Theorbo's (Big Lute type thing) anyone?

Subject: Theorbo's (Big Lute type thing) anyone?
From: Blowzabella
Date: 15 Jun 04 - 07:32 PM

I have a friend who is a very well respected 'early' musician - plays in various groups and consorts. He is also working this season at the Shakespeare Globe and I went to see the show last week (Romeo & Juliet). He was playing this blooming huge lute type thing which, I understand, is called a theorbo - has two sets of pegs on a neck which must be five feet long. I didn't get a chance to ask him about it after the show cos we both had to go separate ways and the stuff I've found on the net looks very academic. Can anyone tell me about this thing in simple, layman's terms?

Subject: RE: Theorbo's (Big Lute type thing) anyone?
From: Blowzabella
Date: 15 Jun 04 - 07:33 PM

And I've just realised that there is an erroneously placed apostrophe in the thread title. Sorry.

Subject: RE: Theorbo's (Big Lute type thing) anyone?
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 15 Jun 04 - 08:23 PM

Here's something.

Subject: RE: Theorbo's (Big Lute type thing) anyone?
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 15 Jun 04 - 08:26 PM

My brother got one years ago in Austria. Six strings tuned as a guitar, and a sort of s-curve in the head so another, longer, six-string set miss the neck. The body is lute/potato-bug shaped, and there's a nice 19th-century looking head carved at the top of the neck. No maker's mark. Looks strange & wonderful and I think that's a theorbo.

We supposed you use the strings with frets like any guitar, and the mid-air strings as bass notes. A sort of harp-guitar, apparently. (We couldn't find "Theorbo for Idiots.")

I don't know how much progress he's making with it. He's in Ecuador now. That's my fiddle-footed brother.

And that's all I know.

clint

Subject: RE: Theorbo's (Big Lute type thing) anyone?
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 15 Jun 04 - 08:34 PM

Desert Dancer posted while I was writing. My brother's ax wasn't that fine,had two sets of six strings each,and, I thought, a 19th century look, especially the geared tuning heads. I supposed then that it was a sort of revival & it looks likely that it was.

clint

Subject: RE: Theorbo's (Big Lute type thing) anyone?
From: John P
Date: 16 Jun 04 - 09:33 AM

The therobo is a blooming huge lute type thing. With big long extra bass notes. Sort of like the Renaissance version of the harp guitar.

Subject: RE: Theorbo's (Big Lute type thing) anyone?
From: M.Ted
Date: 16 Jun 04 - 10:22 AM

The theorbo was used in early orchestral music to play a part that was either bass or just above the bass--it often consisted of the 1 and 5 from the chord( C-G) and essentially kept the beat(to put it another way, the parts were like heavy metal power chords)--contemporary orchestrations of older classical pieces tend to reassign the parts to other instruments, usually cellos--

Subject: RE: Theorbo's (Big Lute type thing) anyone?
From: GUEST,MCP
Date: 16 Jun 04 - 12:14 PM

Here's Robert Spencer's (an exponent of many early plucked/strummed instruments) page on the Chittarone, theorbo and archlute

Mick

Subject: RE: Theorbo's (Big Lute type thing) anyone?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 16 Jun 04 - 02:36 PM

The classic illustration dates to:

GRAMATICA, Antiveduto
Italian painter, Roman school (b. ca. 1571, Roma, d. 1626, Roma)

The Theorbo Player
c. 1615
Oil on canvas, 119 x 85 cm
Galleria Sabauda, Turin

A click on the thumbnail should get you a 98 KB .jpg enlargement, good enough to make very nice 8x10 (or larger) prints. The painting also shows a "period" smaller lute, about tenor uke size, and a tambourine of the era.

John

Subject: RE: Theorbo's (Big Lute type thing) anyone?
From: Blowzabella
Date: 16 Jun 04 - 06:23 PM

Thanks for those everyone. John in Kansas - thanks too for the link to the painting - very interesting, I'll pass it on to Robin too.

Subject: RE: Theorbo's (Big Lute type thing) anyone?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 16 Jun 04 - 11:12 PM

There are a couple of other "classic" paintings of theorbo style instruments, but they're harder to trace because the common names/titles for them are usually given as "Lute player" or some such. The instrument hasn't been shown, so far as I've seen, in art representing the artist's "contemporaries" since a little before 1800, and was probably most common (based on the paintings) in the 1600s or early 1700s. A few later paintings show one - or something similar - as part of an "antique theme."

The couple of history books I've got are rather indefinite about when the theorbo might have been in the pop bands.

John

Subject: RE: Theorbo's (Big Lute type thing) anyone?
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Jun 04 - 11:28 PM

The theorbo is basicaly a lute on steroids. Lutes are the pear-shaped thingys that abound in Renaissance music and artwork, similar to a guitar in appearance, but very (very) different in construction. Lutes have 14+ strings, each course is double-strung, though (except the highest one) -- like a 12-string guitar, I believe. So anyway, at the beginning of the 17th century, as music started simplifying into just a melody and chords instead of polyphony, this monstrosity was created. It's a lute with seven bass strings added an octave below, one for each note, so it ended up being about six feet long. The bass strings are unfretted, and used for extra emphasis on chords and whatnot.