Foreword

A GENERATION OF INSTRUMENT MAKERS has grown up with

the
Guild of American Luthiers, and hundreds of volunteer authors
k have supported our experiment in information exchange. We have
over three thousand members in about forty countries and publish what we
feel to be the world’s foremost lutherie magazine, American Lutherie. We are
proud of, and grateful for, the successes the Guild has achieved, and firmly
believe our greatest accomplishments are yet ahead of us.
This book, and the Guild’s many other publications, are evidence that the
experiment is working, and working at the highest level. Robert Lundberg
contributed the treasure-trove of material in this book to the GAL, as well as
many other articles and convention lectures, because he believed in the
Guild’s basic idea: that a free exchange of information among instrument
makers is good for everyone, and a good thing intrinsically.
Bob Lundberg passed away during the production of this book. We wish to
acknowledge the contribution to this project, under very difficult
circumstances, of Bob’s wife Linda Toenniessen and his daughters Branwyn
and Tabitha Lundberg. Their work in researching materials in Bob’s reference
library, and their enthusiastic support of the Guild’s efforts to complete the
publication of this book, are greatly appreciated.
Bob’s friend and associate Douglas Smith was a valued collaborator in the
final months of the project, answering scores of detailed questions that we
would otherwise have referred to Bob. His book A History of the Lute from
Antiquity to the Renaissance is being published by the Lute Society of America
at about the same time as this volume.
GAL stalwart member Lawrence Lundy gave valuable assistance in the
matter of the Venetian inch, and luthiers Gunter Mark, Jess Wells, Clive
Titmuss, and Michael Yeats helped us wrestle with the unresolved issue of the
unveneered neck. Cyndy Burton, along with her partner Jeffrey Elliott,
contributed time, effort, and energy far in excess of her official duties as a
GAL Contributing Editor.
Due to the unusual nature of the book’s organization, with the great
majority of the material being in the form of photos and captions, we have
opted not to provide a single, traditional index. Instead, we have indexed the
Historical section in the normal manner, and provided a summary of the
Practicum section. The summary should prove useful not only in gaining an
overview of the building sequence, but also in quickly locating the detailed
information on any particular phase of the construction process.
It can be a shock to turn page 234 and realize that the book has suddenly
ended. There is so much more that could be said, but it will not be. Robert
Lundberg’s passing was like that. We will have to content ourselves with
being grateful for the gift he has left us, however much we may wish to
continue the conversation.
 Preface

T
HIS BOOK BEGAN as an agreement between Bob died of cancer in March 2001. He was fifty-two
the GAL and luthier and scholar Robert years old, and had fought and won bouts with cancer twice
Lundberg to publish the lectures which Bob before in his too-short lifetime. He had just recovered from
had been presenting in his annual historical lute the second of those battles when an unrelated, extremely
construction seminar, the Erlangen Lautenbaukurs, aggressive tumor was discovered. Despite the best efforts
named for the German city in which they took place. of his doctors and his enormous will to live, he was gone
The text was transcribed from tape, edited, hammered in a few months.
out, and arranged with Bob’s photographs and drawings. We were working together on this book right up until
The series appeared in five consecutive issues of the end, and most of the inconsistencies which were
American Lutherie magazine in 1987 and 1988. contained in the original magazine articles had been
In the Lautenbaukurs, five historical lectures were addressed before he died, but there are a few which
presented over the course of a week, and were followed remain. I have sought and received help in these areas
by a practicum — a lute-building intensive in which the from other people, but, with very few exceptions, we have
participants, with Bob’s help, applied the information decided not to modify Bob’s original text. There are,
given in the lectures to build their own instruments. therefore, a few issues which deserve some mention. I will
Tim Olsen, the Guild’s founder and editor, discussed address them in the order in which they appear in the text.
with Bob the possibility of presenting a photo essay in The first is the names of the different sizes of
the magazine in lieu of the practicum, perhaps two or instruments in the Renaissance lute family (p. 8). After our
three articles. Tim put a camera in my hands and asked original publication of Bob’s presentation of these lute-
if I would like to take pictures of Bob building lutes, for family instruments, he changed his opinion of how they
which I am eternally grateful. Besides parenthood, it was should be classified. His initial designations for these
the best job I have ever had. I had to learn to use a instruments, both in the magazine and in his instrument
camera, so I did it on the job. For years I had wanted to catalog (p. 249), were (smallest to largest) descant, alto,
meet Bob and see how he accomplished his marvellous tenor, bass, and octave bass. He asked us to change the
work. What you see in my photographs is the eye of an names in the captions and table to read small octave,
intensely interested student attempting to see exactly descant, alto, tenor, and bass. I asked Bob’s friend and
how he accomplished each operation. fellow lute historian Douglas Smith about this. Doug
Over the next five years we spent scores of hours translated the Fugger lute-collection inventory to which
photographing his procedures, and in the process we Bob refers in relation to lute-family instruments and their
became fast friends. It was amazing the amount of work designations on p. 10. He said that while he preferred
he could accomplish over the course of a day. He never Bob’s original designations, nobody has decisively figured
seemed hurried. I never saw a misplaced chisel, knife, out exactly which surviving instruments correspond to
or saw cut. He didn’t fuss. You simply do this, and then each of the seven sizes that Praetorius mentions (pp. 8,10),
you do this. “That’s good enough,” he’d say, and then and that Doug confirmed in the Fugger inventory names;
move on. He was so organized. It all looked so easy. It that is, there is an open debate about the string lengths and
was all so excellent. the names to attach to them. Bob's new designations
When I brought the first shots back to the office it caused me to scratch my head when compared with the
was immediately clear that the length of our practicum classifications in the Fugger inventory, but he always had
series had been severely underestimated. Neither we sound arguments for his opinions, and his model for the
nor Bob had any idea how long it would take to do a proportionality of the instruments based on Praetorius’
thorough job, but the material was just too good for us model stands, regardless of what the various sizes of lutes
to pass up, and he was more than willing despite the are called.
inevitable inconveniences that preparing for and doing The next issue concerns the Venetian inch (V" ), the
photo shoots, writing and editing text, advising on unit of measurement which Bob deduced was used by
layout, and answering endless questions imposed upon early lute makers in Venice and Padua. He compared the
his time. As he said in an endnote to the fourteenth and proportions of their instruments and analyzed them in the
final episode in 1994, “I’m not sure that we would have light of sound assumptions about the practical and efficient
undertaken this project had we known that it would run methods which are typically employed by craftsmen al the
for seven years, nineteen episodes, 700 photographs, workbench. A careful reader will note that although Bob
and some 70,000 words. Wow!” refers to measurements in Venetian inches from the
Over the course of the series it became obvious to all beginning, the closest he conies to defining a precise
of us that this information needed to be collected into a metric equivalent is on p. 57, where he says, “1" Venetian
single volume. It has taken most of seven years since is about 27.4MM.” If one does the
the publication of the final practicum episode in
American Lutherie to realize that goal.
 math where he has given metric equivalents the results vary instrument which still has its half-binding taped in place
within a range of just over 1MM. I asked Bob about this. He while glue is drying. (This was one of those staged
said that any discrepancies are well within working operations.) In a third instance, Bob shows how a pegbox is
parameters, being within a few tenths of a millimeter for the completely veneered before it is glued to the neck in
most part, and that if one was focusing on the discrepancies Practicum Twelve, but the veneer on the end of the pegbox
they were missing the point: the consistency in the evidence is missing in Practicum Sixteen, when the pegs arc being fit.
of the use of this measurement and its easily and practically This was rectified sometime before this neck and pegbox
divisible fractions speak directly of the way in which the were finished in Practicum Seventeen.
ancient makers worked, and is evidence of their attitudes But the thorniest of the unresolved issues in the
toward proportionality, practicality, and harmony. There is Practicum is that of the carving of unveneered necks. After
no way to know for certain the exact metric equivalent since photographing work on a large ebony instrument with a
all we can see are the results of work done using a veneered neck for six episodes (eight in this book’s format),
measuring system hundreds of years ago, not the ruler itself. when I came to Bob’s shop to photograph the gluing of the
The third issue is that of the various spellings of the soundboard he was working on a maple instrument with an
names of the ancient makers. Here I will just say that they unshaped neck block permanently attached. In the text he
are inconsistent, and will refer the reader to the list of said that he would later describe how the shaping of this
Ancient Lute Makers on p. 245, and to the accompanying
neck was to be accomplished, but he never did. How Bob
Note on Spellings on p. 246. Again, we are indebted to
shaped and perfected surfaces is not a mystery — he
Doug Smith for his research and expertise in this area.
demonstrates his methods throughout the Practicum. The
There are a few inconsistencies in the Practicum as
problem is that we don’t know how he would have held a
well. The first is that the form which Bob makes in
Practicum One is small and smooth, while the one he uses in lute with a nearly finalized body, where the only clampable
Parcticum Two is large and faceted. These facets are critical surfaces are those which need to be shaped, during neck
in the rib-fitting process which Bob demonstrated for us. He carving. I have talked to some of his former students and
makes no mention of the small form’s lack of facets, nor colleagues, but none of them ever saw him do it. Gunter
does he give any information on laying out and cutting Mark, who attended the Lautenbaukurs in 1981, said that
facets on a form. The problem wasn’t noticed until it was too Bob did not make a lute with an unveneered neck while he
late to ask. was with him, but he gave me his notes (and editorial
As previously mentioned, the practicum episodes in comments) from the course which instruct one to: “put the
the magazine were developed as we went along. The original lute face down on a workboard covered with a sheet of
intention was to take one instrument to completion, but as rubber (antislip precaution), fix the body of the lute with
the scale of the project grew, reality intervened and we rubber bands (as the ones to fix the ribs during fitting),
eventually photographed work on four different instruments. clamp the neck (whatever that means), make the cutout for
Some procedures were photographed out of order simply the pegbox, work on the neck with the drawknife, glue the
because that was the work that Bob was doing when I pegbox.” Other opinions on how the lute could be held
showed up at his door. He was a working luthier, and his included: using shaped bench stops; working freehand with
workflow could not always be interrupted for our the instrument held between your knees, or in your lap and
convenience. In the magazine presentation we simply wrote partially supported by the edge of the workbench; shaping
around these irregularities, or in some instances we staged one section of the neck at a time while another section is
operations for the sake of the camera. held in a vise or is otherwise clamped; temporarily gluing
When it came time to reformat the magazine articles as the neck to an underform like was done for the shaping of a
chapters for this book, Bob gave me a list of the order in veneered neck.
which he wanted the various procedures presented, That still leaves the question of when to carve the neck.
reflecting the order in which he usually constructed his The logical time would be after the half-binding is done and
instruments. We have rearranged the practicum episodes to the fingerboard is glued on and planed. From that point on
reflect his wishes, but because we did not originally the lute could be completed as illustrated. The only
photograph and publish the information in this order there difference would be that the back of an unveneered neck
are some irregularities. Most are minor. For instance, on p. would be varnished rather than oiled.
106, Bob is shown demonstrating the proper shape of a bass There are other small irregularities as well, but there are
bar by comparing it with the shape of the outline of a going to be problems of accuracy in any work of this kind.
completed lute bowl, but we do not show the bowl being We have tried to make the best presentation that we could of
taken off of the form and completed until three chapters
this body of information, and I am grateful for the part
later. In another case, while the prepping and finishing of the
which I have been allowed to play in its development. We
bowl is demonstrated in Practicum Fourteen, and Bob
would have made a better job of it if Bob had been here to
routinely finished lute bodies before attaching the pegbox, in
Practicum Fifteen a pegbox is shown being glued to an help us finish. I only hope that what we have done with his
book is “good enough."

----- Jonathon Peterson, January 2002

 Introduction

F ROM THE LATE 15TH CENTURY until

several
decades into the 18th, almost all of the great
European lute makers were German. They had
developed their craft in and around the town of Fussen,
his stature. Both built heavy, thickly-proportioned lutes
using the principles of modern classical guitar making,
and consequently one has to play them much like one
plays the modern classical guitar. The primary
published information on lute making in Germany was a
on the River Lech in Upper Bavaria. Lech Valley chapter in the book on guitar making by Franz Jahnel,
instrument makers with the names Tieffenbrucker, which referred (erroneously) to historical practices
Sellas, Maier, Bosch, Graill and many others eventually although his information and instructions had nothing
emigrated over the Alps to Italy where they established to do with the legendary
workshops in Venice, Padua, German lute-building tradition
Bologna, and Rome, to name of the Renaissance and
only a few cities. Of the several Baroque. These makers
hundred surviving lutes from apparently simply applied their
the Renaissance and Baroque, guitar-making knowledge to an
only a few were not made by instrument whose shape they
Germans, a compelling sign of learned from pictures and
their dominance of the craft. perhaps a cursory examination
Contemporary accounts praising of museum lutes. Or they did
German luthiers support the not believe the evidence of their
evidence of the instrument eyes and hands, that old lutes
museums. were very light because the
But the tradition was, of thicknesses of the soundboard,
course, not stable. During the ribs, and so forth were very thin.
Thirty Years War (1618-1648) There used to be a popular
armies devastated Fussen conception that the wood in
several times, decimating the these instruments had dried out
luthier craft in that area. After and shrunk over the centuries.
1600 the demand for lutes Odd that the wood in other old
gradually declined even in Italy, artifacts did not exhibit this
and the violin eventually property.
increased drastically in Suffice it to say that most
popularity, so that many luthiers 20th-century lutes made before
of the Baroque made primarily about 1970, not only in
violins or guitars, and only COURTESY OF LINDA TOENNIESSEN
Germany, were in terms of their
occasionally lutes. A typical Robert Lundberg, ca. 1985, teaching lutherie during the construction principles more
prominent German lute maker practicum portion of his annual seminar, Historical Lute related to the 20th-century
Construction, in Erlangen, Germany. This book is based
of the 18th century was perhaps upon the material presented in those seminars.
classical guitar than the l6th-
Thomas Edlinger of Prague, a century lute. The curiosity of
violin maker who
Italian-German rebuilt old lutes in the Baroque style (with
Renaissance young English and American luthiers who made
more strings and consequent new, wider necks, pegboxes, pilgrimages to English and Continental musical-
and bridges). A few makers, like Johann Christian instrument museums to examine carefully the old lutes
Hoffmann of Nuremberg, or Joachim Tielke in Hamburg, is directly responsible for reconstructing the body of
still made lutes from scratch. But after the middle of the constructional principles necessary to reestablish the
centuiy the lute was scarcely played any more, so the ancient historical lute-making tradition. They
tradition and knowledge of making them — which extended generously shared their observations and ideas with
many centuries back beyond their genesis in Fussen to Italy each other and with players who soon began to demand
and ultimately the Near East — simply went to sleep. more historically-based lutes.
The first lute I ever played was one I borrowed from the One of the first and most influential luthier-scholars
University of Washington’s School of Music when I was a was Robert Lundberg, who in 1974 published an article,
student there. It was made by Hans Jordan of Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Lute Making, in the
Markneukirchen, Saxony, who was then (in the early 1970s) Journal of the Lute Society of America. This landmark
the most renowned German lute maker of the 20th century. study was the product of his trips to museums in London.
The guitar maker Hermann Hauser, who also made a few Vienna, Brussels, The Hague, Nuremberg, and elsewhere,
lutes, was the only German luthier near where he examined and measured over seventy
instruments. I had the privilege of tampering with that

xi
article editorially before it was published, and soon met
Bob. I have valued him as a close friend ever since.
When I went to Munich on a postdoctoral fellowship
in 1977 I began to meet lutenists there. Two who were
instrumental in the genesis of the Erlangen lute making
course were Gerhard Sóhne and Sepp Hornsteiner.
Gerhard was then a student of mathematics and
Germanics, but he had aspirations to lutherie instead of an
academic career. I perceived in him a penetrating intellect
and great enthusiasm for lutes, but he was frustrated by
the total lack of resources for learning historically-
authentic lute making. How ironic that Munich is only
about 100KM from its cradle in Fussen.
On a social outing with Sepp I was introduced to
Dieter Kirsch, professor of guitar and lute at the Wurzburg
Hochschule fur Musik. Dieter was also interested in
making lutes, though for him it was a hobby. I told him
about Bob’s instruments and his historical knowledge, and
the idea to invite Bob to give a seminar was born. We
were not sure if we could cover the costs, but decided to
risk it. Dieter advertised in a guitar publication, and
happily, more than enough students signed up. Dieter
handled the administrative details, and arranged for the
course to be held in the summer of 1978 at the Erlangen
Musikinstitut.
I remember the atmosphere amongst the students,
some of them experienced lute and guitar makers already,
as quite convivial. It radiated from the teacher. In
Germany, an instrument maker typically guarded his trade
secrets closely, and of course he therefore learned none
from his colleagues. I recall that the students were initially
slack-jawed as Bob revealed trade secret after trade secret
to them: how to perform this or that sort of operation to
achieve a historically authentic result, where were the
sources of proper wood, and so forth. It was infectious.
They perceived the benefits and began to open up amongst
themselves.
The course was so successful that it was repeated in
expanded form which included a practicum until 1988. All
told, some 230 students were exposed to the basic
principles of building Renaissance and Baroque lutes by
Bob Lundberg, and quite a few of them are now among
the most prominent lute makers on the Continent.
Gerhard Sóhne later spent a few months with Bob as
an apprentice in Portland, but he now considers that he
makes lutes completely differently, though still according
to historical principles, which Bob stressed in his courses.
He and the others had learned enough to become
independent, which is the greatest gift any teacher can
give his students.
However, Robert Lundberg’s ultimate gift to the
Europeans went beyond this. After its slumber of over 200
years, he returned the great German lute making tradition
of the Renaissance and Baroque to its source. With this
book Bob now passes that lute making tradition to the
whole world.

----- Douglas Alton Smith, March 1999