Dialogue (Venice 1567)

Of the virtuous and ingenious craft of making musical instruments

Brought again to light by Mimmo Peruffo, stringmaker and lute player in the most beautiful and most excellent City of Vicenza in the month of January of the year of our Lord 2003.

To the most excellent and most illustrious Claudio Ronco of Bergamo, musician and composer of the Most Serene City of Venice, to whom I humbly dedicate my labours — the Author

To the Reader. Among the ingenious arts that human virtue has brought to perfection, that of musical instruments is certainly one of the least known — especially to those who will come after us. Hence this Dialogue, written by their most humble servant, aims to shed some light for them. In Venice, 28 January 1567.

A bowed-violone musician from the Papal State has made a long and dangerous journey, partly by carriage, partly on horseback and finally by river barge from Padua, to visit a renowned German luthier in Venice whose shop is in San Salvador, in Cale degli Stagneri, at the sign of the Black Eagle. The luthier is also gifted with second sight, having learned the art from the Knights of the Cross in Malta.

Venetian Luthier: What does Your Lordship desire?

Roman Commissioner: My most excellent greetings, Master; I am here to commission from you, o most esteemed Master, a bowed Violone. May I then humbly enter your shop?

L.: Your servant, my young Lord, but what kind of bowed Violone should be prepared?

C.: One that sounds a Bass [that is, with the first string in “D”, n.d.r.].

L.: Where will it be played? I mean to ask you, Sir, from which State of Italy Your Lordship has come here to Venice.

C.: I come from the most noble State of the Roman Church, after many wearisome and perilous days on horseback and by carriage, and it is there that I intend to use the instrument once my most esteemed Master has finished building it!

L.: Good! To begin my work I would need, however, to hear a Pipe sounding the very note of the first string (or, as we say here… the scempia), to which Your Lordship will then bring the Violone I am to build, that is, according to Roman use. [In those times (and up until the second half of the 19th century) there existed no single pitch standard; even within the same territorial region and the same historical period, different “pitches” could then coexist, depending on the performing context, such as the sacred or the secular. This was obviously the first thing that any cosmopolitan luthier had to bear in mind when designing a musical instrument of the time, n.d.r.]

C.: I have brought it along expressly!

L.: Excellent, is it tuned exactly to the pitch to which the Violone will then have to refer?

C.: Most exactly, Master [scholars agree that the Roman pitch standard of the 16th–17th century hovered around 390 Hz, n.d.r.].

L.: Excellently, let us then hear your “D”.

C.: Here it is… toooot!

L.: Perfect [the luthier then begins to play, at the same time, a flute from his workshop, until he finds a note equal to that of the Roman pipe, n.d.r.], I see that your pitch corresponds almost to the “B” of the pitch commonly used here in Venice [a pitch standard estimated by scholars at around 470 Hz, n.d.r.]: I can now design the whole instrument, starting at once from the most important thing — the right choice of the length of string between the nut atop the neck and the bridge [the vibrating length, that is, n.d.r.].

C.: Why do you begin there, Master, and not from the outline or other features that seem to me more important?

L.: Because it is the only element that is directly influenced by a condition external to the instrument, a condition from which, alas, we luthiers cannot possibly escape: the sonic qualities and the strength of the strings that will then be fitted. The rest of the instrument will then be entirely proportioned to this starting measure, and may then take whatever shape each luthier judges more graceful or useful to the sound. Now we luthiers must know well, by Rule and by Craft, the qualities of the gut strings we normally buy; that is, we must know when and how much to strain them, when and how much they will yield sound and not noise, in the most perfect and most just imitation of the Human Voice…

C.: What then is the secret, o Divine Master, of the procedure you follow?

L.: Sir, we luthiers now know by Rule that for a given length over which is stretched a string made of the same material, and of whatever gauge, it always breaks (however strange this may certainly seem to you) at the self-same note [this frequency is today called the breaking frequency, n.d.r.]. We have further observed that all is proportional: halving that length, the said vibration will double, and vice versa; the product, that is, of the two elements is a fixed number, perfectly calculable by all of us [called the breaking index, n.d.r.].

Said in other words: setting the string in progressive tension and gradually increasing the load that strains it, we shall at a certain point reach a value of weight at which it will snap instantly. To this extreme quantity of weight, Sir, there will also coincide the highest pitch of which I spoke to you before. Obviously the thicker the string, the more weight we shall need to load for it to burst, but you must understand well, Sir, that it will always burst at the self-same, identical height of vibration. This quantity of weight, if now referred to the unit thickness of 1 mm² [that is, a string of about 1.13 mm diameter, n.d.r.], will be called by posterity the breaking load.

For gut strings at the end of our millennium this will amount to about 34 kg/mm² [yielding a breaking index of about 260 Hz · m: this index is obtained today by inserting the breaking-load value of 34 kg/mm² into the general formula for strings, deriving thence the frequency referred to a length of 1 m, n.d.r.], a value in truth quite similar also for our own gut strings and for those of centuries to come. That is to say, a gut string of 1.13 mm, as it reaches 34 kg of load, that is of tension between a fixed point and a peg (or tuning pin), snaps clean. That is (if, Sir, you had not yet fully understood!), according to the said rule a gut string of any diameter, stretched over a vibrating length of one metre, as it reaches a pitch of about 260 oscillations per pulse-beat, will in an instant cease to live, breaking with a great crack. Obviously the higher the breaking load of the string happens to be, fortunately for us, the higher the attainable pitch may be raised with impunity. There also rises (it must now, I think, finally be clear to you, Sir!) the corresponding breaking index, being entirely related to it. For a horrible material to listen to, which they will call Nylon, a strength far greater than our gut will be reached… [nylon in fact presents a breaking index of over 310 Hz · m, n.d.r.].

And now to us. Let us take a step forward: if as the fixed frequency I now take that of the pitch required for the first string of the said Violone, that is a Roman “D” (which I shall for my own convenience and practice call a Venetian “B”), since as I said the product of vibrating length and pitch is a constant number already determined by us, reasoning in reverse (that is, dividing the breaking index by the pitch required of the first string) I can therefore, by inverse Rule, determine the value of the length at which the first string, once brought to pitch, instantly breaks.

C.: All is clear to me, Master, and I beg you now to continue.

L.: These sorts of string lengths that we calculate, one after another, starting from the various pitches to which the first strings of the great variety of viols, small violas and lutes we happen to build will then be brought — my friend, they are for us luthiers reference limits absolutely impossible to cross: they are our Pillars of Hercules, and we must therefore keep well away from them, that is, remain below a certain safety margin, so as to make the first strings of instruments live long enough.

C.: Well, I think I understand that one should then keep well away from this vibrating length, so as not to risk the certain breaking of these costly gut strings…

L.: Alas, we are instead forced to exploit, as much as possible, the full length of string that the breaking load allows us, coming almost to coincide with the breaking limit itself!

C.: And why ever, Master? Why such rashness? Why must you luthiers, of necessity, keep yourselves so close to the abyss? Once you have established the limiting length near which the first strings die, could one not then stay comfortably far back by a good many measures?

L.: Alas! The problem is the Basses, which nowadays are made of gut alone (for bowed Viols and Lutes we have only strings made of this material): as their diameter grows — a necessary condition for going lower in pitch — they do make the low note deeper, but alas they become, little by little, ever more muffled and dull because of the progressive increase in their stiffness (owing to the great diameter), which chokes the sound produced ever more (and bear in mind, Sir, that the stringmakers have already done, and always do, their utmost to improve their acoustic qualities, having already long since found the best gut suited to Music and devised twisting systems suited to obtaining the maximum elasticity, that is, the greatest sound from these thick strings). So, Sir, only by exploiting the greatest possible length of string can we reduce — as far as is allowed, that is, always keeping the right string tension, neither too slack nor too tight — their diameter, “taking away” as much gut as possible from the string itself [at equal string tension, diameter and vibrating length are indeed inversely proportional, n.d.r.], and so we manage to make them sound still acceptable to our ear; this problem is especially true above all for the lowest Bass of the Viol, but even more so of the Lute, which is plucked and therefore much, much more critical.

C.: Forgive me, o Master, if I insist, but is this not too great a risk for the first strings? Do these poor strings not draw too near, like Icarus, to the sun?

L.: The risk naturally exists, but alas there are no alternatives! By choosing, however, a prudent safety margin for the working vibrating length with respect to the breaking limit (that is, where a first string would break instantly), we manage all the same to secure Basses of a fairly reduced diameter, and therefore sufficiently sonorous, while at the same time guaranteeing a reasonably long life for our first strings. The problem for us instead arises when the gut strings “for the first string” that we manage to find sometimes possess a strength [that is, a breaking load, n.d.r.] lower than those we normally obtain (and from which we derived the right proportions for calculating the vibrating lengths of musical instruments). The best first strings remain for us still those from Munich, even though they are very, very costly [cf. the lute-tablature manuscript of the Brescian nobleman Vincenzo Capirola, c. 1517, n.d.r.].

C.: How far below, then, should this safety margin be chosen, Master?

L.: Not as much as it seems: in the 20th century they will discover that in our time the safety margin is chosen at around two or three semitones below the critical vibrating length, that is, two or three frets less than that particular length which we obtain by calculation, at which the string, the very moment it reaches the pitch required, snaps [this deduction has been drawn, for instance, from a few lutes that survive in original condition and that were built in Venice in the late 16th century: taking into account their vibrating length, between 58 and 59 cm, and the estimated Venetian pitch standard of that time, about 470 Hz, for a first string nominally in “G”, one obtains a whole-tone margin of safety from the breaking-limit vibrating length; this margin was respected even in lutes in “D” minor built in Germany in the second half of the 18th century, n.d.r.]. All of this finds its logical explanation in the behaviour of our first strings, made mainly of lamb gut, though occasionally, rarely, also of goat or wolf. These, right around a whole tone from their breaking frequency, begin abruptly to lose their capacity to stretch, as if they had suddenly turned into steel wires, thus immediately warning of the string’s approaching break. In other words, close to their own death, with but a small turn of the peg the vibration of the said first strings rises far more rapidly than before, thus warning us of the nearness of their fate [see graph no. 1 taken from David Van Edwards: “Lute Strings and Angled Bridges”, in “The Lute”, XXV, 1985, n.d.r.]. This rule is naturally followed also for bowed instruments [historical references may be found in T. Mace: “Musick’s Monument”, London 1676, and in J. Playford: “The Skill of Musick”, London 1664, n.d.r.].

Dialogue 3

C.: Have not the stringmakers, worthy men that they are, sought to produce stronger first strings so as to be able to exploit a greater vibrating length, to the benefit of a further reduction in the diameter of the bass strings and hence a further improvement of their acoustic qualities?

L.: My poor friend, this has already been done by them! Consider that our first strings, unlike those that will be used in the 20th century, are made, as I mentioned before, almost exclusively from whole lamb gut; all our strings are moreover carefully sulphured, that is, subjected to the prolonged action of the fumes of burnt sulphur [sulphur dioxide is produced, n.d.r.] within a closed chamber: for centuries they will think (and write) that this operation serves only to bleach the material, but then they will begin to think that this treatment [similar to the vulcanisation of rubber, n.d.r.] also manages to increase the elastic qualities and the strength of the material. Their gut, instead, is always cut first into strips and then twisted together; moreover it is hardly sulphured any longer (at least not for the time we deem necessary: more than two days), at most it is bleached with treatments of various kinds that bring however no benefit from the point of view of sound, while there is a risk of weakening the material if the treatment is too vigorous. Our first strings are moreover treated with Rock Alum in order to harden them further and thus better withstand the continuous strain, which only Atlas can understand better than any worthy man!

C.: Will the cutting of the gut into strips not create problems from the acoustic point of view?

L.: They will not verify it (nor can I tell you anything on the matter…). What does seem certain to me, however, is that a first string so made will perhaps last less than ours, owing to the greater tendency to surface abrasion from the excessive smoothing they will perform with those infernal machines of theirs that they will call “grinders”, and which they will try to counter by varnishing the strings, whereas ours are simply oiled. I must say, though, that perhaps towards the middle of the coming century the strings from Munich will perhaps also be varnished [in the diary of Samuel Pepys one reads: “18 March 1667, Mr. Caesar told me a pretty experiment of his, of angling with a minnikin — a gut string varnished over”, n.d.r.].

But now let us see about beginning to design this bowed Violone.

C.: Excellent, Master!

L.: Through my knowledge I can also clearly deduce that for a first string brought to “B” [Venetian, that is 247 Hz, n.d.r.], that is the one that is equivalent in unison to your “D”, I obtain the breaking of a first string of ordinary manufacture at 1.00 metres of vibrating length [this result is obtained today by dividing the breaking index by the pitch required for the first string: 261:247 Hz = about 1.00 m, n.d.r.]. As I stated before, Sir, I shall choose a prudent shortening of three semitones, that is three frets: this will be the working vibrating length, so that when the Viol is tuned to the “D” of your most esteemed City, the first string will in fact be close to its own breaking point, that is a whole tone below the limiting frequency I described earlier [the importance that this design criterion comes to assume over the course of the Renaissance and the following century must by no means be overlooked, being the only one able to secure the greatest sonority for Basses of pure gut. This rule is constantly confirmed throughout the treatise literature of those times, where, in a kind of conceptual mirroring, it was recommended that the first string of the lute, of the bowed or the fretted viol, and of the violin, for “solo” repertoires, always be tuned to the highest pitch allowed, just short, that is, of its “exitus”, n.d.r.]. Bear in mind, Sir, that the luthiers of the next two centuries will push, with bowed Viols, as far as four to six semitones below the critical pitch, owing to the appearance of the new wound-gut Basses (as we shall see further on…), but no further, except in the case of the largest instruments, such as double-bass Violones [see comment 632 by E. Segerman: “A Closer Look at Pitch Ranges of Gut Strings”, in F.o.M.R.H.I. Bull. no. 40, April 1985, who analyses the proportions of the vibrating lengths of the musical instruments shown in the plates of Praetorius’s “Syntagma Musicum”, 1619, against their presumed pitch, n.d.r.]. The working vibrating length of the Viol will therefore be 0.88 m (repeatedly multiplying the limiting vibrating length by 0.94388 gives a drop of one semitone at a time, that is, one fret. This coefficient is indeed equal to the twelfth root of two, or more simply to the ratio 17/18 [Vincenzo Galilei’s rule of eighteen, a method still as useful today as it was then for finding the position of the frets or fret-ties on a musical instrument, n.d.r.]). Bear well in mind, my young Disciple, that this length of string must always be measured from the nut to the middle of the f-holes; I mean, however, to add that should you find yourself having to play in the company of other instruments, such as certain Pipes or Harpsichords or Spinets whose pitch standard is somewhat different from yours, it may become necessary, as occasion demands, to move the bridge forward or backward, changing if need be the gauge of the strings: thinner ones if the bridge moves away from the tailpiece, thicker ones if instead it draws nearer. Thus, by judiciously varying the length of string, our Divine Rule will always be respected without there being any need to change instrument [see the recommendations of Silvestro Ganassi: “Regola Rubertina”, 1542, but also the abundant iconography on the matter, n.d.r.]. In this way one will avoid either the premature breaking of precious first strings or a Bass sound that is too weakened. The bridge, in other words, with its mobility, allows us to resolve most fully the problem of the multitude of pitch standards in use across these States of Italy, without causing any harm to the voice of our instruments or to the life of the gut strings themselves.

C.: And now, Divine Master, what is the next step?

L.: Once the vibrating length is decided, nothing remains but to proportion the rest of the said instrument accordingly, because you must know, Sir, that everything in a musical instrument, much as in Architecture and in Painting, is entirely related.

C.: Of course, indeed, you said so at the outset!

L.: Here, with this vibrating length the sixth and lowest string will have a thickness of only 2.0 mm, a thickness that also arises from what I subjectively hold to be a “right” value of tactile stiffness [the working tension, n.d.r.], at the pitch you have requested.

C.: A right value, Master?

L.: Yes, here, try feeling it yourself, pressing the said lowest string here near the bridge of this Violone (which is, naturally, at pitch) that I have just finished building and which has a string length very similar to the one you have now commissioned of me: as you can verify (making trials with various thicknesses…), there exists an optimal sensation of hardness or softness beneath the pressing finger, at the required pitch that is, which allows the greatest acoustic result to be obtained: the string is, in short, neither too slack nor too taut. The lute treatises of the coming century will, in any case, be perfectly clear: at the pitch intended for the instrument, the strings must be chosen so that they are neither too hard nor too soft under the fingers and, a very important point, that this sensation of string hardness be equal among all the strings of the instrument. This rule will naturally be followed also for bowed instruments.

C.: But then, Master, our instruments are strung at equal working tension!

L.: Apparently so; in truth things are rather different.

C.: And that is?

L.: Let us speak again of the sensation of stiffness beneath the fingers: we understand it as the sensation of resistance that the said strings offer while they are lowered towards the soundboard; a lowering that occurs when we press them one at a time to test their hardness or softness. Now, Sir from Rome, you must always remember the obligation we have to seek always the same uniformity of hardness among all the strings of the said instruments. Now, posterity will believe that this corresponds to what they will call “disposition at equal tension”. According to the principles of Galileo of Florence, then, these our strings, when all strained to what they will call equal kilograms, ought also to show the very same hardness beneath the finger that presses them, or lower toward the soundboard by the very same amount.

But what is right in theory does not work in common practice! Try, Sir, hanging two strings of quite different thickness but of the same length each from a nail in a wall, and attaching at the end of both two weights of the very same weight, that is, producing the very same tension: is it not true that the thinner of the said strings will stretch more? Above all, is it not also true that the thinner strings need, moreover, many more turns of the peg than the thick ones to bring them to the right pitch? And likewise the said strings, calculated for what they will call “equal tension”, once brought to pitch, will each stretch in a manner quite different from the other: most of all the thin ones, less the thicker ones. So it is that their rule, however valid, will lose its reason for being, save on parchment alone. In practice their tensions (in kilograms!) will fall more upon the thin strings, because these will have become even finer under the strain of being brought to pitch. I mean to say, Sir, that by following the said Rule by calculation and not by practice, they will discover that their string-sets, pressed with the fingers string by string, will then show an increase in hardness as one moves on to press those lower strings endowed with greater thickness. And so the tactile uniformity that all of us incessantly require as an indispensable condition will be lost! Unfortunately even the worthy stringmakers near them will for the most part follow this same mistaken idea.

Those who will occupy themselves with our music and our instruments will have to make an effort to understand, moreover, the differences! Let them observe and study, for example, the violin strings of the age to come, that of that virtuoso Paganini, say: is it not true that the various gauges of the E, A, D string that they will discover to be in use in that century lead only to tensions they will call “scalar” and not equal tension? Is it not true that they will write, in that century so near the invention of flying machines, that stringing at equal tension does not achieve, on the violin, true fifths, and also that the resistance opposed to the bow’s rubbing, as one moves from the thin toward the thick, becomes ever more pronounced and therefore worthy of adjustment by means of a proportioned and judicious gauge of strings? So then our stringing criteria, which they will call… ha, here it is… “equal feel”, will entail a calculation on parchment no longer of equal tension among all the strings, but rather of a certain, progressive increase of tension moving gradually toward the thinner ones, so as to compensate, with wisdom and artifice, the greater and progressive loss of thickness that they show once brought to pitch. Then, in the final condition of being optimally tuned, every gut string will settle at its own proper thickness, so that in the end all will truly be at the same tension as understood by Galileo, or the same hardness beneath the finger that presses them… They will still have to search, still have to experiment…

Forgive my vehemence, Sir, I understand it is now time to move on: I conclude by saying that the more a string has been twisted, the more it will give way from its initial thickness under tension; and this because of the greater capacity for stretching that increased twist grants the material compared to one less twisted. Now you should know, Sir, that a secret of the stringmakers for making the low strings sonorous (rather thick and therefore tending to be stiff) is precisely to make them highly twisted, so as to gain the greatest possible elasticity (which is always gained by twisting a string to the utmost) and thereby reduce what the moderns will call the modulus of elasticity.

C.: And for the first strings?

L.: For the first strings (and here I mean especially those of the lute) the opposite is instead true: being by their nature rather thin, they do not present the problem of elasticity but rather that of guaranteeing us the greatest tensile strength and resistance to surface abrasion.

Dialogue 4

C.: And then, Master?

L.: It has been found, then, that these strings must instead be manufactured with a low degree of twist and also treated with Rock Alum, so that they become harder still [this may be deduced from the indications given by J. Dowland in the “Varietie of Lute Lessons”, London 1610: the best lute first strings should present themselves hard and sharp at one end of the string and snap clean when bitten with the teeth without fraying: behaviour typical only of strings made in low twist, n.d.r.]: elasticity is thereby lost (a matter of little importance here), but strength is gained instead, indispensable for these thin first strings, as air is to us. This increase in strength benefits in turn the “amount” of vibrating length that it becomes possible to exploit, which we know works to the benefit of reducing the thickness of the lowest string, as you now well know. But let us return once more to the concept of “tactile sensation of stiffness”.

C.: Is there more, Master?

L.: Naturally! As I said before, in the 20th century it will take them quite a while to understand that an equal tactile sensation of stiffness is not the same thing as equal working tension, except in the hypothetical case that I use strings of the same diameter and of the very same degree of twist and elastic yield: they will make quite a muddle of it indeed! Well! It seems clear to me by now that while the concept of “equal tactile stiffness” among the strings can absolutely admit no subjective interpretation (equal means equal!), different is the case of the “right” amount of stiffness to be sought in the strings of an instrument (that is, in practice, the choice of the appropriate gauges), which is subjective.

C.: And why, Master?

L.: Because this value is subject to a great many variables, some of a personal or rather aesthetic bearing, such as the Musician’s school of training, how and in what setting one plays — personal taste, in short; others tied to the very nature of the instrument, such as its design, the thicknesses adopted in the soundboard, the type of bridge, the height of the strings above the fingerboard, and lastly the vibrating length.

C.: Even the vibrating length, Master?

L.: Indeed, precisely the vibrating length: as this increases, a string strained at the same working tension becomes ever softer under the pressure of the fingers [increasing the length of a string, at equal working tension, increases the longitudinal elastic yield of the material, n.d.r.], so it is obvious that to recover that most subjective and just tactile sensation of stiffness beneath the fingers, one must increase its diameter, that is, in other words, increase its working tension. Thus for the Viol I have built, of vibrating length similar to yours, I judge suitable a diameter for the Bourdon [the sixth string, n.d.r.] of 2.0 mm [corresponding to a working tension of 6.0 kg, n.d.r.]. Had I not exploited the maximum vibrating length, this gauge (in order to maintain the same tactile sensation of stiffness as before) would have had to be much thicker, and therefore dull, so as not to allow this lower register to be made to sound decently at all. Certainly, I could have reduced the measure of the Bourdon still further, thereby making the instrument work at a lower value of tactile stiffness, but other problems would then have arisen, weighing heavily upon the acoustic yield and the precision of the instrument’s response [inharmonicity of the string, instability of pitch, n.d.r.]. In conclusion, this is the thickness that provides me with an optimal acoustic sensation and tactile stiffness (string tension) from every point of view. I do not deny, Sir, that for you, as for other worthy Musicians, it might be slightly different!

C.: Certainly.

L.: By the way, why is it that the Viol, like the Lute, has only six strings for a span of frequency between the first and the last open string of two perfect octaves? This second instrument, for example, had even fewer a hundred years ago: only the five highest, and all, as today, doubled. Bowed instruments too suffered such limits, and even though some instruments had as many as seven strings, like the Lira da braccio, you will observe, Sir, that those laid over the fingerboard, that is the first five, never reached the two-octave span open that we have today. The Bourdon (with its octave), which was placed off the fingerboard (that is, with a greater vibrating length), must not deceive you: remember to consider the benefit gained in reducing the diameter of this string owing to the increase of its own vibrating length, since the two things are inversely proportional. Thus, all told, the diameter of the Bourdon never reached the limits that we consider critical for producing an acceptable sound.

C.: Where, esteemed Master, lies the secret of the six strings?

L.: It might seem that the reasons are exclusively aesthetic, owing, that is, to the kind of music we perform and to the perfect balance that the addition of the sixth Bass brings to the instrument; the truth (as I believe, and as I also suggest to Readers) is instead tied above all to reasons of technical opportunity, to what we are permitted by the stringmakers, by their manufacturing skill, in other words.

C.: How so, Master? I fail to understand!

L.: Remember, Sir, that gut is always the master here! Six strings, or courses in the case of the Lute, is the most that the quality of our current strings allows us for an open span of precisely two octaves, and the reason is simple.

C.: Master, if you permit, let me try to say it myself: by exploiting the maximum vibrating length, the first string already works at the highest pitch allowed — beyond that one cannot go, for it would break; this, then, I would call the upper constraint.

L.: But now answer me, Sir, first this other insidious and pressing question: why, why do these instruments of ours, such as the Lute or the bowed Violones, have intervals of fourths and thirds between the strings starting from the first string? Why these intervals and not others?

C.: Master, I know not now what to say… perhaps because this solution greatly eases the left hand… perhaps for reasons of harmony…

L.: And yet it is not so difficult as it seems… our Forefathers thought this through most well, here now is my idea: our strings, Sir, being made up of the union of several whole lamb guts (according to the gauge to be obtained), cannot be subjected to any process of diameter reduction by what will be called mechanical grinding (so as to obtain, ourselves too, the whole convenient range of measures that will instead be allowed to posterity, equipped with a machine made for the purpose). The reason is simple: we cannot guarantee, by hand, the perfect roundness of the string as only a machine of the future is able to assure; we shall therefore have to throw away a great many as faulty! Our strings, in the end, can only be surface-polished with an abrasive plant [horsetail, or scouring rush, n.d.r.], which we luthiers also use along with cuttlebone. The final diameter thus depends, almost exclusively, on the number of guts used and not on the polishing. Moreover we do not possess the sensitive measuring instruments for gauge that they will call micrometres, plate string-gauges, and so on. Now, Sir, our stringmakers have always taken great pains to see that the lambs, their age and their feeding are carefully and consistently tended, so as to obtain guts that yield strings of a diameter as similar and as reproducible over time as possible, given the same number of guts used. Now, Sir, pay particular attention: if we go from a string made up of a single gut (that is, the lute’s first string) to one of two, one can notice a large step between the two thicknesses, and likewise between two and three guts, though of a slightly lesser nature, until it is no longer noticeable at all for adjacent strings made up of many combined guts. What I mean to explain to you is that we cannot, in short, have intermediate values of thickness available (unlike posterity), and above all for the thin diameters obtained from few guts. In other words, we have no string of two and a half guts! By virtue of the gap in diameter existing between a string made of one gut and one of two, between one of two and one of three, and so on, only the interval of a fourth between the strings of lutes can assure the condition of equal tactile stiffness, a situation that all of us seek in the strings of an instrument. This is seen very clearly if one lays out for comparison (in what posterity will call a graph) the string diameters obtainable from an increasing number of guts added, at various pitches. This is very true for the lute, whose first string is made up of a single small gut alone [see Athanasius Kircher: “Musurgia Universalis”, Rome 1650, pp. 440–476, n.d.r.], followed by tradition by the bowed Violones, which follow the lute’s tuning principle. For four-string bowed small viols, and in particular the soprano (that is, the violin), the problem is not so keenly felt: they are indeed tuned in fifths, and this perhaps by virtue of the fact that the first string of the said violin at once takes, from the outset, the thickness of the fourth string of lutes (as Mersenne the Frenchman will say), which is made up of at least four guts. This fact by itself limits the difference existing between adjacent diameters, which instead proves quite marked between the first string of the lute and those following of the second and third courses.

L.: Well, let us go on then: it remains to define the lower constraint, which by its nature is far less definable than the first constraint.

C.: I think I understand that it has to do with the maximum diameter that is acceptable from the acoustic point of view, since these thick bass strings exploit, I believe, only a minimal fraction of their available “reserve” of strength; they run, in other words, no risk at all.

L.: And so it is indeed.

C.: I think I have it! The gauge of the sixth, lowest string coincides with the maximum diameter that our guts can allow us from the point of view of sound — that is, apt to provide a sonority still satisfactory in our judgement (always on the premise that the vibrating length has already been exploited to the fullest)!

Dialogue 5

L.: Well done, my ingenious disciple! In the past (up until the late 1400s, n.d.r.) musical instruments had a smaller span of frequency between the first and the last open string, because there did not yet exist, it seems, the manufacturing skill of the stringmaker (who has today brought this art to sublime levels), and the Musicians made their own strings, with results often uncertain, in any case far from the perfection that befits Music.

In the Lute, an instrument even more delicate from the acoustic point of view than the Viol [low working tensions and a vibration imposed solely by a single initial impulse, not sustained continuously by a bow, n.d.r.], the ingenious idea was devised of pairing a thin string tuned exactly an octave above each Bass, so as to get around the obstacle by another route and restore to the Bass itself what the skill of stringmakers still today cannot manage: a low sound rich in upper harmonics. Master Virdung the German wrote of this a few years ago in his most worthy Treatise. Quite curious, then, the foolish claim of posterity, who will hold that the hand-viol used today above all in Spain, but here too until not long ago, has all its courses in unison, basses included. Sir, the strings of the Spaniards come for the most part from Munich, and were this the case, we too would gladly have avoided, long since, some graceful and ingenious novelty for the Basses, sparing ourselves the tedious octaves…

However that may be, we have thus arrived at the conclusion that musical instruments are designed and built around the type of string available: gut at the centre, wood around it. This concept will trouble the scholars of the 20th century not a little!

C.: Well… and the stringmakers?

L.: I have already said that they have so far done their utmost. I must tell you, however, that right here in Italy they are beginning to discover the system that will somewhat revolutionise matters, that is, the possibility of weighting the gut used to make the low strings, so as to greatly reduce their working diameter, hence gaining greater elasticity and acoustic yield.

C.: This seems to me indeed a stroke of genius!

L.: Indeed, and to think that only at the end of the 20th century will they realise that this is precisely the manufacturing secret of the pure-gut Basses built after 1570!

C.: How can this come to pass, Master?

L.: It happens. Fragments of these strings and written documents will in fact not survive, and so they will fall back on alternative working hypotheses, such as the one holding that the pure-gut bass strings in use in the coming century, the 1600s, were made by twisting two thinner strings together like a marine hawser, so as to produce a more elastic structure and hence a potentially more sonorous one.

C.: And is that not a good idea?

L.: It might be; the fact is that the only supporting evidence for them will be the name by which the English of the time of Elizabeth the Great will call a new type of string (manufactured in the region of Bologna) that is already beginning to be available in our markets, and which they, the English, call a “Catline” [“line” in English would indeed mean a kind of marine hawser, n.d.r.], though already within a decade of this find they will instead think the name derives from Catalonia. A string so made, or rather the attempt at reconstruction that will be made in the 20th century, will however lose the peculiarity of being smooth on the surface, contrary, that is, to what the treatises for lute and viol will write in the next century, and to the evidence of paintings. Only in the last stretches of the 20th century will scholars discover a book by Ramelli (who is now still a boy) that will be entitled “Le artificiose macchine…”, written in the not-distant year of our Lord 1599, where they will find that only the thickest strings of the large Violones use this particular twisting technique…

C.: Master, how will they realise that the secret of the Basses is the weighting of the gut?

L.: It will be an almost accidental discovery: taking measurements on various lutes that will survive the injury of time, they will notice that the diameter of the holes for the bass strings in the bridges of these instruments will be far, far too narrow to allow a string of pure gut passing through to reach working tensions deemed suitable for that pitch presumed on the basis of the instrument’s vibrating length according to our Divine Rule. This consideration will naturally also hold true for strings built according to the marine-hawser structure, thereby disproving its historical application for all other instruments except the largest Violones. It must nonetheless be made clear that nothing forbids the use of both systems at once, deriving from them undoubted acoustic advantages. Perhaps this is precisely the case of the Basses of the large Violones, since hawser-twisting alone does not seem at all sufficient to make these extremely thick strings yield sound; unfortunately, Sir, on this I cannot tell you anything for certain!

The musical iconography of the coming century will then show them that the bass strings, when they appeared coloured, were represented exclusively in dark colours such as brown and dark red — and only these [albeit in canvases by artists from various regions of Europe and different historical periods, n.d.r.]: a consequence, they will say, of the process of weighting the gut, not therefore attributable to reasons of an aesthetic nature. For this purpose, indeed, in the treatises of our future they will cite only strings coloured green, blue or flesh-tone, colours that will never be found in the iconographic representations of bass strings. Here is meant the use of Cinnabar, of golden Litharge, of Minium, of Orpiment, of Lead Oxide, and whatever else the stringmakers find convenient and suitable. But in the paintings of the coming century the Basses of pure gut will not always be coloured, but golden like the first strings: they will then manage to show that it is nonetheless possible to weight the gut without altering its own natural, yellowish colour; thus a Painter, rightly, could do nothing other than paint all the strings of the same appearance: that of natural gut. That is to say, one may weight the guts by means of Silver Litharge, of a yellowish colour. However that may be, these dark Bourdons of pure gut will be found positioned, in the musical instruments shown in paintings, precisely where strings of natural gut such as those we use would begin to show their acoustic limits, and precisely where the moderns will mount those Basses that they will call wound, wrapped or covered (of which I shall tell you before long), and this will constitute for them a further piece of supporting evidence.

C.: No small task of reconstructing our history!

L.: It will take several years. Meanwhile they will also discover the Statutes of the Roman Stringmakers, your own most excellent City, where they will learn that a first string was strictly required to be made with two [the Roman stringmakers of the mid-1600s, according to Kircher, instead used a single gut for the lute’s first string, n.d.r.] whole lamb guts, and whoever transgressed paid the steepest of fines!

C.: In what year will this important document be written?

L.: It will be drawn up in the year of our Lord 1642, but the first Statute will date back to 1587, and the whole will last until 1799, when the Roman Stringmakers’ Company will be suppressed forever.

C.: Will this discovery be so important to them?

L.: Yes, because it will allow scholars to estimate the diameter of the first strings in use on lutes 350 years earlier, and consequently to derive, by a simple calculation, an estimate also of their working tension, and to compare it with that deduced from the holes in the bridges of surviving instruments of this kind.

C.: And then?

L.: Then they will realise that this comparison supports the weighting theory admirably!

C.: And how, Master?

L.: But it is obvious: if the gut of the Basses was not weighted, then researchers will find themselves having to admit that these instruments worked under conditions of strong inequality of working tension among the strings (working tension understood, obviously, as tactile sensation of stiffness, n.d.r.): extremely low for the Bourdons (by virtue of the reduced diameter of the holes found in the bridges), much higher for the first strings (based on the indications of the Roman Stringmakers’ Statutes and the practical verification tests the stringmakers will carry out) — in dramatic contradiction, however, with all the 17th-century treatises they will manage to find, which will preach ad nauseam the pursuit of an equal tactile sensation among all the strings, if not indeed — in the theoretical treatises — equal working tension itself [on this second aspect see for instance M. Mersenne: “Harmonie Universelle”, Paris 1636, n.d.r.]. The strings of the lute, as everyone knows, were then those universally used on bowed instruments…

C.: By Diana, now I understand!

L.: I am glad for you, but now let us conclude this discourse on the Basses: what, Sir, will be the consequence of this technological improvement, that is, the weighting of gut?

C.: Well, I have no idea…

L.: Towards the end of this century there will be a true revolution: lutes will begin to be able to make use of unisons even on the middle courses, but above all to expand their low register with several added Basses on the same fingerboard, up to the diameter limits typical of the sixth and lowest string of the Lutes we use today [in six courses, n.d.r.], but tuned, by virtue of the weighting, as much as a fourth (sometimes a fifth) below this our sixth course [the new weighted Basses most probably benefited from the very same twisting techniques used on the “old” unweighted gut Basses; consequently the elastic modulus of the string underwent no change. Thus the lower constraint, that is, in other words, the maximum acoustically acceptable diameter, did not change. The working frequency, instead, could drop by a fourth or a fifth. On the basis of this pitch range, and the presumed invariance of the elastic modulus, it is calculated that the specific gravity of the weighted Basses of the time was around 2.0 to 2.3 times the density of the starting natural material, n.d.r.]. Bowed instruments will not increase the number of strings, but one may often find, as an alternative, also a certain shortening of vibrating lengths [for scholars such as Segerman, for instance, this will be around 20%, n.d.r.] compared to our present ones, so as to ease the performance of the various musical repertoires [the rule of seeking the greatest vibrating length, as can be seen, is still substantially respected by 17th-century luthiers, n.d.r.].

C.: What other unheard-of cunning will be devised, o Master?

L.: On the Lute, an instrument critical above all others from the point of view of sound production, towards the end of our century they will place several Basses (to be played in this case exclusively open) on an extension of the neck that they will call the theorbo-neck, so as to obtain…

C.: So as to obtain, through the great extension of the vibrating length, a strong reduction in the diameter of the Bourdons, with the advantages we know, thereby allowing also the use of ordinary, that is unweighted, gut!

L.: I would say that is exactly right (and such will be the cry of the Archlute, a new instrument come to light); another stratagem, however, will come into use to get around the dimensional limits that the breaking load of gut imposes on the vibrating length.

Dialogue 6

C.: And what will it be?

L.: It will consist in laying out the first string (as is already done nowadays…), but afterwards this will be done also for the second, exactly an octave below. In this way the true first string will in fact become, respectively, the second or the third, allowing the use of vibrating lengths considerably greater than what could have been done with the Lute tuned according to our ordinary sequence of intervals.

C.: But will this not create problems of a harmonic nature, Master?

L.: Absolutely not; this stratagem will indeed be used exclusively for instruments of low tessitura, suited above all to bass parts and later to accompanying Singers, or to performing further bass parts, according to the new, future way of making music, where the effect of tone colour and acoustic yield will matter far more than belonging to the correct octave of the notes making up the various chordal passages. The fact is that with this system a Bass of, say, 2.0 mm diameter will be reduced to only 1.4 mm, with enormous advantages for the strength and duration of the sound produced. This will be the moment of the Chitarrone, or Theorbo as one may prefer to call it; to this device they will rapidly combine also the theorbo-neck extension of the Bourdon strings in imitation of the Archlute, thereby increasing the overall acoustic yield of the Basses, to the great delight of the ears of those present [on this subject see the introduction to the “Intavolatura di Leuto” of Alessandro Piccinini, Bologna 1623, n.d.r.]. It is obvious, Sir, that with these enormous vibrating lengths in the low registers it will be superfluous to use weighted strings, which will instead be employed preferentially on Lutes with several Bourdons laid on fingerboards of usual vibrating length; and note, Sir, that here too the last Bass on the theorbo-neck (that is, the fourteenth) takes, more or less, as it happens, the very same diameter as the sixth and last course of our Lutes. The reason you now already know [the same twisting techniques, the same elastic modulus, the same acoustic limit ultimately embodied by the maximum usable diameter, n.d.r.]. Certain of these new instruments will sometimes be strung in metal in imitation of the most noble Citterns: the vibrating lengths of these Chitarroni, or Theorbos as one may call them, will then, of necessity, have to be considerably shorter than those in use with gut. The reason you can already guess: these our wires for Cittern, Spinet or Harpsichord, in silver, iron and brass, have a breaking index far lower than gut [see the work of Cary Karp: “The Pitches of 18th Century Strung Keyboard Instruments, with Particular Reference to Swedish Material”, Stockholm 1984, n.d.r.], even though their tensile strength is instead considerably greater [the opposite effect induced by specific gravity on the maximum obtainable frequency should be recalled, n.d.r.]. Thus for certain Chitarroni that will survive the ages, endowed with very great length of string (scholars knowing that these instruments took as the pitch of the first string an “A”, or sometimes a nominal “G”, naturally referred to the local pitch standard), one might restring only the fifth and sixth strings on the fingerboard with Cittern wire, and all the Contrabasses on the theorbo-neck [as Piccinini writes in his already-cited book, though there are undoubted problems in interpreting this passage, referred to the Pandora, n.d.r.], since the pitch required for the first four courses is simply not attainable with the metals of our time. Unless, that is, these instruments are given vibrating lengths suited to their own physical limits.

C.: Certainly!

L.: And now, my friend, we have almost reached the conclusion, where I shall tell you of the errors of the moderns.

C.: Errors, o Master?

L.: Indeed, alas, but first I must explain to you the last revolution in strings, which will occur after the year of our Lord 1655, or perhaps 1660.

C.: I want to know everything! Tell me, Master, I beg you!

L.: Certainly, certainly… in that period some worthy man will discover that a thin wire of silver, copper or brass can be wound around an ordinary gut string, and that the acoustic result will be astonishing — we speak here, obviously, of the Basses [Rousseau, in his book of 1687, “Traité de la Viole”, reports that the viol player Sainte Colombe introduced this new type of string in France around 1675, also adding a seventh, low string to the bass viola da gamba. The English treatises, despite the first “official” announcement given by Playford in his 1664 method for the viola da gamba, will almost entirely ignore them until 1694 — that is, until Talbot’s manuscript — while of Germany nothing is known until 1685, the year of publication of Daniel Speer’s treatise: “Grundrichtiger Unterricht der musikalischen Kunst”, Ulm 1687. In Italy the first mention of the term “Violoncello” dates from 1665, an instrument for which the use of a wound fourth string is known for certain, although the Italian iconographic record up to 1681 shows so far only mountings of pure gut. But the very first mention of their existence will be, in spite of everyone, English, and precisely from 1659: “…Goretsky hath an invention of lute strings covered with silver wyer, or strings which make a most admirable musick. Mr. Boyle”, and further: “…string of guts done about with silver wyer makes a very sweet musick, being of Goretsky’s invention…”; The Hartlib Papers Project, “Ephemerides”, year 1659, 59,59-5,6 and 59,59-8, Sheffield University Library. Document found by Mr. Penny Gonk of Manchester, n.d.r.]. Thus will be broken forever the centuries-old bondage that compels all of us to make the first string work at the highest pitch allowed (or nearly so) in order to safeguard the response of the gut Basses. Farewell, Basses of pure gut! Farewell, old and refined technology (which, Sir, in the 1600s will reach the greatest heights of manufacturing complexity): a simple wire of metal wound around a core of gut, even of poor quality [Louis Spohr, in his 1834 violin method, nonetheless recommends the greatest care that overly poor gut not be wound, n.d.r.], will suffice to work the miracle: this alone will be enough to make new generations of stringmakers forget, within the space of but a few years, the skill of their fathers, since the bowed instruments and the Musicians who will avail themselves of these new strings will have them wound directly by the luthiers and not by the stringmakers, who will find themselves compelled, of necessity, to simplify the production techniques practised until then.

C.: What will be the advantage of using these windings over gut?

L.: A sound bright, persistent and powerful! To the luthiers it will seem too good to be true, and so there will be great effort to exploit the occasion, translating in practice into the shortening of the vibrating lengths of certain musical instruments, so loud, indeed too loud, will the new strings sound! This, needless to say, will greatly favour an agile and virtuosic performance of scores, decisively conditioning the way of writing and of making music. The Violoncello will thus develop, shortening the fingerboards of the cumbersome bass Violin, and will therefore be the legitimate child of the new discovery, with its first string a full six to eight semitones below the breaking vibrating length, or if you prefer, Sir, below the critical frequency. One grave problem alone will remain: the timbral difference between the higher strings in pure gut and those wound. An emblematic case will be the fourth string of the seven-string viola da gamba [Forqueray, the French viol player, around 1760 suggests making this “transition” string with a light, open winding, so as to reduce the timbral leap to the following string in natural gut, n.d.r.], and the fourth string of the 19th-century Guitar with respect to the third: they will drag this problem along, Sir, all the way to the late 20th century!

C.: The thing that has struck me most in your discourse, Master, is to learn that within the space of but a few years all the labours of our worthy men will be forgotten!

L.: And indeed, they will forget everything: such is history! Are we not, after all, subject to this same unhealthy vice ourselves? Few indeed, Sir, after the discovery of copper-plate printing, know today the art of making, as was still practised but a few decades ago, those magnificent hand-written books that we may now see in the collections of certain wealthy lords. The saddest thing will be that no one will remember any longer our great labour — the labour of succeeding in making these blessed instruments sound in their low registers — nor the Divine Rule to which we have all lovingly submitted ourselves for centuries in order to solve this same problem. Thus, when they discover the beauty of our music played on copies of our instruments, they will find themselves immersed in a thousand and one difficulties, being deprived of our culture — the culture of gut.

C.: The culture of gut?

L.: Indeed, and in the 20th century they will do their utmost to recover it!

C.: Master, what does it consist of?

L.: For Musicians, in knowing how to recognise at a glance a good string from an unsuitable or poor-quality one, and for us luthiers, the Divine Rule of proportions I showed you before; but now, Sir, you must learn the three basic types that will be in use in the coming century, the golden century of gut.

C.: I am indeed most curious to learn them!

L.: Well then! The 17th-century treatises for Lute, and also for Viol, will divide strings into three types [cf. T. Mace: “Musick’s Monument”, London 1676, and the already-cited work of Robert Dowland: “Varietie of Lute Lessons”, London 1610, n.d.r.]: those for the highest registers alone, among which the best will certainly be the “Minikins” (other documents recommend instead the “Romans”, n.d.r.); those for middle registers, or “Venice Catlins”; and lastly the Basses: the “Lyons”, or the deep-red “Pistoys”. For Bourdons the “Varietie” recommends instead the “Venice Catlins”, suggested by Mace for the middle strings. This division into classes will be by no means arbitrary or tied to a purely commercial matter; each class of division will indeed implicitly indicate the possession of specific constructional characteristics suited to meeting the acoustic and mechanical needs of each register of the Lute and of the bowed Viols. For the first strings I propose the pursuit of maximum tensile strength and resistance to surface abrasion; for the strings of the middle registers, of more substantial diameter, the problem will be to increase elasticity to the utmost, so as effectively to counter the internal damping coefficient that the strings of these registers, owing to their greater diameter, begin to show [and this will most probably be achieved by devising twisting systems more complex than those used for the first strings, so as to reduce the elastic modulus as much as possible, n.d.r.]. For the Basses matters will push further still: it will not suffice, indeed, given the diameters involved and hence the damping effect on sound, to employ the best twisting techniques, but there will be need of that extra something that only the weighting of gut can give.

C.: To each register its specific string, and to each string its specific manufacturing technology, Master!

L.: Exactly. This is one of the things that in the 20th century they will find hard to accept: their strings will in fact comprise only two constructional types — the higher ones in bare gut, and the wound Basses. The process of refinement of our strings, which took hundreds if not thousands of years, may be effectively summed up thus: among the various materials available for the musical instruments of men of a very distant time — that is, horsehair or braided roots, or animal sinew — two in particular were singled out: silk and gut. Of these two, the second gained the upper hand in our Mediterranean regions, probably owing to the easy availability of the raw material. But not all gut was equal! Only over the course of centuries would it be slowly discovered that the best was that of sheep: but what was the most suitable age? Having identified the most suitable animal, it was then necessary to identify also the best age at which to obtain a good starting gut, that is, that of the youngest animal. Yet I remind you, Sir, that already in the Bible everything had been established: did not King David play the Kinnor, an instrument strung with gut strings, whose name derives perhaps from Kinnim, meaning lamb? Having thus found, once and for all, the best gut, the next step consisted in refining, little by little, the various stages of manufacture, seeking the best twisting systems, that is, those allowing one to obtain either extremely strong strings (the first strings), or highly elastic ones (suited, that is, to the middle registers and to the Basses). But it did not stop there: methods were then devised for enhancing the predisposition “to make sound”, already inherent in the natural product, that is, subjecting it to treatments that the moderns will call “chemical”, so as to reduce as much as possible the residual plastic properties of the gut in favour of the elastic ones: rather like turning a soft iron wire into the springy steel of Toledo swords — such are the characteristics of the strings in use today! One effort, however, still remains lacking: the weighting of the gut, which brings the deep sound toward the low register, transforming it from a symbol of Air into a symbol of Earth by means of dark Mercury and Lead, the latest arrival in this long chain, and from which, at present, we alas are not yet benefiting.

Let us return now to our path. It seems superfluous to me to point out that it is not possible to interchange manufacturing techniques among themselves: a string for the middle register made, for example, with the system used for the higher ones would certainly be very strong but devoid of any elasticity, and therefore duller; doing the reverse we would obtain a string exaggeratedly elastic for these thin diameters but of reduced tensile strength — perfectly useless, that is, as a first string. In any case, the fundamental point is that, unlike the majority of 20th-century musicians, ours and those of the coming generations will know how to choose, recognise and fit, with the utmost perfection and diligence, the best strings on their own instrument; we do, as they say, as the tailor does: the garment fitted perfectly to measure. And it cannot be otherwise!

Dialogue 7

C.: And the moderns, Master?

L.: Poor souls! It will largely be a true and proper despair! They will indeed rely almost entirely on what the string sellers impose upon the market, so that everything will be rigidly pigeonholed and laid down beforehand; consequently the experimentation and initiative of the individual Musician will be entirely discouraged. As an alternative, thanks to those gadgets they will call calculators or computers, they will become most skilled at wasting time calculating even fractions of tension to give to the strings, only then to find themselves with tactile stiffnesses almost always completely different from one string to another (by virtue of the things I have explained to you before), in grave contradiction, then, with all the historical treatises they will manage to find! They will moreover waste a good deal of time investigating whether the strings they buy are truly of lamb, without troubling themselves over the beam in their own eye — that is, their use, in their basses, of those wound strings of their day made of materials quite improper and unknown to us of old, such as perlon, nylon, tungsten, flat-wire covering, and so forth. They will in truth know almost nothing of strings and of our Divine Rules, nor will they trouble themselves overmuch to inform themselves, but they will occupy themselves, ad nauseam, with details vain and useless to the sound: some disciples have lately informed me that some of them consider a string that appears brown, and not yellowish like the others, to be surely of mutton. Poor souls! If only they knew that any kind of gut always turns brown, once dried, if it has undergone no bleaching treatment. Whereas mutton itself, if bleached, likewise turns yellowish, so that it will show no difference at all from other common guts found in string shops. But they will meet with the greatest difficulty precisely when there is need to string an instrument exactly as we do today, that is, entirely in gut.

C.: Will you explain yourself further, Master?

L.: In the 20th century, the culture of gut now lost forever, most Musicians and Luthiers will be ignorant of the visual and tactile characteristics typical of a good string, and of the necessary division (from the point of view of construction) of these into three classes — an absolutely indispensable premise, for anyone stringing entirely in gut, for obtaining good acoustic efficiency from every register. Nor will there be recognised, for bowed instruments, the importance of using, in an all-gut stringing, a coarser hair, such as the black variety: they will fail to notice that black horsehair holds almost complete sway in musical iconography starting from as far back as what they call the Middle Ages, for any territorial region and for any kind of bowed instrument. And this, as it happens, will last until the end of the 1600s, the period in which wound bass strings will take over, thus definitively solving the problem of the poor readiness of attack typical of pure-gut Basses. Having strings whose acoustic quality will generally leave something to be desired (because in many cases made too stiff), they will find still greater difficulty in making decent-sounding copies of the instruments of our time [in 17th-century paintings the strings appear almost always extremely soft, curly, smooth and elastic, so much so that they may often be seen coiled in a small bundle along the unused length, as if they were of soft twine; those we have available today, instead, are far less soft: for this reason they are found coiled, in their packaging, exclusively in circular form, a sure sign of an increase in their elastic modulus compared to those in use in the 1600s. Note that this second way of storing the string begins to appear towards the middle of the 1700s, n.d.r.].

C.: Do not be angry, Master, but I cannot just now recall the salient characteristics of a good string…

L.: Well, of the first strings you already know: that they must present themselves stiff and sharp to the touch if touched at one end, while their appearance should be uniform, translucent and without air bubbles inside; if cut with the teeth they should snap clean without fraying, as befits a good string made with a low degree of twist and treated with Rock Alum, a system that guarantees absolutely the greatest tensile strength — as necessary here as the air we breathe. This, indeed, is what will be suggested by the treatises of the coming century for lute first strings, which are those that work under the hardest conditions of all musical instruments. If for first strings maximum tensile strength is always required, for the thicker strings of the middle registers (and therefore potentially stiffer) the sought parameter is elasticity, which is increased, as I said before, by twisting the gut heavily during manufacture. A string of this kind [that is, in high twist, n.d.r.] is easily recognised because it is absolutely soft and yielding to the touch, while the angle formed by the fibres of the gut should be clearly visible in transparency, with a marbled optical effect, that is, similar to the “zigzagging” of a snake’s skin. One should carefully avoid a string that is too yellow, because it may have been made from the gut of too old an animal, and therefore of a less elastic nature. Based on my long experience, Sir, I would suggest using these highly twisted strings also for the first strings of the truly largest bowed instruments, such as the double-bass Violone, leaving low-twist strings exclusively for the first strings of the Lute and of the shorter Viols. This device will considerably improve the acoustic yield of the high strings of certain large instruments! But for all our strings we must always perform Ganassi’s test, to distinguish the good string from the false one by watching their vibration after plucking them, held taut between the hands. In the 20th century, as I have already mentioned, the varnishing of the surface of strings will be in general use: they will manage to increase their durability, but at the expense of the beauty of the sound produced. One last thing: should it happen to you, Sir, to have to replace a low-twist gauge with one of a high degree of twist, remember to increase the gauge a little…

C.: Otherwise, by virtue of the greater capacity for stretching that these strings show compared to those in low twist, I would have the tactile impression of a lower working tension.

L.: Precisely, and this, unfortunately, is another of the things that modern Musicians will fail to give due consideration, all caught up in the mania of referring to equal working tension rather than to equal tactile stiffness.

C.: Ah, Master, unfortunately what is lost is lost…

L.: What will be lost will not, alas, be limited to the strings alone!

C.: What else is there, o Master, that will prevent our distant descendants from fully appreciating the true sound of our instruments?

L.: Do you remember, Sir, the beginning of our conversation?

C.: Of course: the choice of the right length of string.

L.: Well then, when in the 20th century they wish to make a copy of a bowed Viol, a Lute or other instrument, they will almost never respect the rule that requires the first string to work close to breaking (that is, to exploit the maximum vibrating length, so as to obtain the smallest diameter for the lowest Bourdon), simply because most of their Luthiers will not know it, also because, mounting mostly those wound Basses I told you of earlier, they will notice no annoyance at all in the sound produced — quite the opposite! If they use instead Basses of pure gut (to pursue that aim, sometimes obsessive, that they will call by a complicated word that I cannot now recall… ah, here it is! Phi… Philology!), being entirely outside our Rules, they will find themselves with strings so thick as to yield absolutely no fine sound: they will then say, as the supreme and hypocritical justification to their own conscience, that the instruments of our time were, in the bass, weak and feeble of sound, and that we all tolerated this perfectly well. They will justify this claim by invoking the supposedly greater sensitivity our ears would have had compared to theirs, too spoiled and worn by the noises of their civilisation. But alas, have they ever heard, these people, the unbearable din made by carriages or carts drawn by horses over the cobbled pavements of our cities? And what of our harquebuses, culverins and petards? How can these esteemed Gentlemen, Sir, presume to wear our uncomfortable clothes (deliberately renouncing their own perfection of strings) without understanding that in so doing they will find themselves inheriting, most uncomfortably, our very own problems too, the solutions to which we have however already comfortably brought to light?

C.: To avoid such errors, could they not copy one of our instruments that survives?

L.: Worse still!

C.: But how, Master, I do not understand!

L.: It is so: they will copy the instrument exactly as it stands, I mean with the same vibrating length as the original; at most they will worry whether the neck has been replaced, but this will not suffice at all, because every vibrating length of these instruments was related to the nominal pitch of the first string (your “D”, for example), which in turn depended on the pitch standards in use with the commissioning party — which is today (and will still be so for several centuries) of quite great variability: did I not, at the very start of our conversation, ask you to play me the “D” in use in Rome, so as to compare it with that of Venice?

C.: Yes, Master!

L.: Furthermore, not a single instrument — I say not one — will survive that sounds a Bass, Tenor or middle, and Alto of our own generation, and precious few even of the coming century, that is, with a length of string suited to Basses of heavy gut and in proportion to one another [that is to say, at least 80 cm for a Bass, 62 cm for the Tenor and 40 cm for the Soprano: see the measurements of the bass viol reported by Talbot, c. 1697, the same anticipated by Simpson around 1670, and the proportions given by T. Mace in 1676, n.d.r.]. Lengths often modified and shortened to make way for wound strings! These blessed copies, played moreover at the pitch standard of the 20th century [440 Hz, n.d.r.], or at what they will pompously call “Baroque” pitch [415 Hz, n.d.r.], might find themselves, in addition (granting, that is, that they manage to find or reconstruct an instrument in its original state!), not fully exploiting the acoustic potential inherent in the Rule of the greatest possible vibrating length. This will be most especially true for those who copy, exactly as they stand, instruments built for example here in Venice, as a consequence of our own pitch standards being higher than the single one they will use. The short vibrating lengths of such copies will not allow them to enjoy the advantage that our age-old rule brings: the greatest reduction in the diameter of the Basses. If instead the instruments to be copied [hoping they are in original condition, n.d.r.] had been designed for pitch standards lower than those that will then be in use in the 20th century…

C.: Allow me, Master, but I believe I speak rightly in saying that in this case there will be the risk that the first string will break systematically if then tuned to a higher pitch standard, such as the modern one, this string thus reaching, alas, the barrier of its own breaking frequency.

L.: I see with pleasure that my Pupil has hit the mark entirely! None of them will trouble to verify that the product of the frequency of the first string’s pitch and the vibrating length in metres should not exceed the value of 230, at most 240 Hz · m, which is a good working index beyond which lies only the end of first strings.

C.: I thank you, most excellent Master, for the most pleasing compliment, but… alas, I see only now that it has grown quite late: I must therefore take my leave of you, to reach my inn before dark, so as to have time, with the help of the last light of the sun, to chase bedbugs and lice from my bedding! Until tomorrow, then, o most excellent Master!

L.: Until tomorrow…

[The commissioner thus took his leave of the Luthier to reach his inn near the Calle della Bissa; he was afterwards a guest of the Venier family for nearly two months, at the end of which he returned with his new instrument, by schooner and then by carriage from Ostia all the way to Palazzo Barberini, in Rome, where he played… “the said Violone to the great satisfaction of his own ears and of those present”.]

Dialogue 8

Farewell

At the end of this long and patient journey, most amiable and most esteemed Readers, you have been able to touch with your own hand whether there were particular secrets in our humble profession that did not have an explanation able also to satisfy entirely the minds of worthy men, and above all those most excellent virtuosi who make constant practice of Music, and particularly here in our Most Serene City of Venice.

We were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge: so said the Poet, and to us, devoted and most humble servants of this most Divine Art, there remained but to bring it to the greatest light and perfection.

Live happily.

Mimmo Peruffo, 2003

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