Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/85

Rh L U T L U T 71 known as diapasons, which, descending to the deep C of the violoncello, were not stopped with the fingers. The diapasons were tuned as the key of the piece of music required. The illustration represents an Italian instrument made by one of the most cele brated lute makers, Venere of Padua, in 1600; it is 3 feet 6 inches high, and has six pairs of unisons and eight single diapasons. The finger board, divided into approxi mately equal half tones by the frets, as a rule eight in number, was often further divided on the higher notes, for ten, eleven, or, as in the woodcut, even twelve, semi tones. The head, bearing the tuning pegs, was placed at an obtuse or a right angle to the neck, to increase the bearing of the strings upon the nut, and be convenient for sudden requirements of tuning dur ing performance, the trouble of keeping a lute in tune being proverbial. The lute was in general use L te, by Venere of Padua, during the ICth and 17th centuries. In the 18th it declined ; still the great J. S. Bach wrote a &quot; partita &quot; for it, which remains in manuscript. The latest date we have met with of an engraved publication for the lute is 1760. The large double-necked lute, with two sets of tuning pegs, the lower for the finger-board, the higher for the diapason strings, was known as the theorbo ; also, and especially in England, as the archlute ; and, in a special form, the neck being then very long, as the chitarrone. Theorbo and chitarrone appear together at the close of the 16th century, and their introduction was synchronous with the rise of accompanied monody in music, that is, of the oratorio and the opera. Peri, Caccini, and Monte- verde used theorbos to accompany their newly-devised recitative, the invention of which in Florence, from the im pulse of the Renaissance, is well known. The height of a theorbo varied from 3 feet 6 inches to 5 feet, the Paduan being always the largest, excepting the Roman 6-feet long chitarrone. These large lutes had very deep notes, and doubtless great liberties were allowed in tuning, but the strings on the finger-board followed the lute accordance already given, or another quoted by Baron (Untersuchung des Instruments der Lauten^ Nuremberg, 1727) as the old theorbo or &quot; violway &quot; (see Mace, Musick s Monument, London, 1676): We find again both these accordances varied and trans posed a tone higher, perhaps with thinner strings, or to accommodate local differences of pitch ; Praetorius recom mends the chanterelles of theorbos being tuned an octave lower on account of the great strain. By such a change, another authority, the Englishman Thomas Mace, says, the life and spruceness of airy lessons were quite lost. The theorbo or archlute had at last to give way to the violon cello and double bass, which are still used to accompany the &quot;recitative secco&quot; in oratorios and operas. Handel wrote a part for a theorbo in Esther (1720); after that date it appears no more in orchestral scores, but remained in private use until nearly the end of the century. We cannot refrain from admiring the beauty of decora tion of ivory, mother of pearl, and tortoiseshell, the charac teristic patterning of the &quot; knots &quot; or &quot; roses &quot; in the sound boards, all of which was so well allied with the extremely artistic forms of the different lutes, rendering them, now their musical use is past, objects of research for collections and museums. The present direction of musical taste and composition is adverse to the cultivation of such tenderly sensitive timbre as the lute possessed. The lute and the organ share the distinction of being the first instruments for which the oldest instrumental compositions we possess were written. It was not for the lute, however, in our pre sent notation, but in tablature, &quot;lyrawise,&quot; a system by which as many lines were drawn horizontally as there were pairs of strings on the finger-board, the frets being distinguished by the letters of the alphabet, repeated from A for each line. This was the English manner: the Italian was by numbers instead of letters. The signs of time were placed over the stave, and were not repeated unless the mensural values changed. Consult Grove s Dictionary of Music, arts. &quot;Lute,&quot; &quot;Frets&quot;; Stainer and Barrett s Dictionary of Music, &quot; Tablature &quot; ; and the admirable museum catalogues of Carl Engel (South Kensington), G. Chouquet (Paris), and Victor Mahillon (Brussels). (A. J. H. ) LUTHER (1483-1546). First Period (1483-1517). Martin Luther (Lyder, Liider, Ludher from Lothar, some say) was born at*Eisleben in the county of Mansfeld, in Thuringia, on the 10th of November 1483. His father Hans Luther, a slate-cutter by trade, belonged to a family of free peasants. His mother was Margaret Lindeburn. Hans Luther had left Mohra, his native village, and had come to Eisleben to work as a miner. When Martin was six months old he went to Mansfeld and set up a forge, the small profits of which enabled him to send his son to the Latin school of the place. There the boy so distin guished himself that his father determined to make him a lawyer, and sent him for a year to a Franciscan school at Magdeburg, and then to Eisenach near Mohra. There Luther, with other poor scholars, sang for alms in the streets, and his fine tenor voice and gentle manners attracted the attention and gained for him the motherly care of Ursula Cotta, the wife of the burgomaster of Eisenach. From Eisenach he went in his eighteenth year to the high school of Erfurt, where his favourite master was the humanist Trutwetter, who taught him classics and philosophy. He took his bachelor s degree in 1502, and his master s in 1505. At Erfurt the preaching of the town s pastor Weisemann made a deep impression on his mind, as did the preacher s frequent exhortations to study the Scripture. Luther tells us that he sought in vain for a whole Bible, and that he could only get portions to read. A dangerous illness, the death of a near friend, together with other circumstances, so Brought on his pious, sensitive nature that in spite of father and family he resolved to give up all his prospects and become a monk. He entered the Aagustinian convent at Erfurt in June 1505, taking with him Plautus and Virgil, the solitary mementos of the life he had abandoned. His first years of monastic life were spent in fierce mental struggle. He had found a whole Bible and read it diligently, but it did not bring him peace. The feeling of universal human sinfulness, and of his own, was burnt into him both by his dogmatic studies and by his reading of the Scripture. He lived a life of the severest mortification, and invented continually new forms of penance, and all the while heart and head alike told him that outward acts could never banish sin. &quot; I tormented myself to death,&quot; he said, &quot; to make my peace with God, but I was in darkness and found it not.&quot; The vicar- general of his order, Staupitz, who had passed through somewhat similar experiences, helped him greatly. &quot; There