November 19, 2003

Boise State Music Professor Joe Baldassarre Plays With Pluck

When it comes to musical instruments, Boise State University music professor Joe Baldassarre really knows how to pick his subjects. He has been recognized as an expert on the playing technique of the medieval (12th-15th century) European lute. The lute is a plucked-string guitar-like musical instrument with an oval shape and a deeply rounded back and made out of thin strips of wood glued together edgewise. While lute plectrum (or plucking) technique may sound like a topic of little interest in a world of electric guitars and “anything goes” performance methods, classical musicians are dedicated to not only preserving historic musical scores, but also learning to perform them in the ways they were intended. “There are a lot of people who are Renaissance and Baroque lute players,” said Baldassarre, “but there is a resurgence of interest in the medieval lute.” Baldassarre himself took up the instrument 20 years ago after having been a classical guitarist most of his life. Wanting to play the instrument correctly, he began poring over old manuscripts illustrated with paintings and illuminations of lute players. “First I would look at those pictures and try to figure out if the painter was faithful to [the instrument],” he said. He studied the angle of the hand holding the lute, the angle at which the plectrum was being held and which direction the musician seemed to be stroking the strings. Then he compared what he’d learned with samples of medieval repertoire that have survived the centuries. Along the way he not only learned to play accurately, but also with relish. “You can do more with the medieval (plectrum) lute than people think you can,” he said. “When you have a live performance, people are surprised at how versatile it is. There’s a lot of freedom with the lute. Medieval music was composed like jazz — there’s a lead sheet and you do a whole lot of improvisation on that.” Baldassarre enjoys that stylistic elbowroom, which allows him to experiment with how the right hand was used and what the final product will sound like. Since nobody really knows for sure, he’s free to experiment with what is known about the style. Part of that style comes from the instrument itself, which in Baldassarre’s case was made by his father Antonio Baldassarre, an expert in instrument reproductions. The elder Baldassarre used plans supplied by his son, who researched them as one of his doctoral projects. With no detailed plans available — what he found involved a simple description and measurements given as proportions (width to height) — much of his design was based on his studies of paintings, illustrations and the music itself. He used his knowledge of medieval instrument building customs to add the artistic details. “The rose (the center cutout detail) was often a copy of the stained glass window of the cathedral in the town where it was made,” he said. “So I used the cathedral in Avila, Spain as a model.” After further research on the types of wood available, as well as techniques used in creating other instruments, he had his lute crafted out of spruce, walnut and maple strips — three of each type, since the number nine was important in medieval numerology as three times three (the number of members in the Godhead). The result is not only an accurate reproduction of a medieval lute, but a work of art he can use to both support his research and hone his craft. Baldassarre’s expertise with the instrument was recently recognized by two renowned lute journals, both of which approached him on their own with the idea of writing about his research. The Lute Society of America Quarterly printed an article by Baldassarre on medieval plectrum technique in its October 2003 issue and The (British) Lute Society’s journal The Lute will publish one soon. -30- Contact Joe Baldassarre Music department 208 426-1507 Media Contact Kathleen Craven communications and marketing 208 426-3275