![]() ![]() However, what was passed down to me was mainly focused on how to produce strings in the “modern way” (beef gut serosa, modern chemical process, constant use of hardening salts, centerless grinding machine, very stiff strings). To learn more “Why the loading of gut for lute bass strings is the only hypothesis that fulfils the requirements of seven criteria arising from a consideration of historical evidence” I began my research in mid 1980s as a simple enthusiast, spending about ten years working on the problem of Lute gut basses, developing theories, doing practical tests at a string-making company, and finally accurately measuring the holes of the original lute bridges in museums. The period from the 1970s to today has also been marked by some changes in the manufacture of modern gut strings, as a result of discoveries of new historical documentation, and more recently we are witnessing the appearance of amateur string-makers. In those years, several articles were written starting to describe the historical productive cycle used in the past, mainly referring to Italy and France of the second half of the 18 th century, when the Age of Enlightenment finally began to emerge (information from previous centuries is in fact very incomplete or scarce). ![]() ![]() Modern string were too stiff, therefore they were difficult to play under the bow and gave poor acoustic performances. For example, it was impossible to employ a third string in pure gut on the violin or on the cello similarly, there was no way to use gut basses on the family of the viola da gamba or on the lutes. Thanks to this newly found documentation, it began to be understood that the diameters of the strings used on bowed instruments in the past were not generally as thin as people thought, and therefore modern strings could not meet the acoustic standards required by the restored settings of the past. Starting from the 1970s, however, as the research delved into the subject of historical performance and instruments, new attention began to be paid to the issue of the strings: in fact, new documentation regarding the average diameters of strings and the settings used in past centuries began to be discovered moreover, the most famous areas of string production were brought to light, together with the names by which the various types of strings were called (Catlins, Lyons, Pistoys, Minikins, Gansars etc.), and finally new assumptions were introduced that led to related discussions, principally regarding the strings in the low range (loaded strings, roped, etc.). It was generally believed that the sounds of bowed instruments in the past had to be feeble, and that the string diameters had to be very thin, even if there was no supporting documentation. Before then, this problem doesn’t seem to have emerged yet, both because everyone was mainly addressed to the performance practice, and because the gut strings that were generally available at that times did their duty nonetheless: nobody could imagine that strings could have been made differently in the past, and no accurate documentation regarding the ‘historical’ diameters was available. For what I know, it was probably only in the 1970s that the research on the gut strings of the past became popular.
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