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The ud was considered the principal instrument of the Arab world. The ud was thought to be invented by Lamark, a direct descendant of Cain...."On the death of Lamark's son, he hung his remains in a tree, and the desiccated skeleton suggested the form of the ud." This instrument of the early middle ages was predominately used for secular accompaniment. The ud consists of a large sound box connected to a short neck. These features are what distinguish it from the long neck lute family. "The length must be one and a half times the width; the depth half the width; the neck, one quarter of the length". The body of the ud was made from lightweight wood. The primary ud of the middle ages has been noted in the ninth century and consists of four strings. "The strings may be tuned from bass to treble or treble to bass. Bass to treble tuning is represented by al-kindi, who advocated tuning the lowest course to the lowest singable pitch." The other three strings would be tuned in accordance to this low string, in either fourths, fifths, or sixths. The ud towards the later half of the middle ages was bichordal, having double courses. This was thought to allow the development of a more virtuoso type of performance. The earliest relatives of the guitar family were in the lute family during the Middle Ages. The long lute was the first instrument of the era in Europe. This was before the eighth century. This instrument had a slender neck and a neck two to three times its body size. This instrument had six frets. The short lute arrived in the tenth century. "(The lute) is heavy, obviously carved out of one piece of wood; the narrow body is rectilinear with parallel sides and sloping shoulders." These early lute of the middle ages had from two strings,( "like the one in display at the Dashkov museum in Moscow") to seven strings. "The best source of early medieval lutes are miniatures in Spanish manuscripts of the tenth and eleventh century." These books described a short lute and another type of lute which can not be classified yet. Both illustrations of the lutes exhibit a truly awkward peg-box . Musicologists have agreed that the peg-box in these pictures was a result of the poor artistic work." (the peg-box)...must be the embarrassed expedient of artists incapable of drawing in perspective a bent back peg box." The Vihuela starts the guitar family and breaks away from the lute family. Theses instrument had a pear back unlike the lute with its pear-shaped body. Vihuelas were made in a great array of sizes and had from four to seven stings. The standard vihuela had six strings and was double strung, like the modern twelve string guitar. The tuning was G-C-F-A-D-G. The distinction between the vihuela and the common guitar of this time period was that the top and bottom string missing from the guitar. The Vihuela was better suited for polyphonic music which was becoming extremely popular. Milan, Mudarra, Fuenalla and Narvaez were the main figures responsible for the flowering of the vihuela in sixteenth century. "They were the earliest composers in the history of music to develop a truly independent instrumental idiom that was not merely a translation from the vocal style". As time progressed the vihuela seamed to disappear from the seen and the four course guitar took over in popularity. It seams as if the school of vihuela playing disappeared from history until its discovery in the 1870's when the Conde de Morphy undertook the immense job of translating the notation of that time to standard notation. What he found were musical masterpieces from musicians such as Milan, Navaez and Mudarra. The instrument which is closest to the present day guitar is the four-course guitar. This instrument was much smaller then the present day guitar . This guitar of the middle ages," unlike the modern guitar probably had some intricate design over the sound hole, gut instead of nickel for frets and only ten frets." The four course guitar was tuned in intervals of fourth-major third-forth for four strings. " The first interval was usually from the note "G" to "C" but a variety of different notes were also used." The guitars and viheulas of that period had two strings next to each other of the same note, and sometimes different pitches. For example the lowest string would be tuned to a particular pitch of G and the string next to it would be G also but an octave higher. What this means is that in actuality a four string guitar has eight strings and a 6 string vihuela has 12 strings. The performance technique required to play the four-course guitar was similar to the lute and vihuela. Most music was written in tabulator. This system used four lines to represent the courses and the numbers or letters to represent were the fingers were placed. The note values were placed over the numbers or letters. Although this instrument was invented and used in the Middle ages , much of its music was written at the turn of the sixteenth century. This factor makes the four string guitar an instrument from the renaissance as wall as an instrument from the middle ages. Then much in the same way that the viheula was overshadowed by the four course guitar, the five course guitar is introduced and the four-string guitar is cast aside like an old antic. |