me:mo is made possible by your support! To become a patron, see: www.patreon.com/musicamemo For more information visit my website: www.musicamemo.com me:mo is hosted by Lukas Henning: www.musicamemo.com/Lukas_Henning
What an incredible channel - id love to learn more from you, mate. Im working through some Dall'aquila and it is quite demanding for me. All the best from California
Thank you! It's quite amazing what the internet offers in that regard, even if some digging is sometimes required. And this is only a fraction of the material that's out there and not yet digitized or made publicly available.
There are so many beautiful things in this video, and not just speaking as a lutenist (although not a professional one) in love with the XVI Century music. By the by, he dowlandian description of McCartney's cover for the orpharion is a juicy touch of class, really amusing! Ah, one last little thing: those scissors on the string... please don't you show that ever again, it's traumatising! :-D
Lukas is charming, interesting and informed as always, and I thoroughly enjoyed this installment of me:mo. I was, however, disappointed that there was no mention of strings made of silk. During the renaissance, those who could afford them did use strings of silk on their lutes, although by that time the Chinese had been using them for centuries on a wide variety of oriental lutes and zithers. Silk, once it has been properly stabilized and hardened through a very elaborate process, is as strong as gut but retains a certain warmth and resonance which comes from the overtones inherent in its molecular structure.
I guess Lukas is delighted anyway that you are watching his channel :) I have indeed found Renaissance lute strings made from silk, but they cost as much as gut... I'm fine with 6 course fishing wire. :)
Beautiful episode! Great information and wonderful playing! I'm not sure what happened with my Patreon pledge, but I just renewed it. Thanks for this great channel.
Dear Corinne, I'm very glad to hear you enjoyed this one, as well, thank you for your kind words! And thanks for letting me know about the Patreon-problem. It seems that the website is mostly working as it should, but now and again a hitch like that can still occur. Please excuse the inconvenience there - I hope the website won't create any further confusion. By the way - the next episode is already nearing completion (I'm writing the script right now), so until then best wishes! Lukas
The sponsor is actually useful. I've been dying to get some proper replacements for the nylon strings I got on some of my instruments but google search gives 4 reviews, an american retailer(the VAT's a bad joke when you buy $80 worth of strings from the US to Europe. Never again) and a bunch of sites that have no CSS and no "buy" button even though I specified it in the search. And then the first related strings (nylgut... close enough) are all for the ukulele. No lute, theorbo, baroque guitar, or any other instrument I play. My life is one big rant. I'm working on it. Anyways, loved the video. Keep up the tremendous work.
Dear Karel, that makes me happy to hear! As a side note: Just in case you have interest, I do offer lute courses and lessons. This year there's a summer course in Berlin (June) and in Arosa, Swiss Alps (July) and apart from that I have for some months now been giving lute lessons via Skype, which works (surprisingly?) well! In case you'd like to try (the first lesson is free) or find it more, please do let me know! All the best, Lukas
Et merci beaucoup à vous! En passant, il y a quelques mois, j'ai fait une vidéo sur le thème de la France, je pensais que vous pourriez trouver amusant: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-i1mGCx6f3ZI.html
You had gut strings the whole time? Nice! I wasn't sure whether your preference was gut, nylgut, fluorocarbon, nylon, etc. How do you maintain your gut lute strings? Also, are they varnished or unvarnished?
Lucas: Very well thought out, acted and edited as are all your videos that I have seen so far, but I have one quibble: It appears that he poem "Upon Lute-strings Cat-eaten" (ca. 2:47) was originally published in Musarum Deliciæ: Or The Muses Recreation of 1656, not in Witt's Recreations (1640).
Dear Byron, thank you! Also many thanks for this correction. There admittedly was an oversight there, I hope it doesn't diminish my point too much. It might also be interesting to know that the author Thomas Masters lived from 1603 until 1643, so the date of creation probably was about 1640. I took the original text from a 19th anthology of those 17th century prints, found on google books, hence also the confusion: bit.ly/2EYjCNN
What a great episode Luka! You can not find cat strings on our website but instead cats playing lutes... we do have three of them! cuerdaspulsadas.es/blog/catslutes-an-interview-with-the-illustrator-nathan-nun/ We are proud to help this project continue growing :)
Right, I forgot about those! Cats+Lutes... something in there for everybody! ;-) I'm very grateful for and likewise proud of your sponsorship, a considerable part of the funding that makes this project possible.
Self-tuning lute strings/pegs would truly catapult us into the 3rd millenium! (and perhaps we are not so far! There are self-tuning pianos already which function by heating/cooling the individual strings!) Then again, as described in the video, there is something very special about that tuning-"ritual", isn't it? Thank you for your comment!
We also wrote about that "60 years tuning the lute" topic almost four years ago. The truth behing that saying is explained here: cuerdaspulsadas.es/blog/60-anos-afinando-el-laud/
