PLATE XV.
LUTE.
A FINE old Italian Lute, with the label "1600, In Padova Vvendelio Venere." It is not only rare, but a special interest is attached to it from its having been the favourite musical instrument of the late Carl Engel. When he disposed of his collection he reserved this instrument for his own use, and probably his last performance upon it was Handel's "Lascia ch'io pianga," which he played to the present writer, who now owns the instrument.
It is a large lute, being 42 inches in length. The greatest width of the body is 14½ inches, with an extreme depth of 8 inches. The body is 21 inches from the base to the shoulders; from thence to the nut is 10¾ inches, and it is 13½ inches from the nut to the extremity of the head, the angle of the peg-box being obtuse. The mean width of the finger-board is 4 inches. It is furnished with twenty strings, which are divided into six pairs of unisons, and eight single strings for basses. Engel tuned it in the D minor tuning, an accordance introduced according to Herr Oscar Fleischer in the first half of the seventeenth century, by the great French lutenist, Denis Gaultier. This accordance ultimately prevailed not only in France and England but in Germany; the same writer informs us that Joseph Haydn used it. This lute, when so tuned, is thus arranged—
but the old Lute tuning was, in chamber pitch—