The Gendering of the Lute in Sixteenth-Century French Love Poetry

Renaissance Quarterly, Autumn, 2000 by Carla Zecher

Blame not my lute for he must sound Of this or that as liketh me.

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Lute-poems came into vogue in France in the 1540s and 1550s. Because of the lute's shape, it could be gendered either as masculine or feminine; male and female poets therefore made use of lute imagery in different ways. Their references to the lute are informed by the gendered culture surrounding the instrument in this period and by the etiquette and technicalities of lute playing. Even more than painters and engravers, poets could invest the lute with human qualities, conflating it with bodies and body parts. It could thus be adapted to serve a variety of amorous scenarzos.

The "lute-poem" -- a short lyric text in which the poetic subject personifies the lute as a muse, companion, or confidant -- was a popular genre among French poets in the 1540s and 1550s, during the final years of the reign of Francois I, and that of Henri II. [1] The convention of addressing a poem to a string instrument originated with classical poets' invocation of inspiring deities through references to the lyre. [2] But literary imitation was not the only factor that contributed to the evolution of the sixteenth-century lute-poem. The vogue for these texts arose with the emergence of a written repertoire for the lute in Europe and with the flourishing of this instrument as a vehicle for the artistic expression of courtiers and the cultivated bourgeoisie. [3] More than any other musical instrument, the lute helped break down the remaining medieval barriers between amateur and professional musicians, as the practice of instrumental music expanded beyond specialized corporations of minstrels to be integrat ed into the education of the upper classes. [4] The lute-poem flourished among the poets of the so-called Pleiade group and also among those who lived in Lyons, which was a prosperous center of lutherie and a hub for the printing and diffusion of Italian lute tablatures in the middle third of the century. [5] Some of the poets who composed lute-poems were accomplished lutenists; others had the rudimentary familiarity with the instrument one might expect from literati who were often present at its playing. [6]

One intriguing feature of French poems is the attention they devote to the iconography of the lute -- both the "anatomy" of the instrument and the way the player holds it -- as exemplified in the opening lines of a sonnet by Amadis Jamyn:

When I see her so gracious and lovely,

Plucking so gently the strings

Of the pleasant lute, and matching her voice

To the soft pitch spoken by the highest string, My whole heart leaps, thrilled with pleasure. [7]

The tension that drives many lute-poems originates not so much in the vicissitudes of unrequited love or failing health or professional ambition (although all these motifs occur) [8] as in the nuances of the interaction between player, instrument, and/or spectator. Cradled gently in the arms and caressed by the fingers, the lute -- more than any other instrument -- perfectly complemented the human form. [9] In the hands of a Renaissance gentleman or lady it constituted more than an agent for music-making; the lute was an adornment. [10]

Instructions on posture included in the seventeenth-century manuscript known as the "Burwell Lute Tutor" confirm the paramount importance of the visual effect obtained in lute playing:

One must... sit upright in playing to show no constraint or pains, to have a smiling countenance, that the company may not think you play unwillingly, and [to] show that you animate the lute as well as the lute does animate you. Yet you must not stir your body nor your head, nor show any extreme satisfaction in your playing. You must make no mouths, nor bite your lips, nor cast your hands in a flourishing manner that relishes of a fiddler. In one word, you must not less please the eyes than the ears. ... All the actions that one does in playing of the lute are handsome; the posture is modest, free and gallant, and do not hinder society. The shape of the lute is not so troublesome; and whereas other instruments constrain the body, the lute sets it in an advantageous posture. When one plays of the virginal he turns his back to the company. The viol entangleth one in spreading the arms, and openeth the legs (which doth not become man, much less woman). The beauty of the arm, of the hands and of the neck are adva ntageously displayed in playing of the lute. [11]

These instructions pertain to lutenists of either sex but their concern for decorum is particularly addressed to women, so intimately associated with this instrument in Renaissance culture. According to Julia Craig-McFeely, in England between 1530 and 1630 far more lute pieces were dedicated to women than to men (1994, 8). In France, as Jean-Michel Vaccaro has noted, Lyonnais literature from the middle decades of the sixteenth century constitutes a veritable apology for women lutenists (35).

The lute's anatomy -- its rounded belly, its "worthy voluptuousness" [12] -- reinforced connections with notions of femininity and especially fertility, by evoking pregnancy. While the lute could symbolize voluptas in the positive sense of the term (that is, music-making as a pleasant pastime, as solace, as a source of mind-body equilibrium), it could also connote the vita voluptuosa, with its illicit gratification, its excess and dissipation. In a series of paintings attributed to the Master of the Female Half-Lengths (active in Antwerp c. 1520-1530), the artist represents Mary Magdalen as a wealthy courtesan by casting her as a lutenist (fig. 1). [13] There was a contradiction inherent in the common pictorial image of the Renaissance lady with her lute, for the instrument made her at once respectable and desirable.