LUTE SOURCES
On this page I
hope to list the manuscripts and publications that have
served as sources of my arrangements. Increasingly I try to
get as close as I can to primary sources (a task that is
becoming easier as more manuscript facsimiles are becoming
available as physical publications or on the internet)
though quite a lot of the arrangements are from secondary
sources (transcriptions of the tablature) or in some cases
revisions of earlier arrangements. Currently several
sources mentioned on the music pages are not yet included
here and some of my earliest arrangements come from sources
I have forgotten!
Much the best
available source of information about English Lute
manuscripts is a thesis dated 2000 by Julia Craig-McFeely
available at http://www.ramesescats.co.uk/thesis,
also published at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/julia
Margaret Board Lute Book
An English manuscript lute book held at the Royal Academy
of Music, London from the collection of the late Robert
Spencer. According to Craig-McFeely it dates from
after 1620 and its original owner, Margaret Board, is
though to have received lute lessons from John
Dowland.
ML
Lute Book
A manuscript lute book containing 88 lute pieces (mostly
solos, some duets), the majority dating from c1610 - 1625.
A modern facsimile (Spencer, R. (Ed.) (1985) The M.L. Lute
Book Boethius Press, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland.) is available
from Ruxbery Publications
and many of
the pieces are available on Wayne Cripps’ page
as pdf’s or
MIDI or Wayne’s own TAB format.
Willoughby
Manuscript
A lute book from the 1570’s. It belonged to Sir Francis
Willoughby (born around 1547) a member of the English
aristocracy who had made money from mining interests, built
a grand house near Nottingham, hired musicians and studied
the lute - perhaps to impress Elizabeth the first and rise
in court circles (Spring 2001; Ward
1992).
The Folger Dowland Manuscript
This MS is thought to have belonged to the Dowland family
and contains some pieces in John Dowland’s hand, though the
other pieces are unlikely to be by Dowland. It is held in
the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. There is a
facsimile on the Musick’s Handmade site at
http://musickshandmade.com/lute/
together with
MIDI files and transcriptions into modern tablature.
Since I first looked guitar and grand staff notation
versions have also appeared, making this site an
excellent resource for both lutenists and
guitarists.
Hendar
Roberts Lute Book
This lute book was found in 1973 in the possession of the
Robarts family in their family home, Ladyrock House, in
Cornwall (UK). The book was written out for Hendar Robarts
in the seventeenth century in France, where he had been
sent as a young man for lute lessons. His lute teacher
signs himself as ‘Borgaise’ and the music is written for an
11 course lute in D minor tuning. A modern facsimile of the
book was produced by the Boethius Press in 1978. It
contains an introduction, inventory and list of
concordances by Robert Spencer. There are 65 pieces in the
book, many by Ennemond Gaultier, some unattributed and a
few by other named composers. Eight pieces from the Robarts
Lute Book are available in Django format on Alain Veylit’s
lute pages at http://musickshandmade.com/lute
Capirola
Lute Book
According
to Duarte (1976)
the Capirola
Lute Book dates from c. 1517 and is the oldest known
handwritten collection of lute tablatures, a compilation
by a (probably amateur) Venetian lutenist identified
only by his first name, Vidal, of the compositions of
his instructor Vincenzo Capirola a lutenist born in
Brescia and professionally active in Venice. The book
has 45 pages with 13 ricercare, 7 dances and 22
intabulations of vocal works.
Saizenay
Manuscript was compiled by
the French amateur lutenist Jean Etienne Vaudry, Seigneur
de Saizenay, 1668 - 1742
Music
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