Volume1 Number1
Tourism Magazine
Tourism information from a different perspective
AATR Publishing's
Savannah
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ve knuckled down with the Bose on repeat track,” said Christopher Kohut after a practice session on his renaissance lute to memorize Scottish tunes for upcoming weddings.
“Stayed up till 1:00, Nailed three of ‘em.” Playing the once-common, but now unusual, instrument for weddings requires transitions and elimination.
Kohut says of the nineteen stringed instrument, “The technique isn’t really that difficult, it just sounds like more than it is.” What the lute is, is a difficult instrument to master. Kohut has his hands (literally) around the title. His timing is good. Celtic and Scottish lute music is making a comeback -- especially at Celtic events and weddings..
“I’ve come to think of the Scottish lute as the most beautiful of all available lute music, he says. “Its old, its modal, yet the voicings are decidedly modern and sometimes even sweetly discordant. It has more soul than much of Dowland’s music, whose technique is impeccable, yet sometimes lacks the tenderness that you never fail to hear in the Scottish lute.” John Dowland, born in either Dublin or London in 1563 and renown for his Renaissance music, was musician to Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Kohut jokes, “It is of course damnable heresy for a lute player to even come close to criticizing Dowland in the smallest of manner. It would be like a pianist declaring, ‘I don't really care for Chopin.’ One would conclude that pianist is drunk -- but neither do I care, nor am I drunk. The comparisons and dissimilarities of one style of music to the other are impossible to miss. I think it might be the principle in life that the ‘waters are purer closer to the source.’” Scottish lute music is pure.
This syle of music has it’s own mood and feel according to Kohut. He explains the process through a scene in the movie A River Runs Through It. The narrator’s father is a Presbyterian minister and schoolmaster. “There is a scene where the little tyke hands in a composition to his father over an enormous oak desk, looks to the heavens and sighs – he’d been there before. Sure enough, his father took out the pencil and began crossing out entire hard-fought lines of composition.
With typical Scot economy, even in criticism, his father simply says, ‘Shorter.’” The scene was repeated several times until the correct chaste length was acquired. Finally he and his brother could go fishing.
Renaissance Music
for Ceremony and Reception
Scottish lute music “is a bit like that I think,” Kohut says. The music, like Scotland’s famous national drink, is distilled. “And just a bit will nicely do the job. The pieces are short. Which is merciful if the lute grates on your nerves, as it sometimes does mine.” How short are the pieces? “Sometimes they break down to a bit more than a riff, played twice. Other times the tunes have more to say. But they say it beautifully in either case.” Somehow more of the beauty of the Scottish soul is contained in a few chaste riffs and voicings “than any amount of baroque ornamentation can deliver from elsewhere or at any other time,” says Kohut.
He adds, “It has been played in some form,” probably in the form like a small mandora, or descant lute, “for a thousand years in the highlands and was preferred over many other instruments” including the pipes and has a 400 year edge over the continental lute of Europe.
According to Kohut, recording artist Rob McKillop claims that the Scots were using the musical style, “a thousand years before anyone had even thought of chords.”
Lutes come in varied numbers of strings and “courses.” A ten-course lute has nineteen string while a five-course lute has nine, though courses and strings can vary. Strings are tuned much like a twelve-string guitar where two are plucked together. Medieval lutes, dating from 500 - 1450, had fewer courses.
During the Renaissance (1450-1600) more strings were added until in the Baroque period (1600-1750) lutes had evolved with up to fourteen courses, which also had nineteen strings.
According to Kohut, Johann Sebastian Bach and Leopold Silvius Weiss are generally credited with the lute's fall from its lofty position. “These two were responsible for taking lute technique through the stratosphere. Fewer and fewer people could play the new stuff and they couldn't go back.” The lute was abandoned to make room for the rise of Niccolo Amati's and Antonio Stradivarius' fiddles.”
Under Bach's watch the instrument acquired more strings than any one individual -- save certain members of the British royal family -- would naturally have fingers and toes to play. In some cases these long-necked lutes called continuos may have as many as 28 strings.
Scottish isn’t the bulk of Kohut’s repertoire; it’s simply the latest. He plays for fun and profit at wedding and events in Savannah, Georgia and other Southern cities.
-- WTM --
Christopher Kohut plays a number of stringed instruments including the ten-course lute.
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Kohut plays for an engagement proposal, above, at the Mansion on Forsyth Park. He is available for wedding, events and for pure enjoyment. Impromptu concerts occur
often in many Savannah Squares.
Olde is Hot!
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