Micrologus; Lindberg's Lute

83-02 LINDBERG’S LUTE

One of the great pleasures of hosting the Micrologus show is that it gives me a chance to visit with the young, talented and very often charming early music performers who concertize in the Cleveland area. One such recent visitor was the Swedish lutenist, Jacob Lindberg, or [Jakob Lin Berja], as he tells me his name is pronounced in his homeland. Not long ago, Mr. Lindberg succeeded Diana Poulton, the biographer of John Dowland, in the distinguished position of Professor of Lute at London's Royal College of Music.

I asked him first how he got his start as a lutenist.

LINDBERG: Well, that's quite a long story, really. I started off playing guitar like, I suppose, everybody did when they were around 15 and the wave was on in full swing. And it was really my interest in Beatles tunes that made me start music at all, because before that I was really mostly interested in ice hockey. But anyway, once having taken up the guitar, I was taught by— I realize now how good a teacher he was; he led me on to the classical repertoire— His name was Jürgen Rörby. He's a Swedish guitarist. And he was very encouraging towards my studies. And, I found soon that a lot of the music that was playing was in fact lute music. And the music that I liked the best that I played on the guitar was originally written for the lute, so I decided I have to get a lute. So I eventually bought a lute and started playing that more and more. And I went to London in 1972 as a guitarist with the second study of lute, and it was in London that I realized that the two instruments are very difficult to combine, in one and the same technique, because if you want to play the lute authentically, you really need to use your hands in quite a different way. Articulation is different: you play without nails, the double stringing and so on. There are too many differences to be able to play modern guitar and lute authentically. So I decided then to, in fact, sacrifice the guitar and its repertoire, for the lute.

DUFFIN: When you talk about the differences in technique, the the nails are not the only difference.

LINDBERG: No, absolutely not. No. In fact, then perhaps the most important difference is the use of the right hand, in relation to the articulation: you think of the fingers as being of different importance and weight, rather than in the guitar, you try to even up all the differences between the fingers. Instead, in the lute hand position, the thumb, for instance, is very much heavier and it's a down stroke. And, whereas the forefinger, uh, you, it's an up stroke and therefore lighter. So the hand position and the weight of the fingers create, naturally, the articulation.

DUFFIN: We're going to listen first to a lute solo from the Renaissance: Walsingham and Squirrel's Toy— actually a pair of lute solos, by Francis Cutting. What can you tell us about them?

LINDBERG: Yes, well, these two pieces come from manuscript sources. Like most of the English repertoire, it did not appear in print. But what we have is these big manuscripts compiled by players, either amateur, or a teacher teaching an amateur. And we have a lot of music from those. And these two pieces are from two different manuscripts. One is in Edinburgh called the Euing Lute Book. The other one, The Squirrel's Toy, which is a very short little piece, is from a manuscript source in Cambridge.

[MUSIC: Walsingham and The Squirrel’s Toy: two solos for lute by the early 17th century English composer, Francis Cutting]

DUFFIN: Jacob Lindberg is not only a soloist. He also performs in combination with other instrumentalists. And one of his hats is that of lutenist with Cradle of Conceits.

LINDBERG: Yes, it's an ensemble which was formed by me and a violinist who I work with quite frequently, Monica Huggett. And it's designed to play the very interesting repertoire of broken consorts. So it comprises violin, flute, and viola da gamba, with three plucked instruments: the lute, which I play, and then we have two metal-string instruments, the bandora and the cittern.

DUFFIN: And it has quite an interesting repertory from the end of the 16th, early 17th century, doesn't it?

LINDBERG: Yes, it's a very important repertoire, too, because in a way it was the first example of orchestration in music history, because here we have music written for instruments of different timbres, fulfilling a particular function in the ensemble.

DUFFIN: With the instrumentation specified rather than just left up to the performer.

LINDBERG: Precisely, yes.

DUFFIN: We're going to listen to the De la tromba Pavin by Richard Allison. Can you tell us anything that we should listen for in this piece?

LINDBERG: Well, here we have a typical feature of the broken consort: answering phrases between the violin and the lute. Because the lute fills not only of the function of a harmony instrument, but also provides melody. And the violin is the obvious melody instrument, But the lute here, we can hear it playing the same phrases as the violin in a sort of battle situation, one could almost say.

DUFFIN: This happens especially towards the end of the piece.

LINDBERG: That's right, yes.

[MUSIC: The De la tromba Pavin, for Broken Consort, by Richard Allison, performed by Cradle of Conceits]

DUFFIN: That group's violinist and co-founder has also been working with Jacob Lindberg in a different repertory.

LINDBERG: Yes, that's correct. Monica Huggett and I, we have had a duo for several years now, and we play not only 17th and 18th century, but also some music from the 19th century in our programs. Here, we will hear, however, an example of the early repertoire which we have. It's a Sonata for Violin and Continuo, from the early part of the 17th century by Biagio Marini.

DUFFIN: One of the great violin composers of the Age. Now, you're not going to be playing lute on this, rather chitarrone. Can you tell us about the chitarrone?

LINDBERG: Yes, the chitarrone is an instrument which was invented towards the end of the 16th century and it became very popular. It's a curious instrument. It's very long. It's got one set of strings, which is stopped with the left hand, and is tuned like a lute, with the exception of the two top strings being an octave lower, because this instrument is a very big instrument and therefore the string length does not allow the top strings to go up in pitch. So they tuned it an octave lower.

DUFFIN: How tall is your chitarrone?

LINDBERG: It’s about the same height as me. That is just under six foot, I should think.

[MUSIC: The Sonata Terza by Biagio Marini performed by violinist Monica Huggett with my guest Jacob Lindbergh, chitarrone]

DUFFIN: Next, we hear a piece by a composer who seems to have been involved with the early development of the chitarrone.

LINDBERG: Yes, Alessandro Piccinini, who himself, claims to be the inventor of this idea of having extended bass strings. He wrote some very nice music for chitarrone solo, and I'm going to play a toccata by him.

[MUSIC: A Toccata for chitarrone solo by Alessandro Piccinini, from a collection published in 1623]

DUFFIN: Jacob Lindbergh has been instrumental, pardon the pun, in bringing forward little-known Scottish lute music, or at least, lute music preserved in Scottish sources. One of these sources is the Balcarres Lute Book.

LINDBERG: Yes, it's a very interesting lute manuscript, quite a big book, in fact, compiled sometime around 1700. And it includes, not only Scottish lute music, but also some French lute music.

DUFFIN: There was quite a correspondence between France and Scotland during the 17th century, too.

LINDBERG: Yes. One talks about the “Auld Alliance,” which existed between Scotland and France. And, many Scotsmen seem to have gone to France to have their education, and that's probably where they picked up the idea of playing French lute music. And maybe this manuscript is an example of somebody who was in France, then returned to Scotland, put down some of his favorite French pieces, but mainly it consists of settings of Scottish folk music.

DUFFIN: These must be among the earliest notated settings of these Scottish folk tunes. I mean, there's a very, very long tradition of Scottish folk tunes through the bagpipe and so on, but for the most part these things are not notated, and yet, here are some very early settings.

LINDBERG: Yes, it's curious that some of the first examples we have of written-down Scottish folk music is for the lute. More often, they would have played the harp or the bagpipe and maybe the lutenist here imitating a style of, say, a harp player—a clarsach player, as they were.

[MUSIC]

DUFFIN: From the Scottish Balcarres Lute Book of about the year 1700, that was “When she came in, she bobbed,” and “I never knew I loved thee,” performed on baroque lute by my guest on Micrologus today, Jacob Lindberg.