Lute

A renaissance-era lute
strings
Classification	Necked bowl lutes String instruments
Hornbostel–Sachs classification	321.321-5 (Composite chordophone sounded by the bare fingers)
Developed	Classical antiquity (early lutes) Middle Ages (modern lutes)
Related instruments
Angélique (instrument) Archlute Balalaika Barbat (lute) Bağlama Biwa Bouzouki Charango Chitarra Italiana Cobza Dombra Domra Dutar Kobza Komuz Kopuz Mandocello Mandola Mandolin Mandolute Oud Pandura Pipa Tambur Tanbur Tembûr Theorbo Tiorbino Topshur

Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck (either fretted or unfretted) and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes.

The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern oud both descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. The lute is used in a great variety of instrumental music from the Medieval to the late Baroque eras and was probably the most important instrument for secular music in the Renaissance. It is also an accompanying instrument, especially in vocal works, often realizing a basso continuo or playing a written-out accompaniment.

The player of a lute is called a lutenist, lutanist or lutist, and a maker of lutes (or any string instrument) is referred to as a luthier.

Etymology[link]

The words "lute" and "oud" derive from Arabic al‘ud (العود; literally "the wood").^[1] Recent research by Eckhard Neubauer suggests ‘ud may in turn be an Arabized version of the Persian name rud, which meant "string", "stringed instrument", or "lute".^[2] It has equally been suggested the "wood" in the name may have distinguished the instrument by its wooden soundboard from skin-faced predecessors.^[3] Gianfranco Lotti suggests the "wood" appellation originally carried derogatory connotations because of proscriptions of all instrumental music in early Islam.

Construction[link]

Soundboard[link]

Lutes are made almost entirely of wood. The soundboard is a teardrop-shaped thin flat plate of resonant wood (typically spruce). In all lutes the soundboard has a single (sometimes triple) decorated sound hole under the strings called the rose. The sound hole is not open, but rather covered with a grille in the form of an intertwining vine or a decorative knot, carved directly out of the wood of the soundboard.

Back[link]

The back or the shell is assembled from thin strips of hardwood (maple, cherry, ebony, rosewood, gran, wood and/or other tonewoods) called ribs, joined (with glue) edge to edge to form a deep rounded body for the instrument. There are braces inside on the soundboard to give it strength; see the photo among the external links below.

Neck[link]

The neck is made of light wood, with a veneer of hardwood (usually ebony) to provide durability for the fretboard beneath the strings. Unlike most modern stringed instruments, the lute's fretboard is mounted flush with the top. The pegbox for lutes before the Baroque era was angled back from the neck at almost 90° (see image), presumably to help hold the low-tension strings firmly against the nut, which is not traditionally glued in place, but is held in place by string pressure only. The tuning pegs are simple pegs of hardwood, somewhat tapered, that are held in place by friction in holes drilled through the pegbox.

As with other instruments using friction pegs, the choice of wood used to make pegs is crucial. As the wood suffers dimensional changes through age and loss of humidity, it must as closely as possible retain a circular cross-section in order to function properly, as there are no gears or other mechanical aids for tuning the instrument. Often pegs were made from suitable fruitwoods such as European pearwood, or equally dimensionally stable analogues. Matheson, ca 1720, stated "if a lute-player has lived eighty years, he has surely spent sixty years tuning."

Belly[link]

The geometry of the lute belly is relatively complex, involving a system of barring in which braces are placed perpendicular to the strings at specific lengths along the overall length of the belly, the ends of which are angled quite precisely to abut the ribs on either side for structural reasons. Robert Lundberg, in his book "Historical Lute Construction", suggests ancient builders placed bars according to whole-number ratios of the scale length and belly length. He further suggests the inward bend of the soundboard (the "belly scoop") is a deliberate adaptation by ancient builders to afford the lutenist's right hand more space between the strings and soundboard.

The belly thickness is somewhat variable, but hovers between 1.5 and 2 millimeters in general. Some luthiers tune the belly as they build, removing mass and adapting bracing to ensure proper sonic results. The lute belly is almost never finished, but in some cases the luthier may size the top with a very thin coat of shellac or glair in order to help keep it clean. The belly is joined directly to the rib, without a lining glued to the sides, and a cap and counter cap are glued to the inside and outside of the bottom end of the bowl to provide rigidity and increased gluing surface.

After joining the top to the sides, a half-binding is usually installed around the edge of the belly. The half-binding is approximately half the thickness of the belly and is usually made of a contrasting color wood. The rebate for the half-binding must be extremely precise to avoid compromising structural integrity.

Bridge[link]

The bridge, sometimes made of a fruitwood, is attached to the soundboard typically at 1/5 to 1/7 the belly length. It does not have a separate saddle but has holes bored into it to which the strings attach directly. The bridge is made so that it tapers in height and length, with the small end holding the trebles and the higher and wider end carrying the basses. Bridges are often colored black with carbon black in a binder, often shellac and often have inscribed decoration. The scrolls or other decoration on the ends of lute bridges are integral to the bridge, and are not added afterwards as on some Renaissance guitars (cf Joachim Tielke's guitars).

Frets[link]

The frets are made of loops of gut tied around the neck. They fray with use, and must be replaced from time to time. A few additional partial frets of wood are usually glued to the body of the instrument, to allow stopping the highest-pitched courses up to a full octave higher than the open string, though these are regarded anachronistic by some (although John Dowland and Thomas Robinson describe the practice of gluing wooden frets onto the soundboard ^[4]). Given the choice between nylon and gut, many luthiers prefer to use gut, as it conforms more readily to the sharp angle at the edge of the fingerboard.

Strings[link]

Strings were historically made of animal gut, usually from the small intestine of sheep (sometimes in combination with metal) and are still made of gut or a synthetic substitute, with metal windings on the lower-pitched strings. Modern manufacturers make both gut and nylon strings, and both are in common use. Gut is more authentic for playing period pieces, though unfortunately it is also more susceptible to irregularity and pitch instability due to changes in humidity. Nylon offers greater tuning stability, but is seen as anachronistic by purists, as its timbre differs from the sound of earlier gut strings. Such concerns are moot when more recent compositions for the lute are performed.

Of note are the "catlines" used as basses on historical instruments. Catlines are several gut strings wound together and soaked in heavy metal solutions which increase the mass of the strings. Catlines can be quite large in diameter by comparison with wound nylon strings for the same pitch. They produce a bass which differs somewhat in timbre from nylon basses.

The lute's strings are arranged in courses, of two strings each, though the highest-pitched course usually consists of only a single string, called the chanterelle. In later Baroque lutes two upper courses are single. The courses are numbered sequentially, counting from the highest pitched, so that the chanterelle is the first course, the next pair of strings is the second course, etc. Thus an 8-course Renaissance lute will usually have 15 strings, and a 13-course Baroque lute will have 24.

The courses are tuned in unison for high and intermediate pitches, but for lower pitches one of the two strings is tuned an octave higher (the course at which this split starts changed over the history of the lute). The two strings of a course are virtually always stopped and plucked together, as if a single string, but in extremely rare cases a piece calls for the two strings of a course to be stopped and/or plucked separately. The tuning of a lute is a somewhat complicated issue, and is described in a separate section of its own below. The result of the lute's design is an instrument extremely light for its size.

History and evolution of the lute[link]

Ancient Egyptian tomb painting depicting lute players, 18th Dynasty (c. 1350 BC)

The origins of the lute are obscure, and organologists disagree about the very definition of a lute. The highly influential organologist Curt Sachs distinguished between the "long-necked lute" (Langhalslaute) and the short-necked variety: both referred to chordophones with a neck as distinguished from harps and psalteries. Smith and others argue the long-necked variety should not be called lute at all because it existed for at least a millennium before the appearance of the short-necked instrument that eventually evolved into what is now known as the lute. It also was never called a lute before the 20th century.

Source of our knowledge about these instruments is since the ancient Greek Mantineia marble (4th century BC), now exhibited at National Archaeological Museum of Athens, depicting the mythical contest between Apollo and Marsyas, where ancient Greek Pandura is being played by a muse seated on a rock^[5] documenting that lutes have been first present in ancient Greece, since the Akkadian era.^[6]

Various types of necked chordophones were in use in ancient Greek, Egyptian (in the Middle Kingdom), Hittite, Roman, Bulgar, Turkic, Indian, Chinese, Armenian/Cilician cultures. The Lute developed its familiar forms as Barbat in Persia, Armenia, and Byzantium beginning in the early 7th century. These instruments often had bodies covered with animal skin, and it is unknown exactly when it became replaced with a wooden soundboard.

As early as the 6th century, the Bulgars brought the short-necked variety of the instrument called Komuz to the Balkans, and in the 9th century, Moors brought the Oud to Spain. The long-necked Pandura had previously been a quite common variety of the lute in the Mediterranean. The quitra did not become extinct, however, but continued its evolution. Besides the still surviving Kuitra of Algiers and Morocco, its descendants include the Chitarra Italiana, Chitarrone and Colascione.

Middle Ages[link]

In about the year 1500 many Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese lutenists adopted vihuela de mano, a viol-shaped instrument tuned like the lute, but both instruments continued in coexistence. This instrument also found its way to parts of Italy that were under Spanish domination (especially Sicily and the papal states under the Borgia pope Alexander VI who brought many Catalan musicians to Italy), where it was known as the viola da mano.

Another important point of transfer of the lute from Arabian to european culture might have been in Sicily, where it was brought either by Byzantine or later by Saracen musicians. There were singer-lutenists at the court in Palermo following the Norman conquest of the island, and the lute is depicted extensively in the ceiling paintings in the Palermo’s royal Cappella Palatina, dedicated by the Norman King Roger II in 1140. By the 14th century, lutes had disseminated throughout Italy. Probably due to the cultural influence of the Hohenstaufen kings and emperor, based in Palermo, the lute had also made significant inroads into the German-speaking lands by the 14th century.

Painter David Hoyer playing a lute, painted by Jan Kupetzky, ca. 1711

Medieval lutes were 4- or 5-course instruments, plucked using a quill as a plectrum. There were several sizes, and by the end of the Renaissance, seven different sizes (up to the great octave bass) are documented. Song accompaniment was probably the lute's primary function in the Middle Ages, but very little music securely attributable to the lute survives from the era before 1500. Medieval and early-Renaissance song accompaniments were probably mostly improvised, hence the lack of written records.

In the last few decades of the 15th century, in order to play Renaissance polyphony on a single instrument, lutenists gradually abandoned the quill in favor of plucking the instrument with the fingertips. The number of courses grew to six and beyond. The lute was the premier solo instrument of the 16th century, but continued to be used to accompany singers as well.

By the end of the Renaissance the number of courses had grown to ten, and during the Baroque era the number continued to grow until it reached 14 (and occasionally as many as 19). These instruments, with up to 26-35 strings, required innovations in the structure of the lute. At the end of the lute's evolution the archlute, theorbo and torban had long extensions attached to the main tuning head in order to provide a greater resonating length for the bass strings, and since human fingers are not long enough to stop strings across a neck wide enough to hold 14 courses, the bass strings were placed outside the fretboard, and were played "open", i.e. without fretting/stopping them with the left hand.

Over the course of the Baroque era the lute was increasingly relegated to the continuo accompaniment, and was eventually superseded in that role by keyboard instruments. The lute almost fell out of use after 1800. Some sorts of lute were still used for some time in Germany, Sweden, Ukraine.

• 

  Ancient Greek (Tanagra) terracotta statuette depicting a player of the pandura, 4th century BC)

• 

  Christian and Muslim playing lute, miniature from Cantigas de Santa Maria by king Alfonso X.

Lute in the modern world[link]

The lute enjoyed a revival with the awakening of interest in historical music around 1900 and throughout the century. That revival was further boosted by the early music movement in the twentieth century. Important pioneers in lute revival were Julian Bream, Hans Neemann, Walter Gerwig, Suzanne Bloch and Diana Poulton. Lute performances are now not uncommon; there are many professional lutenists, especially in Europe where the most employment is to be found, and new compositions for the instrument are being produced by composers.

During the early days of the early music movement, many lutes were constructed by available luthiers, whose specialty was often classical guitars. Such lutes were heavily built with construction similar to classical guitars, with fan bracing, heavy tops, fixed frets, and lined sides, all of which are anachronistic to historical lutes. As lutherie scholarship increased, makers began constructing instruments based on historical models, which have proven on the whole to be far lighter and more responsive instruments.

Lutes built at present are invariably replicas or near copies of those surviving historical instruments that are to be found in museums or private collections. They are exclusively custom-built or must be bought second hand in a very limited market. As a result, lutes are generally more expensive than mass-produced modern instruments such as the guitar, though not nearly as expensive as the violin. Unlike in the past there are many types of lutes encountered today: 5-course medieval lutes, renaissance lutes of 6 to 10 courses in many pitches for solo and ensemble performance of Renaissance works, the archlute of Baroque works, 11-course lutes in d-minor tuning for 17th century French, German and Czech music, 13/14-course d-minor tuned German Baroque Lutes for later High Baroque and Classical music, theorbo for basso continuo parts in Baroque ensembles, gallichons/mandoras, bandoras, orpharions and others.

Lutenistic practice has reached considerable heights in recent years, thanks to a growing number of world-class lutenists: Robert Barto, Eduardo Egüez, Edin Karamazov, Nigel North, Christopher Wilson, Luca Pianca, Pascal Monteilhet, Lex van Sante, Ariel Abramovich, Evangelina Mascardi, Luciano Contini, Hopkinson Smith, Yasunori Imamura, Paul O'Dette, Jozef van Wissem et alii. Singer-songwriter Sting has also played lute and archlute, in and out of his collaborations with Edin Karamazov, and Jan Akkerman released two albums of lute music in the 1970s while he was a guitarist in the Dutch rock band Focus. Lutenist/ Composer Jozef van Wissem composed lute music and vocals for the Sims Medieval video game.

Lutes of several regional types are also common in Greece: laouto, and outi.

Lute repertoire[link]

Orazio Gentileschi's young lutenist, painted ca 1626, plays a 10-course lute, typical of the time from around 1600 AD through the 1630s. Music stands appear very rarely in paintings of the period—the music is most commonly laid flat on a table, as seen here.

Although lutes were in widespread use in Europe at least since the 13th century, and documents mention numerous early performers and composers, the earliest surviving music for the instrument dates from the late 15th century. Lute music flourished during the 16th and 17th centuries: numerous composers published collections of their music, and modern scholars have uncovered a vast number of manuscripts from the era—however, much of the music is still lost. In the second half of the 17th century lutes, vihuelas and similar instruments started losing popularity, and almost no music had been written for the instrument after 1750. The interest in lute music was revived only in the second half of the 20th century.

Improvisation was apparently a highly important aspect of lute performance, and so much of the repertoire was probably never written down. Furthermore, it was only around 1500 that lute players started the transition from plectrum technique to that of the right hand: the latter allowed for complex polyphony, for which notation had to be developed. During the next hundred years three schools of tablature notation developed gradually: Italian (also employed in Spain), German and French. Only the latter survived into the late 17th century. The earliest known tablatures are designed for a six-stringed instrument, although evidence of earlier four- and five-stringed lutes exists.^[7] Tablature notation depends on the actual instrument for which the music is written, and to read it, it is necessary to know the tuning, the number of strings, etc. of the instrument.

Renaissance and Baroque forms of lute music are more or less similar to those of keyboard music of the periods. Intabulations of vocal works were very common, as well as various dances, some of which disappeared during the 17th century, such as the piva and the saltarello. The advent of polyphony brought about fantasias: complex, intricate pieces with much use of imitative counterpoint. The improvisatory element, present to some degree in most lute pieces, is particularly evident in the early ricercares (not imitative as their later namesakes, but completely free), as well as in numerous preludial forms: preludes, tastar de corde ("testing the strings"), etc. During the 17th century keyboard and lute music went hand in hand, and by 1700 lutenists were writing suites of dances quite akin to those of keyboard composers. The lute was also used throughout its history as an ensemble instrument, most frequently in songs for voice and lute; these were particularly popular in Italy (see frottola) and England.

The earliest surviving lute music is Italian, from a late 15th century manuscript. The early 16th century saw Petrucci's publications of lute music by Francesco Spinacino (fl. 1507) and Joan Ambrosio Dalza (fl. 1508); together with the so-called Capirola Lutebook, these represent the earliest stage of written lute music in Italy. The leader of the next generation of Italian lutenists, Francesco Canova da Milano (1497–1543), is now acknowledged as one of the most famous lute composers in history. The bigger part of his output consists of pieces called fantasias or ricercares, in which he makes extensive use of imitation and sequence, expanding the scope of lute polyphony. The second half of the century saw no composers equal in stature, but in the early 17th century Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger (c.1580–1651) and Alessandro Piccinini (1566–1638) revolutionized the instrument's technique and Kapsberger, possibly, influenced the keyboard music of Frescobaldi.

French written lute music began, as far as we know, with Pierre Attaingnant's (c.1494–c.1551) prints, which comprised preludes, dances and intabulations. Particularly important was the Italian composer Albert de Rippe (1500–1551), who worked in France and composed polyphonic fantasias of considerable complexity. His work was published posthumously by his pupil, Guillaume de Morlaye (born c.1510), who, however, did not pick up the complex polyphony of de Rippe. French lute music declined during the second part of the 16th century; however, various changes to the instrument (the increase of diapason strings, new tunings, etc.) prompted an important change in style that led, during the early Baroque, to the celebrated style brisé: broken, arpeggiated textures that influenced Johann Jakob Froberger's suites. The French Baroque school is exemplified by composers such as Ennemond Gaultier (1575–1651), Denis Gaultier (1597/1603–1672), François Dufaut (before 1604–before 1672) and many others. The last stage of French lute music is exemplified by Robert de Visée (c.1655–1732/3), whose suites exploit the instrument's possibilities to the fullest.

The history of German written lute music started with Arnolt Schlick (c.1460–after 1521), who published in 1513 a collection of pieces that included 14 voice and lute songs and three solo lute pieces, alongside organ works. He was not, however, the first important German lutenist, because contemporaries credited Conrad Paumann (c. 1410–1473) with the invention of German lute tablature. However, this claim has yet to be proven, and no lute works by Paumann survive. After Schlick, a string of composers developed German lute music: Hans Judenkünig (c.1445–50–1526), the Neusidler family (particularly Hans Neusidler (c.1508/9–1563)) and others. During the second half of the 16th century, German tablature and German repertoire were gradually replaced by Italian and French tablature and international repertoire, respectively, and the Thirty Years War (1618–48) effectively stopped publications for half a century. German lute music was revived much later by composers such as Esaias Reusner (fl. 1670), however, a distinctly German style came only after 1700 in the works of Silvius Leopold Weiss (1686–1750), one of the greatest lute composers, some of whose works were transcribed for keyboard by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), who composed a few pieces for the lute himself (although it is unclear whether they were really intended for the lute, rather than another plucked string instrument or the lautenwerk).

Of other European countries, particularly important are England and Spain. English written lute music only began around 1540, however, the country produced numerous lutenists, of which John Dowland (1563–1626) is perhaps the most famous. His influence spread very far: variations on his themes were written by keyboard composers in Germany decades after his death. Dowland's predecessors and colleagues, such as Anthony Holborne (c. 1545–1602) and Daniel Bacheler (1572–1619), were less known. Spanish composers wrote mostly for the vihuela; their main genres were polyphonic fantasias and differencias (variations). Luys Milan (c.1500–after 1560) and Luys de Narváez (fl. 1526–49) were particularly important for their contributions to the development of lute polyphony in Spain. Finally, perhaps the most influential European lute composer was the Hungarian Bálint Bakfark (c.1526–30–1576), whose contrapuntal fantasias were much more difficult and tighter than those of his Western European contemporaries.

Lute revival and composers[link]

The revival of lute-playing in the 20th century revitalized the interest of composers in the instruments of the lute family. One of the first such composers was Johann Nepomuk David in Germany. Composer Vladimir Vavilov was a pioneer of the lute revival in the USSR, also the author of numerous musical hoaxes. Sandor Kallos, Stefan Lundgren, Toyohiko Satoh applied modernist idiom to the lute, Elena Kats-Chernin, Jozef van Wissem and Alexandre Danilevsky minimalist and post-minimalist idiom, Robert Allworth serial composition, composing the first modern Concerto for the 11 course lute in his romantic 12-tone style, Roman Turovsky-Savchuk, Paulo Galvão, Robert MacKillop and Maxym Zvonaryov historicist idiom, and Ronn McFarlane New Age. This active movement by early music specialists has inspired composers in different fields; for example, in 1980, Akira Ifukube, a classical and film composer best known for the Godzilla's theme, wrote the Fantasia for Baroque Lute with the historical tablature notation, rather than the modern staff one.^[8]

Tuning conventions[link]

15-course Theorbo tuning chart.

1619 picture featuring Theorbos, a lute, citterns, a mandore, along with a "quinterne" (vihuela) and "Posche" (pochette).

Lutes were made in a large variety of sizes, with varying numbers of strings/courses, and with no permanent standard for tuning. However, the following seems to have been generally true of the Renaissance lute: A 6-course Renaissance tenor lute would be tuned to the same intervals as a tenor viol, with intervals of a perfect fourth between all the courses except the 3rd and 4th, which differed only by a major third. The tenor lute was usually tuned nominally "in g" (there was no pitch standard before the 20th century), named after the pitch of the highest course, yielding the pattern [(G'G) (Cc) (FF) (AA) (dd) (g)] from the lowest course to the highest. (Much renaissance lute music can be played on a guitar by tuning the guitar's third string down by a half tone.)

For lutes with more than six courses the extra courses would be added on the low end. Due to the large number of strings lutes have very wide necks, and it is difficult to stop strings beyond the sixth course, so additional courses were usually tuned to pitches useful as bass notes rather than continuing the regular pattern of fourths, and these lower courses are most often played without stopping. Thus an 8-course tenor Renaissance lute would be tuned to [(D'D) (F'F) (G'G) (Cc) (FF) (AA) (dd) (g)], and a 10-course to [(C'C) (D'D) (E♭'E♭) (F'F) (G'G) (Cc) (FF) (AA) (dd) (g)].

However, none of these patterns were de rigueur, and a modern lutenist will occasionally be seen to retune one or more courses between performance pieces. Manuscripts bear instructions for the player, e.g. 7^e choeur en fa = "seventh course in fa" (= F in the standard C scale).

The first part of the seventeenth century was a period of considerable diversity in the tuning of the lute, particularly in France. However, by around 1670 the scheme known today as the "Baroque"[1] or "d-minor" tuning became the norm, at least in France and in northern and central Europe. In this case the first six courses outline a d-minor triad, and an additional five to seven courses are tuned generally scalewise below them. Thus the 13-course lute played by [2] Weiss would have been tuned [(A"A') (B"B') (C'C) (D'D) (E'E) (F'F) (G'G) (A'A') (DD) (FF) (AA) (d) (f)], or with sharps or flats on the lower 7 courses appropriate to the key of the piece.

Modern lutenists tune to a variety of pitch standards, ranging from A = 392 to 470 Hz, depending on the type of instrument they are playing, the repertory, the pitch of other instruments in an ensemble and other performing expediencies. No attempt at a universal pitch standard existed during the period of the lute's historical popularity. The standards varied over time and from place to place.

Quotations[link]

The art of playing the lute formed a major part of instrumental music-making in the Renaissance before keyboard instruments assumed central significance. It was a refined, soft and at the same time colorful art, in sharp contrast to the agitated times in which it was practiced.

—Karl Schumann^[9]

This style knows nothing of the otherwise usual requirements and prohibitions of voice-leading; it can only be understood in relation to the fingering technique; it frequently applies the sound of open strings and in no way avoids the otherwise so despised parallel 5ths and octaves or unisons. The dissonances and other conflicting sounds which appear so often ... strike me as exciting and revealing.

—Carl Orff^[9]

See also[link]

Instruments[link]

European Lutes:

• String instruments
  • Angélique (instrument)
  • Archlute
  • Cittern
  • Laúd
  • Chitarra battente
  • Cobza
  • Gallichon
  • Kobza
  • Mandore
  • Mandora
  • Torban
  • Theorbo
  • Vihuela
  • Tablature
• Early music
  • Medieval music
  • Renaissance music
  • Baroque music
  • Classical Music
• Greek Music
  • Cretan Music

African Lutes:

• Gonje
• Xalam

Asian Lutes:

• Barbat
• Biwa
• Dombra
• Dotar
• Dramnyen
• Kutiyapi
• Laúd
• Oud
• Pipa
• Qinqin
• Setar
• Sitar
• Tanbur
• Tar
• Veena
• Yueqin
• Sapeh
• Stringed instrument tunings

Composers of lute music[link]

• Category:Composers for lute
• List of composers for lute

Lute players[link]

• Category:Lutenists

Lute makers[link]

• Michael Lowe
• Cezar Mateus
• Stephen Murphy
• Andrew Rutherford
• Antonio Stradivari
• Joachim Tielke
• Nico van der Waals

Notes[link]

1. ^ "Etymology Online". http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=lute. Retrieved July 12, 2010. 
2. ^ Douglas Alton Smith. A History of the Lute from Antiquity to the Renaissance. p. 9. Lute Society of America (LSA), 2002. ISBN 0-9714071-0-X.
3. ^ During, Jean. "'Barbat'". Encyclopedia Iranica. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/barbat. Retrieved 17 April 2011. 
4. ^ "Dowland’s Lutes by Martin Shepherd". http://www.johndowland.co.uk/DowlandsLutes.htm. 
5. ^ 4th century BC, the trichord, pandouris on a Greek marble in ancient Greece
6. ^ Pandura, the first appearance in Greece.
7. ^ Apel 1949, 54.
8. ^ Yokomizo, Ryoichi (1996). 伊福部昭ギター・リュート作品集 (Akira Ifukube - Works for Guitar and Lute) (CD Booklet). Japan: FONTEC. pp.4. 
9. ^ ^{a b} From the liner notes to the Wergo edition of Orff's Kleines Konzert, with English translations by John Patrick Thomas.

References[link]

• The Lute in Europe by Andreas Schlegel, published by The Lute Corner (2006). ISBN 978-3-9523232-0-5
• A History of the Lute from Antiquity to the Renaissance by Douglas Alton Smith, published by the Lute Society of America (2002). ISBN 0-9714071-0-X ISBN 978-0-9714071-0-7
• The Lute in Britain: A History of the Instrument and its Music by Matthew Spring, published by Oxford University Press (2001).
• Historical Lute Construction by Robert Lundberg, published by the Guild of American Luthiers (2002).
• La musique de luth en France au XVIe siècle by Jean-Michel Vaccaro (1981).
• Articles in Journal of the Lute Society of America (1968–), The Lute (1958–), and other journals published by the various national lute societies.
• Eckhard Neubauer, "Der Bau der Laute und ihre Besaitung nach arabischen, persischen und türkischen Quellen des 9. bis 15. Jahrhunderts", Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften, vol. 8 (1993): 279–378.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lute

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Lute.

Lute societies[link]

• The Lute Society (UK)
• The Lute Society of America
• The German Lute Society
• The French Lute Society
• The Lute Society of Japan
• The Belgian Lute Society
• The Lute and Early Guitar Society (Founded by Toyohiko Satoh)

Lute music online and other useful resources[link]

• reneszanszlant.lap.hu collection of many useful links: luthiers/lute makers, lute players, tablatures, etc. (in English and Hungarian)
• ABC Classic FM presents: Lute Project videos Watch Tommie Andersson play the theorbo, 7-course & 10-course lutes.
• Wayne Cripps' lute pages
• The Lute Lieder Site, library of songs and lieder with baroque lute accompaniment.
• The Ukrainian Lute Page Torban, a Ukrainian variety of lute/theorbo.
• Lute History by István Kónya
• Joachim Tielke The website for the great Hamburg lutemaker Joachim Tielke
• Musick's Handmade Facsimiles/Scans (Dowland, etc.) and pdfs - by Alain Veylit
• Sarge Gerbode's Lute Page 3000+ lute solo pieces by 140 composers in midi, PDF, TAB, and Fronimo formats
• Contemporary and Modern Lute Music Modern (post 1815) and Contemporary Lute Music. A list of modern lute music written after 1815

Photos of historic lutes[link]

• Photos of historic lutes at the Museum Cité de la Musique in Paris

Instruments et oeuvres d'art – search-phrase: Mot-clé(s) : luth

Facteurs d'instruments – search-phrase: Instrument fabriqué : luth

Photothèque – search-phrase: Instrument de musique, ville ou pays : luth

• Lutes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Articles and resources[link]

• Pioneers of the Lute Revivial by Jo Van Herck (Belgian Lute Academy)

Original: Over de pioniers van de luitrevival; Luthinerie / Geluit no. 15 (september 2001) and no. 16 (december 2001)

• Photos and Paintings
• French Lutenists and French Lute Music in Sweden
• La Rhétorique des Dieux
• Continuo for lutenists and guitarists: a tutor and music theory supplement Thesis by Roland H.B. Stearns

	Tota Pulchra Es noicon By Hans Judenkünig (1450-1526), lute played by Jan van Outryve (Capilla Flamenca)
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Paul R. O'Dette (b. Columbus, Ohio, February 2, 1954) is an American lutenist, conductor, and music researcher specializing in early music.

O'Dette began playing classical guitar, and while in high school also played electric guitar in a rock band in Columbus, Ohio, where he grew up. He eventually adopted the lute (as well as the related archlute, theorbo, and Baroque mandolin) as his primary instruments, and primarily specializes in the performance of Renaissance and Baroque music. He has made more than 120 recordings, earning five Grammy nominations and numerous other awards. In addition to his activities as a performer, Paul O'Dette is an avid researcher, having worked extensively on the performance and sources of seventeenth-century Italian and English solo song, continuo practices and lute technique.

Since 1976, he has served as Professor of Lute and Director of Early Music at the Eastman School of Music in New York. He is the Co-Artistic Director of the Boston Early Music Festival. He lives in Rochester, New York with his wife, son, and daughter.

External links[link]

• Biography from Eastman Faculty
• Biography and Concert Schedule (Harmonia Mundi)
• Biography at Goldberg web
• Paul O'Dette interview by Bruce Duffie

This article on an American conductor or bandleader is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Sylvius Leopold Weiss.

Silvius Leopold Weiss (12 October 1687 – 16 October 1750) was a German composer and lutenist.

Born in Grottkau near Breslau, the son of Johann Jacob Weiss, also a lutenist, he served at courts in Breslau, Rome, and Dresden, where he died. Until recently, he was thought to have been born in 1686, but recent evidence suggests that he was in fact born the following year.

Weiss was one of the most important and most prolific composers of lute music in history and one of the best-known and most technically accomplished lutenists of his day. He wrote around 600 pieces for lute, most of them grouped into 'sonatas' (not to be confused with the later classical sonata, based on sonata form) or suites, which consist mostly of baroque dance pieces. Weiss also wrote chamber pieces and concertos, but only the solo parts have survived for most of them.

In later life, Weiss became a friend of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and met J.S. Bach through him. J.S.Bach and Weiss were said to have competed in improvisation, as the following account by Johann Friedrich Reichardt describes:

"Anyone who knows how difficult it is to play harmonic modulations and good counterpoint on the lute will be surprised and full of disbelief to hear from eyewitnesses that Weiss, the great lutenist, challenged J. S. Bach, the great harpsichordist and organist, at playing fantasies and fugues."

Sylvius Weiss' son Johann Adolph Faustinus Weiss succeeded him as a Saxon court lutenist.

External links[link]

• Free scores by Sylvius Leopold Weiss in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Classical Composers Database
• Silvius Leopold Weiss

Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American blues singer and musician. His landmark recordings from 1936–37 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend, including a Faustian myth. As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson enjoyed little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime.

His records sold poorly during his lifetime, and it was only after the first reissue of his recordings on LP in 1961 that his work reached a wider audience. Johnson is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly of the Mississippi Delta blues style. He is credited by many rock musicians as an important influence; Eric Clapton has called Johnson "the most important blues singer that ever lived."^[1][2] Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an "Early Influence" in their first induction ceremony in 1986.^[3] In 2003, David Fricke ranked Johnson fifth in Rolling Stone 's list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.^[4]

Life and career[link]

Early life[link]

Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, possibly on May 8, 1911,^[5] to Julia Major Dodds (born October 1874) and Noah Johnson (born December 1884). Julia was married to Charles Dodds (born February 1865), a relatively prosperous landowner and furniture maker with whom she had 10 children. Charles Dodds had been forced by a mob to leave Hazlehurst following a dispute with white landowners. Julia left Hazlehurst with baby Robert but after some two years sent him to live in Memphis with her husband, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer.^[6]

Around 1919, Robert rejoined his mother in the area around Tunica and Robinsonville, Mississippi. Julia's new husband was known as Dusty Willis; he was 24 years her junior. Robert was remembered by some residents as "Little Robert Dusty,"^[7] but he was registered at Tunica's Indian Creek School as Robert Spencer. In the 1920 census he is listed as Robert Spencer, living in Lucas, Arkansas with Will and Julia Willis. Robert was at school in 1924 and 1927^[8] and the quality of his signature on his marriage certificate^[9] suggests that he was relatively well educated for a boy of his background. One school friend, Willie Coffee, has been discovered and filmed, recalling that Robert was already noted for playing the harmonica and jaw harp.^[10] He also remembers that Robert was absent for long periods, which suggests that he may have been living and studying in Memphis.^[11]

After school, Robert adopted the surname of his natural father, signing himself as Robert Johnson on the certificate of his marriage to sixteen-year-old Virginia Travis in February 1929. She died in childbirth shortly after.^[12] Surviving relatives of Virginia told the blues researcher Robert "Mack" McCormick that this was a divine punishment for Robert's decision to sing secular songs, known as 'selling your soul to the Devil'. McCormick believes that Johnson himself accepted the phrase as a description of his resolve to abandon the settled life of a husband and farmer to become a full-time blues musician.^[13]

Around this time, the noted blues musician Son House moved to Robinsonville where his musical partner, Willie Brown, lived. Late in life, House remembered Johnson as a 'little boy' who was a competent harmonica player but an embarrassingly bad guitarist. Soon after, Johnson left Robinsonville for the area around Martinsville, close to his birthplace Hazlehurst, possibly searching for his natural father. Here he perfected the guitar style of Son House and learned other styles from Isaiah "Ike" Zimmerman.^[14] Ike Zimmerman was rumoured to have learned supernaturally to play guitar by visiting graveyards at midnight.^[15] When Johnson next appeared in Robinsonville, he had seemed to have acquired a miraculous guitar technique.^[16] House was interviewed at a time when the legend of Johnson's pact with the Devil was well known among blues researchers. He was asked whether he attributed Johnson's technique to this pact, and his equivocal answers have been taken as confirmation.^[5]

While living in Martinsville, Johnson fathered a child with Vergie Mae Smith. He also married Caletta Craft in May 1931. In 1932, the couple moved to Clarksdale in the Delta. Here Caletta fell ill and Johnson abandoned her for a career as a 'walking' (itinerant) musician.^[17]

Itinerant musician[link]

David "Honeyboy" Edwards was one of several blues guitarists whose testimony has been used to piece together Johnson's history

From 1932 until his death in 1938, Johnson moved frequently between large cities like Memphis, Tennessee and Helena, Arkansas and the smaller towns of the Mississippi Delta and neighboring regions of Mississippi and Arkansas.^[18][19] On occasion, he travelled much further. Fellow blues musician Johnny Shines accompanied him to Chicago, Texas, New York, Canada, Kentucky, and Indiana.^[20] Henry Townsend shared a musical engagement with him in St Louis.^[21] In many places he stayed with members of his large extended family, or with women friends.^[22] He did not marry again but formed some long term relationships with women to whom he would return periodically. One was Estella Coleman, the mother of the blues musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. In other places he stayed with a woman seduced at his first performance.^[23][24] In each location, Johnson's hosts were largely ignorant of his life elsewhere. He used different names in different places, employing at least eight distinct surnames.^[25]

Biographers have looked for consistency from musicians who knew Johnson in different contexts: Shines, who travelled extensively with him; Lockwood who knew him as his mother's partner; David "Honeyboy" Edwards whose cousin Willie Mae Powell had a relationship with Johnson.^[26] From a mass of partial, conflicting, and inconsistent eye-witness accounts,^[27] biographers have attempted to summarize Johnson's character. "He was well mannered, he was soft spoken, he was indecipherable".^[28] "As for his character, everyone seems to agree that, while he was pleasant and outgoing in public, in private he was reserved and liked to go his own way".^[29] "Musicians who knew Johnson testified that he was a nice guy and fairly average—except, of course, for his musical talent, his weakness for whiskey and women, and his commitment to the road."^[30]

When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. Musical associates have said that in live performances Johnson often did not focus on his dark and complex original compositions, but instead pleased audiences by performing more well-known pop standards of the day^[31] – and not necessarily blues. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, Johnson had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted, and certain of his contemporaries later remarked on Johnson's interest in jazz and country music. Johnson also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience; in every town in which he stopped, Johnson would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.

Fellow musician Shines was 17 when he met Johnson in 1933. He estimated Johnson was maybe a year older than himself. In Samuel Charters' Robert Johnson, the author quotes Shines as saying:

"Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of a peculiar fellow. Robert'd be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody's business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money'd be coming from all directions. But Robert'd just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn't see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks ... So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along."

During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman about fifteen years his senior and the mother of musician Robert Lockwood, Jr. Johnson reportedly cultivated a woman to look after him in each town he played in. Johnson supposedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases the answer was 'yes'...until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.

In 1941, Alan Lomax learned from Muddy Waters that Johnson had performed in the Clarksdale, Mississippi area.^[32] By 1959, historian Samuel Charters could only add that Will Shade of the Memphis Jug Band remembered Johnson had once briefly played with him in West Memphis, Arkansas.^[33] In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis and possibly Illinois, and then to some states in the East.

In 1938, Columbia Records producer John H. Hammond, who owned some of Johnson's records, had record producer Don Law seek out Johnson out to book him for the first "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. On learning of Johnson's death, Hammond replaced him with Big Bill Broonzy, but still played two of Johnson's records from the stage.^[34]

Recording sessions[link]

Robert Johnson records

Johnson's recordings were released on several labels: "Milkcow's Calf Blues" on Perfect Records (top), "Love in Vain Blues" on Vocalion Records (middle), and "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" by Conqueror Records (bottom)

In Jackson, Mississippi, around 1936, Johnson sought out H. C. Speir, who ran a general store and doubled as a talent scout. Speir put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who offered to record the young musician in San Antonio, Texas. The recording session was held on November 23, 1936 in room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio,^[35][36][37] which Brunswick Records had set up to be a temporary recording studio. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played sixteen selections, and recorded alternate takes for most of these. Johnson reportedly performed facing the wall, which has been cited as evidence he was a shy man and reserved performer. This conclusion was played up in the inaccurate liner notes of the 1961 album King of the Delta Blues Singers. Ry Cooder speculates that Johnson played facing a corner to enhance the sound of the guitar, a technique he calls "corner loading".^[38]

Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were "Come On In My Kitchen", "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" and "Cross Road Blues". The first songs to appear were "Terraplane Blues" and "Last Fair Deal Gone Down", probably the only recordings of his that he would live to hear. "Terraplane Blues" became a moderate regional hit, selling 5,000 copies.

His first recorded song, "Kind Hearted Woman Blues", was part of a cycle of spin-offs and response songs that began with Leroy Carr's "Mean Mistreater Mama" (1934). According to Wald, it was "the most musically complex in the cycle"^[39] and stood apart from most rural blues as a through-composed lyric, rather than an arbitrary collection of more-or-less unrelated verses.^[40] In contrast to most Delta players, Johnson had absorbed the idea of fitting a composed song into the three minutes of a 78 rpm side.^[41] Most of Johnson's "somber and introspective" songs and performances come from his second recording session.^[42]

In 1937, Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session in a makeshift studio at the Vitagraph (Warner Brothers) Building, 508 Park Avenue, where Brunswick Record Corporation was located on the third floor.^[43] Eleven records from this session would be released within the following year. Johnson did two takes of most of these songs and recordings of those takes survived. Because of this, there is more opportunity to compare different performances of a single song by Johnson than for any other blues performer of his time and place.^[44]

By the time he died, at least six of his records had been released in the South as race records.

Playback issues in extant recordings[link]

The accuracy of the pitch and speed of the extant recordings has been questioned. In The Guardian's music blog from May 2010, Jon Wilde states that "the common consensus among musicologists is that we've been listening to [Robert] Johnson at least 20% too fast;" i.e., that "the recordings were accidentally speeded up when first committed to 78 [rpm records], or else were deliberately speeded up to make them sound more exciting."^[45] He does not give a source for this statement. Former Sony music executive Lawrence Cohn, who won a Grammy for the label's 1991 reissue of Johnson's works, "acknowledges there's a possibility Johnson's 1936–37 recordings were speeded up, since the OKeh/Vocalion family of labels, which originally issued the material, was 'notorious' for altering the speed of its releases. 'Sometimes it was 78 rpms, sometimes it was 81 rpms,' he says. It's impossible to check the original sources, since the metal stampers used to duplicate the original 78 discs disappeared years ago."^[46]

Death[link]

Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles (24 km) from Greenwood. Differing accounts and theories attempt to shed light on the events preceding his death. A story often told is that one evening Johnson began flirting with a woman at a dance, the wife of the juke joint owner, according to rumor, unaware that the bottle of whiskey she gave to Johnson had been poisoned by her husband. In another version, she was a married woman unrelated to the juke joint owner. Johnson was allegedly offered an open bottle of whiskey that was laced with strychnine. Fellow blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson allegedly advised him never to drink from an offered bottle that had already been opened. According to Williamson, Johnson replied, "Don't ever knock a bottle out of my hand." Soon after, he was offered another open bottle of whiskey, also laced with strychnine, and accepted it. Johnson is reported to have begun feeling ill the evening after drinking from the bottle and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days, his condition steadily worsened and witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain—symptoms which are consistent with strychnine poisoning.

Musicologist Robert "Mack" McCormick claims to have tracked down the man who murdered Johnson, and to have obtained a confession from him in a personal interview. McCormick has declined to reveal the man's name, however.^[47]

In his book Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson, Tom Graves uses expert testimony from toxicologists to dispute the notion that Johnson died of strychnine poisoning. He states that strychnine has such a distinctive odor and taste that it cannot be disguised, even in strong liquor. He also claims that a significant amount of strychnine would have to be consumed in one sitting to be fatal, and that death from the poison would occur within hours, not days. This observation was also noted in a recent Guitar World comment from contemporary David "Honeyboy" Edwards, who said that it couldn't have been strychnine, since he would have died much sooner than the three days he suffered.

Gravesite[link]

Alleged gravesite showing one of Robert Johnson's two tombstones

The exact location of his grave is officially unknown; three different markers have been erected at possible church cemetery burial sites outside of Greenwood.^[48]

• Research in the 1980s and 1990s strongly suggests Johnson was buried in the graveyard of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church near Morgan City, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. A one-ton cenotaph in the shape of an obelisk, listing all of Johnson's song titles, with a central inscription by Peter Guralnick, was placed at this location in 1990, paid for by Columbia Records and numerous smaller contributions made through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund.
• In 1990 a small marker with the epitaph "Resting in the Blues" was placed in the cemetery of Payne Chapel near Quito, by the cemetery's owner. This alleged burial site, in an apparent attempt to strengthen a claim, happens to be located in the center of Richard Johnson's family plot.
• More recent research by Stephen LaVere (including statements from Rosie Eskridge, the wife of the supposed gravedigger) indicates that the actual grave site is under a big pecan tree in the cemetery of the Little Zion Church, north of Greenwood along Money Road. Sony Music has placed a marker at this site.

An interviewee in the documentary The Search for Robert Johnson (1991) suggests that due to poverty and lack of transportation Johnson is most likely to have been buried in a pauper's grave (or "potter's field") very near where he died.

Devil legend[link]

According to legend, as a young man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi, Robert Johnson was branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician. He was "instructed" to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. The "Devil" played a few songs and then returned the guitar to Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument. This was in effect, a deal with the Devil mirroring the legend of Faust. In exchange for his soul, Robert Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous. ^[49]

Various accounts[link]

This legend was developed over time, and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow,^[50] Edward Komara^[51] and Elijah Wald, who sees the legend as largely dating from Johnson's rediscovery by white fans more than two decades after his death.^[52] Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson's astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966.^[53] Other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House and there were fully two years between House's observation of Johnson as first a novice and then a master.

Further details were absorbed from the imaginative retellings by Greil Marcus^[54] and Robert Palmer.^[55] Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in the biography Crossroads by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of Blues musician Tommy Johnson. This story was collected from his musical associate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s.^[56] One version of Ledell Johnson's account was published in David Evans's 1971 biography of Tommy,^[57] and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside Son House's story in the widely read Searching for Robert Johnson.^[58]

In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that Ike Zimmerman of Hazelhurst, Mississippi learned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones. Zimmerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young Robert Johnson.^[59] Recent research by blues scholar Bruce Conforth uncovered Ike Zimmerman's daughter and the story becomes clearer. Johnson and Zimmerman did practice in a graveyard at night because it was quiet and no one would disturb them, but it was not the Hazlehurst cemetery as had been believed. Johnson spent about a year living with and learning from Zimmerman, who ultimately accompanied Johnson back to the Delta to look after him. Conforth's article in Living Blues magazine goes into much greater detail.^[60] There are now tourist attractions claiming to be "The Crossroads" at Clarksdale and in Memphis.^[61]

The legendary "Crossroads" at Clarksdale, Mississippi.

His own account[link]

Most musicians who knew Johnson well, such as Johnny Shines, never heard him claim that he had sold his soul to the Devil. Different accounts give contradictory information in this regard, but there is no conclusive evidence one way or another.

"Me And The Devil" begins, "Early this morning when you knocked upon my door/Early this morning when you knocked upon my door/And I said, 'Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go,'" and continues with, "You may bury my body down by the highway side/You may bury my body down by the highway side/So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride."

Johnson's lyrics to "Cross Road Blues" ("Standin' at the crossroads, tried to flag a ride") suggest he was hitchhiking rather than selling his soul to the Devil.

Interpretations[link]

Folklorist Alan Lomax was instrumental in preserving Johnson's recordings and spreading the mythology around his skill

The Devil in these songs may not solely refer to the Christian story of Satan, but equally to the African trickster god, Legba, himself associated with crossroads—though author Tom Graves deems the connection to African deities tenuous.^[62] As folklorist Harry M. Hyatt discovered during his research in the South from 1935–1939, when African-Americans born in the 19th or early-20th century said they or anyone else had "sold their soul to the devil at the crossroads," they had a different meaning in mind. Ample evidence indicates African religious retentions surrounding Legba and the making of a "deal" (not selling the soul in the same sense as in the Faustian tradition cited by Graves) with this so-called "devil" at the crossroads.^[63]

"The Blues and the Blues singer has really special powers over women, especially. It is said that the Blues singer could possess women and have any woman they wanted. And so when Robert Johnson came back, having left his community as an apparently mediocre musician, with a clear genius in his guitar style and lyrics, people said he must have sold his soul to the devil. And that fits in with this old African association with the crossroads where you find wisdom: you go down to the crossroads to learn, and in his case to learn in a Faustian pact, with the devil. You sell your soul to become the greatest musician in history."

—Bill Ferris, American Public Media: The Story with Dick Gordon^[64]

Folk tales of bargains with the Devil have long existed in African-American and European traditions and were adapted into literature. Two well-known examples are Washington Irving's "The Devil and Tom Walker" in 1824 and Stephen Vincent Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster" in 1936. In the 1930s Hyatt recorded many tales of banjo players, fiddlers, card sharks, dice players, guitarists, and one accordionist selling their souls at crossroads. Folkorist Alan Lomax considered that every African American secular musician was "in the opinion of both himself and his peers, a child of the Devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme".^[65]

Musical style[link]

Robert Johnson is today considered a master of the blues, particularly of the Delta blues style; Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones said in 1990, "You want to know how good the blues can get? Well, this is it."^[66] But according to Elijah Wald, in his book Escaping the Delta, Johnson in his own time was most respected for his ability to play in such a wide variety of styles—from raw country slide guitar to jazz and pop licks—and to pick up guitar parts almost instantly upon hearing a song.^[67] His first recorded song, "Kind Hearted Woman Blues," in contrast to the prevailing Delta style of the time, more resembled the style of Chicago or St. Louis, with "a full-fledged, abundantly varied musical arrangement."^[68] Unusual for a Delta player of the time, a recording exhibits what Johnson could do entirely outside of a blues style. "They're Red Hot," from his first recording session, shows that he was also comfortable with an "uptown" swing or ragtime sound similar to the Harlem Hamfats but, as Wald remarks, "no record company was heading to Mississippi in search of a down-home Ink Spots ... [H]e could undoubtedly have come up with a lot more songs in this style if the producers had wanted them."^[69]

"To the uninitiated, Johnson's recordings may sound like just another dusty Delta blues musician wailing away. But a careful listen reveals that Johnson was a revisionist in his time . . Johnson's tortured soul vocals and anxiety-ridden guitar playing aren't found in the cotton-field blues of his contemporaries."

—Marc Myers, Wall Street Journal^[70]

Voice[link]

An important aspect of Johnson's singing was his use of microtonality. These subtle inflections of pitch help explain why his singing conveys such powerful emotion. Eric Clapton described Johnson's music as "the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice." In two takes of "Me and the Devil Blues" he shows a high degree of precision in the complex vocal delivery of the last verse: "The range of tone he can pack into a few lines is astonishing."^[71] The song's "hip humor and sophistication" is often overlooked. "[G]enerations of blues writers in search of wild Delta primitivism," writes Wald, have been inclined to overlook or undervalue aspects that show Johnson as a polished professional performer.^[72]

Johnson is also known for using the guitar as 'the other vocalist in the song', a technique later perfected by B. B. King and his personified guitar known as 'Lucille':^[73]

". . in Africa and in Afro-American tradition, there is the tradition of the talking instrument, beginning with the drums . . the one-strand and then the six-strings with bottleneck-style performance; it becomes a competing voice . . or a complementary voice . . in the performance . . "

—Bill Ferris, American Public Media: The Story with Dick Gordon^[64]

Instrument[link]

Johnson mastered the guitar, being considered today one of the all-time greats on the instrument. His approach was highly complex and extremely advanced musically. When Keith Richards was first introduced to Johnson's music by his band mate Brian Jones, he replied, "Who is the other guy playing with him?", not realizing it was Johnson playing on one guitar. "I was hearing two guitars, and it took a long time to actually realise he was doing it all by himself,"^[74] said Richards, who would later add "Robert Johnson was like an orchestra all by himself."^[70]

"As for his guitar technique, it's politely reedy but ambitiously eclectic—moving effortlessly from hen-picking and bottleneck slides to a full deck of chucka-chucka rhythm figures."

—Marc Myers, Wall Street Journal^[70]

Lyrics[link]

In The Story with Dick Gordon,^[75] Bill Ferris of American Public Media said:

"Robert Johnson I think of in the same way I think of the British Romantic poets, Keats and Shelley, who burned out early, who were geniuses at wordsmithing poetry."

and:

"The Blues, if anything. are deeply sexual. You know, 'my car doesn't run, I'm gonna check my oil' ... 'if you don't like my apples, don't shake my tree'. Every verse has sexuality associated with it."

Influences[link]

Johnson fused approaches specific to Delta blues to those from the broader music world. The slide guitar work on "Rambling on My Mind" is pure Delta and Johnson's vocal there has "a touch of ... Son House rawness," but the train imitation on the bridge is not at all typical of Delta blues, and is more like something out of minstrel show music or vaudeville.^[76] Johnson did record versions of "Preaching the Blues" and "Walking Blues" in the older bluesman's vocal and guitar style (House's chronology is questioned by Guralnick). As with the first take of "Come On In My Kitchen," the influence of Skip James is evident in James's "Devil Got My Woman", but the lyrics rise to the level of first-rate poetry, and Johnson sings with a strained voice found nowhere else in his recorded output.^[77]

The sad, romantic "Love in Vain" successfully blends several of Johnson's disparate influences. The form, including the wordless last verse, follows Leroy Carr's last hit "When the Sun Goes Down"; the words of the last sung verse come directly from a song Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded in 1926.^[78] Johnson's last-ever recording, "Milkcow's Calf Blues" is his most direct tribute to Kokomo Arnold, who wrote "Milkcow Blues" and who influenced Johnson's vocal style.^[79]

"From Four Until Late" shows Johnson's mastery of a blues style not usually associated with the Delta. He croons the lyrics in manner reminiscent of Lonnie Johnson, and his guitar style is more that of a ragtime-influenced player like Blind Blake.^[80] Lonnie Johnson's influence on Robert Johnson is even clearer in two other departures from the usual Delta style: "Malted Milk" and "Drunken Hearted Man". Both copy the arrangement of Lonnie Johnson's "Life Saver Blues".^[81] The two takes of "Me and the Devil Blues" show the influence of Peetie Wheatstraw, calling into question the interpretation of this piece as "the spontaneous heart-cry of a demon-driven folk artist."^[72]

Legacy[link]

Robert Johnson has had enormous impact on music and musicians, but outside his own time, place, and even genre for which he was famous. His influence on his contemporaries was much smaller, due in part to the fact that he was an itinerant performer—playing mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances—who worked in a then undervalued style of music, and who died young after recording only a handful of songs. Johnson, though well-traveled and admired in his performances, was little noted in his own time and place; his records even less so. "Terraplane Blues", sometimes described as Johnson's only hit record, outsold his others but was still only a minor success.

If one had asked black blues fans about Robert Johnson in the first twenty years after his death, writes Elijah Wald, "the response in the vast majority of cases would have been a puzzled 'Robert who?'" This lack of recognition extended to black musicians:

"As far as the evolution of black music goes, Robert Johnson was an extremely minor figure, and very little that happened in the decades following his death would have been affected if he had never played a note."^[82]

With the album King of the Delta Blues Singers, a compilation of Johnson's recordings released in 1961, Columbia Records introduced his work to a much wider audience—fame and recognition he only received long after his death.

Rock and roll[link]

Johnson's major influence has been on genres of music that weren’t recognized as such until long after his death: rock and roll and rock. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included four of his songs in a set of 500^[83] they deemed to have shaped the genre:

• “Sweet Home Chicago” (1936)
• “Cross Road Blues” (1936)
• “Hellhound on My Trail” (1937)
• “Love in Vain” (1937)

Johnson recorded these songs a decade and a half before the recognized advent of rock and roll,^[84] dying a year or two later. The Museum inducted him as an “Early Influence” in their first induction ceremony in 1986, almost a half century after his death. Marc Meyers of the Wall Street Journal wrote that, "His 'Stop Breakin' Down Blues' from 1937 is so far ahead of its time that the song could easily have been a rock demo cut in 1954."^[70]

Rock music and related genres[link]

Many of the artists who claim to have been influenced by Johnson the most, injecting his revolutionary stylings into their work and recording tribute songs and collections are prominent rock musicians. His impact and influence on these future star musicians from England—who would then come to develop and define both the rock and roll and rock music eras—resulted not from personal appearances or direct fraternization. Instead, the artistic power of his exceptional talents and original compositions would be relayed across the Atlantic many years after his death through the compilation of his works released in 1961 by Columbia Records (King of the Delta Blues Singers).

Sam Dunn's documentary Metal Evolution cites that Robert Johnson was the "great grandfather to all things heavy metal" with members of Rush and Slipknot agreeing that he played a major role in the future of rock music.

Examples of the influence he had on major musicians include:

• Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin referred to him on NPR's Fresh Air (recorded in 2004) as “Robert Johnson, to whom we all owed our existence, in some way.” His group recorded "Traveling Riverside Blues", a song that drew from Johnson's original and quoted a number of Johnson's songs in the lyrics.
• To Eric Clapton, founder and member of many legendary groups, Johnson was "the most important blues musician who ever lived."^[74] He recorded enough of his songs to make Me and Mr. Johnson, a blues-rock album released in 2004 as a tribute to the legendary bluesman (also made into the film Sessions for Robert J). He'd earlier recorded "Crossroads", an arrangement of "Cross Road Blues", with Cream in 1969, leading some to consider him "the man largely responsible for making Robert Johnson a household name."^[85]
• Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones introduced bandmate Keith Richards to his first Robert Johnson album. The blues master's recordings would have as much impact on him as on Mick Jagger. The group would perform his "Walkin' Blues" at the Rock and Roll Circus in 1968. They arranged their own version of "Love in Vain" for their album Let It Bleed; recording "Stop Breakin' Down Blues" for Exile on Main Street.
• He was a strong influence on Fleetwood Mac in the group's early years as a British blues band. Guitarist Jeremy Spencer contributed two covers of Johnson-derived songs to the group's early albums, and lead guitarist Peter Green would later go on to record Johnson's entire catalog over the course of two albums, The Robert Johnson Songbook and Hot Foot Powder.

Alexis Korner, referred to as "the Founding Father of British Blues", co-wrote and recorded a song entitled "Robert Johnson" on his The Party Album released in 1978.

Guitar playing[link]

The L1 from Gibson Guitar Company is a tribute model to Johnson

His revolutionary guitar playing has led contemporary experts, assessing his talents through the handful of old recordings available, to rate him among the greatest guitar players of all time:

• In 1990 Spin Magazine rated him 1st in its 35 Guitar Gods listing—on the 52nd anniversary of his death.^[86]
• In 2008 Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 5th on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time—70 years after he died.^[4]
• In 2010 Guitar.com ranked him 9th in its list of Gibson.com’s Top 50 Guitarists of All Time—72 years after he died.^[87]

Musicians who proclaim his profound impact on them, i.e., Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton, all rated in the top ten with him on each of these lists. The boogie bass line he fashioned for "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom" has now passed into the standard guitar repertoire. At the time it was completely new, a guitarist's version of something people would only ever have heard on a piano.^[88]

Lifetime achievement[link]

The Complete Recordings, a double-disc box set released by Sony/Columbia Legacy on August 28, 1990, containing almost everything Robert Johnson ever recorded, with all 29 recordings (and 12 alternate takes) won a Grammy Award for “Best Historical Album” that year. In 2006 he was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (accepted by his son Claud).^[89]

Problems of biography[link]

"The thing about Robert Johnson was that he only existed on his records. He was pure legend."

—Martin Scorsese, Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson

Very little is known of Johnson's early life with any certainty. Two marriage licenses for Johnson have been located in county records offices. The ages given in these certificates point to different birth dates, as do the entries showing his attendance at Indian Creek School, Tunica, Mississippi. That he was not listed among his mother's children in the 1910 census^[8] casts further doubt on these dates. Carrie Thompson claimed that her mother, who was also Robert's mother, remembered his birth date as May 8, 1911. The 1920 census suggests he was born in 1912.^{[citation needed]} Five significant dates from his career are documented: Monday, Thursday and Friday, November 23, 26, and 27, 1936, at a recording session in San Antonio, Texas. Seven months later, on Saturday and Sunday, June 19–20, 1937, he was in Dallas at another session. His death certificate was discovered in 1968, and lists the date and location of his death.^[90]

The two confirmed images of Johnson were located in 1973, in the possession of the musician's half-sister Carrie Thompson, and were not widely published until the late 1980s. A third photo, purporting to show Johnson posing with fellow blues performer Johnny Shines, was published in the November 2008 edition of Vanity Fair magazine.^[91] The same article claims that other photographs of Johnson, so far unpublished, may exist.

"We don't know much, really . . there's so little known about this musician, other than these recordings that were made, and the fact that he died early, poisoned by the jealous husband of a woman he was hanging out with."

—Bill Ferris, American Public Media: The Story with Dick Gordon^[64]

Johnson's records were greatly admired by record collectors from the time of their first release and efforts were made to discover his biography, with virtually no success. Noted blues researcher Mack McCormick began researching his family background, but was never ready to publish. McCormick's research eventually became as much a legend as Johnson himself. In 1982, McCormick permitted Peter Guralnick to publish a summary in Living Blues (1982), later reprinted in book form as Searching for Robert Johnson.^[92] Later research has sought to confirm this account or to add minor details. A revised summary acknowledging major informants was written by Stephen LaVere for the booklet accompanying the compilation album Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings (1990), and is maintained with updates at the Delta Haze website.^[93] The documentary film The Search for Robert Johnson contains accounts by Mack McCormick and Gayle Dean Wardlow of what informants have told them: long interviews of David Honeyboy Edwards and Johnny Shines, and short interviews of surviving friends and family. These published biographical sketches achieve coherent narratives, partly by ignoring reminiscences and hearsay accounts which contradict or conflict with other accounts.

A relatively full account of Johnson's brief musical career emerged in the 1960s, largely from accounts by Son House, Johnny Shines, David Honeyboy Edwards and Robert Lockwood. In 1961, the sleeve notes to the album King of the Delta Blues Singers included reminiscences of Don Law who had recorded Johnson in 1936. Law added to the mystique surrounding Johnson, representing him as very young and extraordinarily shy.

Discography[link]

	Traveling Riverside Blues noicon Cross Road Blues noicon
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

Eleven Johnson 78s were released on the Vocalion label during his lifetime, with a twelfth issued posthumously.^[94] All songs are copyrighted to Robert Johnson, and his estate^{[citation needed]}.

The Complete Recordings: A double-disc box set was released on August 28, 1990, containing almost everything Robert Johnson ever recorded, with all 29 recordings, and 12 alternate takes. (There is one further alternate, of "Traveling Riverside Blues," which was released on Sony's King of the Delta Blues Singers CD and also as an extra in early printings of the paperback edition of Elijah Wald's "Escaping the Delta.")^[95]

To celebrate Johnson's 100th birthday, May 8, 2011, Sony Legacy released a re-mastered 2 CD set of all 42 Robert Johnson recordings extant, entitled Robert Johnson: The Centennial Collection.^[96] In addition, there were two brief fragments: one where Johnson can be heard practicing a guitar figure; the second when Johnson can be heard saying, presumably to engineer Don Law, "I wanna go on with our next one myself."^[96] Reviewers commented that the sound quality of the 2011 release was a substantial improvement on the 1990 release.^[97][98]

Awards and recognitions[link]

Grammy Awards[link]

Grammy Hall of Fame[link]

National Recording Registry[link]

The Complete Recordings of Robert Johnson (1936–1937) was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2003.^[99] The board selects songs in an annual basis that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame[link]

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included four songs by Robert Johnson in the 500 songs that shaped rock and roll.^[100]

The Blues Foundation Awards[link]

Honors and inductions[link]

On September 17, 1994, the U.S. Post Office issued a Robert Johnson 29-cent commemorative postage stamp.^[102]

Tribute albums[link]

There have been a number of tribute albums by guitar virtuosi, including

Films and other media[link]

• The 1986 film Crossroads is about a young white blues guitarist's search for Johnson's "missing" 30th song and the theme of blues artists selling their souls to the devil.
• Stones in My Passway: The Robert Johnson Story (1990), a biographical film by Martin Spottl.
• The Search for Robert Johnson (1991), UK documentary hosted by Blues musician John P. Hammond, son of John H. Hammond.
• Can't You Hear the Wind Howl? The Life and Music of Robert Johnson (1997)
• Hellhounds On My Trail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson (2000, directed by Robert Mugge)
• Eric Clapton – Sessions for Robert Johnson (2004, documentary)
• Me and the Devil Blues: The Unreal Life of Robert Johnson (published in 2008) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akira Hiramoto. It is a phantasmagoric reimagining of Johnson's life.
• Celebration of the music and legend of Robert Johnson: Show 502 WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. Rory Block and Scott Ainslie discuss Johnson and play his music. Taped 2008-09-29; 60 minutes audio (WMA, MP3), 88 minutes video (WMV).
• To commemorate Johnson's 100th birthday, Dogfish Head Brewery released "Hellhound on My Ale", a limited edition beer, in collaboration with Sony's Legacy Recordings division.^[104]
• Crossroads by Radio Lab the myth of what happened to Robert Johnson at the crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

See also[link]

Biography portal

• 27 Club

References[link]

Bibliography[link]