IF writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then, in 816, Bai Juyi, a Chinese poet, made one of the boldest imaginative leaps in his Song of the Lute (translated here by Burton Watson). It describes hearing a woman playing from a boat, the sound drifting across the water:
The big strings plang-planged like swift-falling rain,
The little strings went buzz-buzz like secret conversations,
Plang-plang, buzz-buzz mixed and mingled in her playing
Like big pearls and little pearls falling on a plate of jade.
Most musical instruments have evolved from earlier versions of themselves and alongside these are ancient-or original or historic (terms vary)-ones that hold a particular fascination for some of today's players. Of these, the lute is probably the most familiar, described by writers down the centuries and cropping up in poems by Anacreon in Greece in the 6th century BC, by Thomas Wyatt and Shakespeare in the 16th century, Emily Dickinson and Paul Laurence Dunbar in the 19th and Elizabeth Bishop in the 20th.
Lutenist Paula Chateauneuf started off by playing the guitar, but, at university in Connecticut, US, she met a music professor who happened to be mad about the viola da gamba, or viol, a family of stringed instruments played upright. The early-music revival was beginning and he'd formed a Collegium Musicum of players. 'I asked if I could join,' recalls Ms Chateauneuf. 'He stood up, went into a back room, pulled out a lute and handed it to me.
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Tales as old as time
By appointing writers-in-residence to landscape locations, the National Trust is hoping to spark in us a new engagement with our ancient surroundings, finds Richard Smyth
Do the active farmer test
Farming is a profession, not a lifestyle choice’ and, therefore, the Budget is unfair
Night Thoughts by Howard Hodgkin
Charlotte Mullins comments on Moght Thoughts
SOS: save our wild salmon
Jane Wheatley examines the dire situation facing the king of fish
Into the deep
Beneath the crystal-clear, alien world of water lie the great piscean survivors of the Ice Age. The Lake District is a fish-spotter's paradise, reports John Lewis-Stempel
It's alive!
Living, burping and bubbling fermented masses of flour, yeast and water that spawn countless loaves—Emma Hughes charts the rise and rise) of sourdough starters
There's orange gold in them thar fields
A kitchen staple that is easily taken for granted, the carrot is actually an incredibly tricky customer to cultivate that could reduce a grown man to tears, says Sarah Todd
True blues
I HAVE been planting English bluebells. They grow in their millions in the beechwoods that surround us—but not in our own garden. They are, however, a protected species. The law is clear and uncompromising: ‘It is illegal to dig up bluebells or their bulbs from the wild, or to trade or sell wild bluebell bulbs and seeds.’ I have, therefore, had to buy them from a respectable bulb-merchant.
Oh so hip
Stay the hand that itches to deadhead spent roses and you can enjoy their glittering fruits instead, writes John Hoyland
A best kept secret
Oft-forgotten Rutland, England's smallest county, is a 'Notswold' haven deserving of more attention, finds Nicola Venning