The Living Lute: its Music and Story in the Living Wunderkammer Basel

         The Living Lute: its Music and Story in the Living Wunderkammer Basel

Like many German instrument makers of the sixteenth century, Michael Hartung, who hailed from Füssen, was drawn to Italy. Seeking a milder climate, one in which the spruce, yew, and maple essential to instrument making could flourish, he ended up in Padua. Somewhere within the maze of that city’s narrow streets, he set up a workshop and from then on called himself Michielle Harton. In 1594, he completed there a Renaissance lute of exceptional beauty and craftsmanship, embodying the highest ideals of his time. From that moment, it began an extraordinary journey that would span more than five centuries and cross multiple borders. Converted into a Baroque lute in Prague in 1736 and further evolved into a hybrid lute–guitar in Leipzig in 1809, the instrument continually adapted to the changing musical tastes and cultural landscapes of Europe.

Although inscriptions inside the instrument reveal dates and places, its lived history remains a mystery. When this remarkable witness to more than 530 years of history seemed on the verge of falling silent in the Munich City Museum, it came into the hands of lutenist Peter Croton, who revives its voice with music from the era of its birth and inscribes himself into the lineage of musicians who have animated the instrument. Author Tanja Arx has woven an imaginative narrative around the instrument’s documented story, exploring what its forgotten centuries might have held; in an artistic collaboration, she and Peter Croton together explore what lies hidden within the instrument. Through text and sound, they trace the long life of this lute. What stories are inscribed in its wood? What emotions has it brought to light? Who played it and in which rooms and at which courts did its music resound? Through what twists of fate did it survive, still playable, into our own century? What does a fragment of eternity contain?

The next step is a unique artistic collaboration: Tanja and Peter will bring this story to life in a filmed performance combining music and narration, set inside Andreas Häner’s extraordinary “Living Wunderkammer” in Basel –a space filled with rare historical objects, each carrying its own echoes of the world in which this lute was once created. A place that makes it possible to engage in dialogue with the past in order to question what allows it to endure. 

A special feature of the program is the inclusion of several works from a lute book from the holdings of the Basel University Library, compiled by Emanuel Wurstisen between 1591 and 1594 during his studies in Basel.

The medium of film allows for the preservation of the literary and musical exploration of this piece of history, embodied in the sounds of an original lute crafted by Michelle Harton, and makes it accessible to a broad audience. The music and artefacts from the “Living Wunderkammer” from the 16th and 17th centuries are linked together by Tanja Arx's narration and the visual imagery of the film. In this way, a visual document emerges that enables viewers to immerse themselves in the possible lived life behind objects and factual history. The film is therefore also an invitation to use one’s own imagination as a means of travelling through time. Within the world of inanimate objects, many lost narratives lie hidden, to which we can gain access through our imagination. In an era marked by excess, such attentive listening to and sensing of the past can be healing. One learns that it is not materiality itself that determines value, but rather the care and love of those who bring things to life and keep them alive.