(Fr.: ‘angel lute’; Ger. Angelika; It. angelica).
A two-headed lute with ten single strings on the lower head and six or seven on the upper (see illustration). Its characteristic diatonic tuning greatly restricts its compass, but the tone of the open strings is full and clear. An instrument of the lute family, tuned in this way, was depicted by Praetorius (Theatrum instrumentorum, pl.xxxvi), who said it was played like a harp. The 23 strings shown, however, run between a sloping bridge and a single pegbox angled to one side. The name ‘angel lute’ or ‘angélique’ is found in the late 17th century and the 18th. The instrument can usually be distinguished by the ten pegs of the lower pegbox. James Talbot (GB-Och Music 1187, c1695) gave the tuning for the 16-course angel lute, spreading diatonically on ‘white’ notes from D to e'. He also said that the instrument had nine frets and was ‘more proper for slow and grave lessons than for quick and brisk by reason of the continuance of sound when touched which may breed discord’.
Christiaan Huygens heard a consort of five angéliques in Paris in 1661. The performers were Jérôme Vignon, who claimed to be the angélique’s inventor, his daughters and other pupils; they played instruments made by Guillaume Jacquesson, a well-known lute and theorbo player. The angélique was also cultivated in Strasbourg, where Valentin Strobel (ii) published some ensemble music for it in 1668 (now lost). An influential player and teacher was Jean Béthune, who was active in Paris in 1664 and moved to Strasbourg about 1681; Béthune’s work is represented in two manuscripts in tablature. The angélique is one of four instruments (the others being lute, bass viol and guitar) for which alternative song accompaniments were provided by Kremberg. A third angélique manuscript is in the former Mecklenburg ducal library at Schwerin. The collection also includes four early 18th-century angéliques made in Hamburg (one of which is certainly the work of Tielke), suggesting that the instrument remained popular in German aristocratic circles into the 18th century; this idea is supported by the arrangements of music by Count J.A. Losy in a manuscript from the monastery of Rajhrad (Raigern), near Brno, Moravia.
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Monin MS, Paris, 1664, F-Pn Vm7-6212 [compositions and arrs. by Béthune; also incl. lute music] |
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J. Kremberg: Musicalische Gemüths-Ergötzung (Dresden, 1689) |
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Manuscrit Béthune, ?Strasbourg, late 17th century, F-Pn Rés.169 (facs. (Geneva, 1979)) [probably prepared by a pupil under Béthune’s supervision] |
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MS, late 17th century, D-SWl Ms.Mus.640 |
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MS, late 17th or early 18th century, CZ-Bm A.3329 [incl. music by Losy] |
PraetoriusTI
L. Brugmans: Le séjour de Christian Huygens à Paris (Paris,1935), 151
F. Lesure: ‘The angélique in 1653’, GSJ, vi (1953), 111–12
F. Lesure: ‘Les luthistes parisiens à l’époque de Louis XIII’, Le luth et sa musique: Neuilly-sur-Seine 1957, 222–3
M. Prynne: ‘James Talbot’s Manuscript: IV: Plucked Strings – the Lute Family’, GSJ, xiv (1961), 52–68
E. Pohlmann: Laute, Theorbe, Chitarrone: die Instrumente, ihre Musik und Literatur von 1500 bis zur Gegenwart (Bremen, 1968, 5/1982), 394–7
E. Vogl: ‘Die Angelika und ihre Musik’, HV, xi (1974), 356–71
G. Hellwig: Joachim Tielke: ein Hamburger Lauten- und Violenmacher der Barockzeit (Frankfurt, 1980), 304–5
C. Meyer and M. Rollin: Oeuvres de Gumprecht (Paris, 1993), xvii
IAN HARWOOD/TIM CRAWFORD