Paul’s Guitar Museum
10. Theorbo or Lute?
“Lute Player” 1667 (theorbo/lute) |
Gerard Ter Borch: 1617-81, Dutch genre and portrait painter. He portrayed the life of the wealthy Dutch burgher class in |
Paul: I looked in my humble library of musical instrument books and found
several instruments very much like the “lute player” painting above. In “The world of medieval & renaissance musical instruments” by J.Montague I found three theorbo’s:
- a Panduan Theorbo made by Wendelin Tieffenbrucker in 1595 (Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna)
- A Venetian Theorbo made by Matteo Sellas in 1637 (Victoria & Albert Museum, London)
- Roman theorbo (archlute or chitarrone) by Magno Tieffenbrucker in the second half of the 16th century (Kunthistoriches Museum, Vienna)
In “The World of Musical Instruments” by A. Kendall I found four theorboes:
- in a painting: “The Sharp Family on the Thames” by Zoffany, a venetian theorbo
- two more Venetian style theorbo’s 1) Michael Rauche, London 1762 and 2) J.H. Goldt in Hamburg 1734 both in the “Victoria & Albert museum , London
- an archlute Theorbo (roman theorbo) in a painting “The Theorbo Player” by Jan Brockhorst early 1600’s
- painting by G. Terboc in a book “String instruments of the Middle Ages” by H. Panum.
All of the theorboe‘s I found have a” straight head” kinda like a fender
where the head has a “jog” in it then it keeps going strait.
Lute‘s on the other hand have a head that is close to 90 degrees
from the fingerboard and here’s the clincher – the instrument in the
painting “the lute player” is identified as a “Theorbo-Lute” & it has BOTH characteristics: a head like a theorbo and a head like a lute.