WEBVTT

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Well, I'll read something a
little more cheerful than that.

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I'll read a love poem.

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Maybe some of you
are young enough

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that you can believe love
is different than that.

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This is an instrument-- a poem
about a musical instrument

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in a way, a lute.

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I am perhaps now the world's
worst living lutenist.

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Back in the day
in the Renaissance

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when everybody played
the lute, there probably

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were people who play
worse than I do,

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but now, when only experts
play, I've got a corner on it.

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If you buy a guitar, or a lute,
or any instrument that has

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a wooden sounding board--
this is true of even a violin

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or piano--

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and you buy it as
a new instrument,

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you don't know too much
at that point about what

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it's matured voice will be like.

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It's your business as
performer of that instrument

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to mature its voice.

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You want to destroy
a fine instrument

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you buy it, put it in a case,
put the case on the shelf.

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In time, the wood
dries out and loses

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whatever potential for
resonance it might have had.

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And if it stays
there long enough,

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no one can ever fetch it back.

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There's a story that
the great Stradivari.

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Stradivarius violins are
so wonderful because they

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were made with the wood from
torn down churches which

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had been vibrating
for years and years

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with all the choirs that sang.

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I don't suppose that's
true, but you know,

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that's better than true, I
mean that's truer than true.

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If you have an instrument
and you've treated it

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with the affection and the
respect that it deserved,

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you'll have played it a
lot in its first few years.

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After its first few
years, the worst danger

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of cracking and warping is over.

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So you take it back to
a fine instrument maker,

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and if it's a lute, you
have something done called

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regraduation of the face.

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The face is the sounding
board of the instrument

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and up to this
point, it will have

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been fairly thick to prevent
cracking as much as possible.

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Now, you want to make it as
thin and percussive as you dare,

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so you take it back and the
first thing you probably does

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is-- because a lute has many
strings, it begins at 11

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and runs up to 24 or more,
enormous tension there.

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Probably the neck
will have warped some

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and the strings will be up
to high off the fret board

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and you can't play accurately,
even as accurately as usual.

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So you have-- you
don't try to get rid

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of that warp, that's part of the
life of the wood that goes on

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after the tree's dead.

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But you must replane the neck
and take it into account,

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then you string up
the instrument again.

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And you have to
leave it strung up

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while you do this and the
lute has a round belly,

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and you must take that off.

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The whole thing may
fly apart when you--

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too bad, lost your
instrument, sir.

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If it doesn't fly apart, then
he begins regraduating the face

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and playing all the
time he's doing this

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so he can measure that vibrancy.

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He wants to make the
face of the instrument

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just as thin as he dares
short of the point at which it

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won't sustain sound.

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You go too far and you've
wrecked it that way,

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but you get it down just
as narrow as you dare.

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If you own a fine lute, it is an
astonishingly light instrument

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and an unbelievably resonant
responsive instrument.

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You don't even need to
sing to it, speak to it,

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it answers you always.

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"Regraduating the Lute."

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"Having gathered
power and resonance

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through two years
playing, the fingerboard

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replaned to the warp of
the living grain, then,

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we are ready.

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Keeping the strings tuned
and under tension, we

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gradually pare away
while playing constantly.

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All excess.

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From behind the tempered
face, the way, along grief,

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hollows the cheeks away.

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Not so much as might lose
endurance to sustain a music.

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Yet, until the sounding
board is parchment thin

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and the white bone structure.

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Or a strong light
would shine nearly

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through until it trembles,
to the least touch trembles,

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to the latest song.

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By hand, we slowly rub away the
preserving brilliant varnish,

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to a soft, old silver glow.

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It's voice now is equal
to any in the world.

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We take it home to sing
to, or lay it on the bed.

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In any place, at any time
I play, behind this face

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where nobody can see, I have
burned your name, to stay."

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