Sherman Oaks : Music Society Reviews Resurgence of the Lute

Lawrence K. Brown has had to re-create the craft of lute making from scratch.

“It’s a broken tradition,” said Brown, a lecturer from North Carolina addressing about 35 members of the Southern California Early Music Society at a Sherman Oaks home Sunday. “But we’re building up a new tradition of lute making.”

The talk was part of an annual lecture series sponsored by the society, which has 300 members. The smaller group Sunday listened to Brown explain the history of the lute in a private art gallery at the home of Carl Schlosberg. His brother, Phillip, is the society’s programming director.

Brown’s interest in the lute--the most popular instrument until the invention of the violin in the mid-1700s--started while he was earning a master’s degree in medieval literature at Indiana University in the 1970s. But the only examples of the instrument were in museums.

Through trial and error, Brown and a handful of other lute makers rediscovered the craft of creating the instrument, which now is building its number of modern-day admirers.

“The movement is, I think, growing slowly but steadily,” Brown said during the 2 1/2-hour session, which featured performances by modern lute players. He has given the same talk at the Smithsonian Institution’s Hall of Instruments.

“It’s more than resurging,” said Santa Monica resident Keller Coker, a music producer who has released recordings of lutes and other early instruments. Coker himself plays a cittern, one of the earliest stringed instruments.

The lute is a complicated instrument that looks similar to a guitar but has many more strings and is much harder to play. The range and flexibility of its notes make it very appealing, said James Tyler, director of the early music performance program at the USC School of Music.

“When it’s played by an expert, it has many textures of music,” Tyler said. He likened it more to the piano than the guitar because of its range. “It’s a universal instrument.”