Dr. Stemming or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Lute

Sitting down with the lute this afternoon and I was chill. This is what it's all about with the lute: connection, not only of player and lute, but player and the universe through the music. And then I started tuning it...

Now I'm not saying that tuning the instrument isn't a valuable part of practice. When tuning your instrument, you're also tuning yourself into the musical moment. It's your chance to touch the strings and feel the wood against yourself, slowly becoming one. But after a certain amount of time it gets a bit tedious, especially when you have what's technically called 'slippery pegs syndrome'. It took me about 15 minutes to get everything stable and I had worked myself up into a state of anxiety and frustration. Not ideal for lute playing huh? But start playing I did. And even though I played 'Fortune My Foe', a ballad usually sung to announce death or disaster, it went quite well. I played a passable tune with some errors due to the tension in me. After going over some tricky passages I played it again and it turned out ok. Here's an interesting arrangement of Fortune by Jan Alpsjö.

Then I noticed a fret out of place so took the lute off and laid it on my lap to adjust it. Before I knew it I had spent five minutes cooing over it, checking it closely, touching the wood, running my fingers up the ribs. It occurred to me that I was effectively cuddling the lute.

Snapping out of this compromising position, I placed the lute back in playing position and gave another stab at Fortune and what do you reckon? Better sound, less mistakes. It could have been because I'd just been canoodling with the lute or it might just have been that I was more relaxed. Either way it was a positive session, I thought.

If you're wondering about the post title it's a cheeky allusion to a Kubrick film starring Peter Sellers.

From: Das Neu Eröffnete Orchestre, 1713, p. 275