Gut top strings for lutes

Gut top strings for lutes

For a variety of reasons, a lute’s treble can be considered the string which, in absolute terms, works under the most critical conditions as compared to the trebles of all other coeval string instruments, both plucked and bowed. The lute, in its most common form with back-bent peg box, forces the string into a sudden and unnatural change of direction. To this we have to add the typical 16th century ‘rule’ which demands that the top string must work as high as possible, close to its breaking point.

To further complicate this already critical picture we must add that the strings in question are also the thinnest which string makers of any epoch could achieve. Their extreme thinness makes the strings liable to be false but also to suffer from the ‘cutting’ effect of sharp edges we so often find on nuts and sometimes on bridges, too.

Gut, although very resistant to stress, is extremely easy to cut and squash: hence Mace’s accurate instructions on how to smooth the nut and make the grooves (Musick’s Monument, London 1676), following Dowland’s suggestion to lubricate the grooves with graphite in order to keep the strings from jamming. All this requires that a gut treble of the dolce strumento possess absolutely extraordinary mechanical qualities, achieved through a specific manufacturing technology, different from that of all other strings.

The question arises naturally: what has come down to us through historical sources? Is it possible to draw any information that could be useful to our string making technology from it?

First of all, original sources tell us that the best trebles came from Rome or from Munich and that the raw material was the gut of lambs. On the other hand, Spaniards in the 16th century preferred ram’s gut. According to A. Kircher (Musurgia Universalis, Rome, 1650), Roman trebles were made of a single lamb-gut. One whole gut, as prescribed by the statutes of Roman string makers in 1642, which seem to expressly forbid cleaving the gut. The interpretation is still somewhat doubtful, though, since the statutes forbid the splitting of bundles down the middle — spaccar le mazze per mezzo — and the cleaving of the single gut. A string made of one whole gut has a specific characteristic, verified empirically, which is due to biological reasons: it is slightly conical; besides, it also has a somewhat irregular and uneven surface. Already in the early 16th century Capirola warns us about the conicity of strings, a feature which Munich trebles seemed to lack. If Munich trebles were not conical it probably means that they were made of thin gut strands twisted together and not of one single gut.

Hand polishing to correct string conicity is impracticable because of the considerable amount of material to be taken away with extreme accuracy and without fine control tools like a micrometer, but also because such a heavily treated string, even granted it were not false, would fray or immediately break when put under stress.

Further valuable information comes from Dowland who, incidentally, is the only one to describe the mechanical qualities a good treble should possess (Varietie of Lute lessons, London, 1610): the end should feel stiff to the fingertip and should present a frayed end, not a clean end, when broken under tension.

It must be observed that when a poor quality string breaks it shows a frayed, not a clean, end. This feature is not as pronounced if the string is very strong. This remark by Dowland seems to point in the opposite direction from the results of our tests and practical experience!

So, the best trebles were very stiff: an indispensable characteristic (the structure of the material being equal) in order to grant a high breaking index. Baron (Nürnberg, 1727) describes a treble lasting one month as a rare but possible event; two weeks average playing life must have been a likely standard. On the other hand most modern gut trebles hardly last a few hours, at best a few days, before fraying.

It has been thought that the main reason for this is the habit of rectifying the strings smooth, thus causing excessive breakage of gut fibers. This is true, but not the whole picture. Dowland’s indications have prompted me experimentation with a new technique of producing gut trebles. This resulted in lute top strings which, although rectified smooth with modern rectifying technology, still possess a breaking index of 310-320 Hz · m as compared with the traditional 240-260 Hz · m. In practice, a treble string of this last generation on a Renaissance lute with a 63 cm. string length at a-440 cleanly breaks at b’ natural, sometimes c’’. A third or fourth higher than g’.

These strings feel rather stiff to the fingertip. Thanks to their tough structure they are less liable to be squashed (less liable to jam on the nut) or cut. Thanks to their high breaking index these trebles are less heavily stressed, which becomes evident especially through the fact that they stretch less while tuning. In practical terms, less peg turning is needed to reach the required pitch. Less stretching under stress means a higher resistance to fraying, which is the main problem of modern strings and depends on the action of the player’s fingers, sweat and string tension.

Played with a quill (medieval lute), unvarnished .44 mm. thick strings lasted 1.5 months, showing no fraying but only the marks left by the quill. An unvarnished .38 mm. treble on a d-minor 11 course lute, regularly played (in summer) lasted two months. A gut treble’s playing life depends, it is well known, on several factors: manner and amount of playing, type of sweat, season &c., but an average of no less than 20-30 days seems to be a standard we could verify under different conditions, including performing in concert. Another well documented aspect is their tuning stability: an accurate study has shown that this parameter is influenced especially by how the strings were put under tension while drying on the frame.

Two suggestions, then:

1) maybe the time has come to reconsider our present opinions on the mechanical properties of historical lute trebles: the chemicals we treat gut with are exclusively those we know were also used by string makers in the 17th century (see P. Skippon: “A journey thro’ part of the Low-Countries, Germany, Italy and France”, A. & J. Churchill, A collection of voyages and travels, London, 1732, pp. 532-533; cited by Ian Woodfield in the Lute Society Bulletin).

2) maybe the time has finally come when we shall really be able to use gut strings. All things considered, a treble is certainly cheaper than a pint of beer and lasts much longer.

Mimmo Peruffo

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