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This lute, along with another built in Venice or Padua, ca. 1600 (NMM 10214), was stored in the attic of Hrubý Rohozec castle in northern Bohemia during the 19th century (castle photo by Z. Pykalová). Perched high on a hillside overlooking the Jizera River valley on the outskirts of Turnov, now but an hour's drive northeast of Prague, the Hrubý Rohozec castle was founded about 1280, as an early Gothic castle, with a moat on the north and west sides. A Renaissance reconstruction took place at the beginning of the 17th century, when the moat was filled and gardens planted. The castle underwent a third, and final, Empire-style reconstruction in 1822. |
On August 17, 1907, Nikolaus Graf Des Fours Walderode wrote from Vienna to Albert Fuchs, a Professor of Music in Dresden whose book, Taxe der Streichinstrumente (Values of Stringed Instruments), had just been published, asking, in German, about two lutes that had been kept in his Bohemian castle, "for a very long time." They had, in fact, been listed in an 18th-century inventory with the label texts that can still be seen inside the instruments today.
After World War II, Carl Des Fours Walderode brought the lutes to Vienna. On July 28, 1954, Des Fours loaned them to the Sammlung alter Musikinstrumente at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
On June 12, 1979, Carl Des Fours Walderode retrieved the instruments from the Vienna museum. Two days later, he transferred legal title to his wife, Johanna Kammerlander. This photo shows Carl and Johanna with the two lutes shortly before they were placed in a climate-controlled area built to house the famous art collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein, a family friend, in Schloss Vaduz, the castle overlooking Vaduz, the major town in the principality of Liechtenstein. There the lutes remained until their acquisition by the NMM in 2002. Both lutes retain their original, fitted, leather-covered wooden cases with iron hardware. |
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Front and back views of the lute's pegbox. The first single course crosses a chantrelle rider; the twelfth and thirteenth double courses are guided by a bass rider. The instrument was repaired in 1907 by Rudolf Heckel of Dresden, whose repair label is preserved inside the lute. Heckel may be responsible for the rather unrefined open fretwork (Art Nouveau style) on the back of the pegbox (similar to that on NMM 10214).
According to Robert Lundberg (d. 2001), who examined this instrument while it was on loan to the the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (1954-1979), "this lute is one of the few which has a 13-course neck, fingerboard, pegbox, and bridge all by one maker." Several photographs accompany a discussion of it in Lundberg's posthumously published book, Historical Lute Construction (Tacoma, Washington: Guild of American Luthiers, 2002).
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