Le luthiste Miguel Serdoura lance une nouvelle marque d’instruments et une maison d’édition
Alexandre Pham, Classiquenews – 5 July 2015 | Paris, France
The young lutenist Miguel Serdoura aims to revolutionize the world of the lute by creating instruments that are both high-performing and accessible. His ambition goes further: he also designs the essential accessories for playing the instrument and oversees a publishing house dedicated to music scores.
Le Luth Doré® is the new benchmark brand in the making of lutes, guitars, and early mandolins. A visionary project—conceived, defended, and now fully realized by the young virtuoso lutenist, the finest pupil of Hopkinson Smith—Miguel Serdoura. The brand’s LLD crest proudly displays a Renaissance lute with eight courses, typical of the sixteenth century.
In addition to instrument making, Le Luth Doré® devotes exceptional care to publishing its own scores. Presented in large format and printed on refined paper, they reflect the same standard of quality as the instruments themselves.
Perfection has a name: Le Luth Doré
By uniting quality, refinement, and tradition, the lutes and instruments crafted by Le Luth Doré / “LLD®” (the catalogue also includes early guitars and mandolins) offer the best option for today’s players, whether beginners or advanced practitioners: carefully selected tonewoods, modern fiberglass “Superior” cases with a climate-control system including hygrometer and humidifier. The meticulous craftsmanship turns these instruments into true works of art—at remarkably competitive prices.
For this purpose, Miguel Serdoura has partnered with makers boasting over 30 years of experience, able to produce high-performance acoustic instruments at unprecedented prices and within timelines that defy all competition.
His deep knowledge of the instrument enabled him to model and supervise the design of a Renaissance lute, the “LLDIO1-M,” for beginners, with 8 courses (string length: 59 cm; ribs: 11; weight: 800 g)—a genuine jewel designed for the widest audience (price: €1,000). The “advanced” model (LLDIO1-D) is offered at €1,500. A new model, a Baroque lute with 13 courses, the outcome of a long-considered prototype, will be unveiled soon. It is the next step for Le Luth Doré, with sales announced for autumn 2015.
A modern distribution model
Le Luth Doré currently operates on a pre-order basis. Starting in September, the brand will hold instruments in stock, allowing each buyer, for the first time since the lute’s disappearance at the end of the eighteenth century, to acquire a professional-quality instrument at an accessible price—at any time. The true advantage of Le Luth Doré lies here: beyond accessibility, availability. Today, build times for a lute from any other maker range from two to five years. The new offer, operational from September 2015, will be consolidated by the launch of an online store: all models (Renaissance and Baroque lutes, then children’s lutes, theorbos, early guitars, and mandolins) will be presented, discussed, and available for purchase in just a few clicks from your computer.
With Le Luth Doré, buying your lute will be as simple as choosing your latest iPhone. This revolution in instrument making also signals an unprecedented democratization: a transformation unseen for more than 250 years in the history of the lute, the guitar, and the early mandolin. It is a return to the lute’s golden age, when making and playing flourished on a large scale—exactly what Le Luth Doré’s workshops now propose.
Le Luth Doré® thus stands out with a unique offer combining quality and reasonable pricing: every lute is supplied with a high-quality hard case (value: €300), whereas average market prices for an equivalent case range between €600 and €700 (instrument not included).
A music-score publishing house
In addition to the instruments, Le Luth Doré devotes exceptional care to publishing its own scores. In large format and printed on refined paper (cream interior), each score is designed like a rare book or luxury edition (perfect-bound and sewn). All are in URTEXT, i.e., established through meticulous critical review to remove the errors often found in facsimiles. Extensive footnotes specify the variants observed in the manuscript sources. It is therefore a rigorous editorial endeavor requiring, for each volume, the expert eye of at least two editors. Such comfort for the performer comes at a price.
Le Luth Doré® also plans to publish pedagogical methods for all instruments: Peter Croton (professor at the Schola Cantorum in Basel) is preparing the method for the Renaissance lute. In time, methods for children will also be offered (four books for the first cycle, ages 7 to 11). Moreover, in 2016, Renaissance lutes with 6 courses for young children will be launched, enabling them to begin at the age of six or seven.
Today there is no publishing house of such scope for these instruments. In the interest of democratizing the repertoire, Le Luth Doré also intends to publish classical-guitar transcriptions of lute works. Tomorrow, millions of guitarists worldwide will finally be able to discover this early-music heritage so close to their current instrument.
Finally, Le Luth Doré’s workshops also produce pegs, peg-turners, tuners, music stands, singles, and soon, strings. A revolution is underway. Its name is Le Luth Doré.
