable string stops for this tuning would be 63-70 cm. Presumably, serious players would prefer the high end of the string-stop range, trading shorter 1st string life for more focus on the lowest string, while less serious players may prefer a shorter string stop for easier holding and playing, and less trouble and expense with replacing broken strings.

In the late 17th century the two-headed 12-course and single-headed 11-course lutes converged in actual tuning, and so were in more competition than ever. In the 18th century, the larger 11-course one prevailed. But before then, the smaller 12-course one had its advocates. Talbot quoted Agutter’s description of it as: ‘the 15 Trebles have the (lower) head bearing back as the French lute of which this seems to be an improvement’.

TABLE
Extrapolation of Limits on Praetorius's Lute to Other Sizes
at Catholic German Chorthon				at French Ton de Chappelle
lowest	shortest	highest	longest	lowest	shortest	highest	longest
string pitch	string stop	string pitch	string stop	string pitch	string stop	string pitch	string stop
at a'=383	(cm)	at a'=383	(cm)	at a'=375	(cm)	at a'=375	(cm)
c	35	g"	31	c	36	g"	31
B	37		32	B	38		33
	39	f"	34		39	f"	35
A	40	e"	36	A	41	e"	37
	42		39		43		39
G	44	d"	41	G	45	d"	42
	46		43		47		44
F	49	c"	46	F	50	c"	47
E	51	b'	49	E	52	b'	50
	53		52		55		53
D	56	a'	55	D	57	a'	56
	59		58		60		59
C	61	g'	61	C	63	g'	63
BB	64		65	BB	66		66
	67	f'	69		69	f'	70
AA	70	e'	73	AA	72	e'	74
	74		77		75		79
G G	77	d'	82	G G	79	d'	84
	81		87		83		89
FF	85	c'	92	FF	87	c'	94
EE	89	b	97	EE	91	b	99
	93		103		95		105
DD	97	a	109	DD	99	a	112
	102		116		104		118
C C	107	g	123	C C	109	g	125

References

¹ E. Segerman, ‘Strings in the 16th and 17th Centuries’ G.S.J. XXVII (1974), pp. 48-73.

² E. Segerman, ‘A closer look at pitch ranges of gut strings’, FoMRHI Q 40 (July 1985), Comm. 632, p. 51

³ M. Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II (Wolfenbüttel 1618); facs. ed. (Kassel 1958); Eng. trans. D. Z. Crookes (Oxford 1986)

⁴ E. Segerman, ‘Praetorius’s CammerThon Pitch Standard’ G.S.J. L (1997), pp 81-108

⁵ E. Segerman, ‘On Praetorius and the sizes of Renaissance bowed instruments’, FoMRHI Q 89 (Oct. 1997), Comm. 1545, pp. 40-52

⁶ E. Segerman, ‘Praetorius’s plucked instruments and their strings’, FoMRHI Q 92 (July 1998), Comm. 1593, pp. 33-37

⁷ A. Piccinini, Intavolatura di liuto, et di chitarrone; libro primo (Bologna 1623), p.10; facs ed. A.M.I.M.B. (Bologna 1962)

⁸ E. Segerman, ‘On English lute sizes and tunings c. 1600’, FoMRHI Q 51 (Apr. 1988), Comm. 867, pp. 37-8.

⁹ M. Mersenne, Harmonie Universelle (Paris 1636), book 2, proposition 11; Eng. transl. R. E. Chapman (The Hague 1957)

¹⁰ M. Burwell manuscript, facs. ed. edited by R. Spencer, The Burwell Lute Tutor (Leeds 1974), transcribed and discussed in T. Dart, ‘Miss Mary Burwell’s Instruction Book for the Lute’, G.S.J. XI (1958), pp.3-62.

¹¹ T. Salmon, An Essay to the advancement of Musick (London, 1672), p.66.

¹² E. Segerman, ‘English organs and transposition skills’, FoMRHI Q 69 (Oct. 1992), Comm. 1127, pp. 39-41.

¹³ T. Crawford, ‘An Unusual Consort Revealed in an Oxford Manuscript’, Chelys 6 (1975-6), pp. 61-8.

¹⁴ E. Segerman, ‘Mersenne’s pitch standard’, FoMRHI Q 80 (July 1995), Comm. 1374, pp. 39-40.

¹⁵ T. Mace, Musick’s Monument (London 1676), facs. ed. C.N.R.S. (Paris 1958)

¹⁶ J. Talbot, manuscript Christ Church (Oxford) Library Music MS 1187 (c. 1694), transcribed and discussed in M. Prynne, ‘James Talbot’s Manuscript: IV. Plucked Strings - The Lute Family’, G.S.J. XIV (1961), pp. 32-68.

¹⁷ O. Vang & E. Segerman, ‘Two-headed lute news’, FoMRHI Q 13, (Oct. 1978), Comm. 156, pp. 30-38 (pp. 33-6 missing because of a pagination error).


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