Contribución al proyecto “La obra musical renacentista: fundamentos, repertorios y prácticas”

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Article details
Article title: Lute, Vihuela, and Early Guitar
Article ID: 9780199757824-0251
Article author(s): John Griffiths, Paul Kieffer
Publishing Group: Reference-US
Table of contents:
Introduction
General
Current Studies
Legacy Works
Reference Works, Catalogues,
Databases
Editions and Facsimiles
Collections of Essays
Biographies
Middle Ages
Renaissance Lute
Vihuela
Early Guitars
Theorbo, Chitarrone, and Archlute
Baroque Lute—France
Baroque Lute—Germany, Central and
Northern Europe
Accompanied Song
Performance Practice
Continuo Playing

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9780199757824
Lute, Vihuela, and Early Guitar

Introduction

Lutes, guitars, and vihuelas were the principal plucked instruments in use in Europe until around
1800. Ancient forms of the lute existed in many parts of the ancient world, from Egypt and
Persia through to China. It appears to have become known in Europe, where its earliest
associations were with immigrants such as the legendary Persian lutenist Ziryab (b. c. 790–d.
852), who was established in Moorish Spain by 822. The origins of the various flat-backed
instruments that eventually became guitars are more difficult to trace. The vihuela is one such
instrument that evolved in the mid-15th century and was prolific in Spain and its dominions
throughout the 16th century and beyond. Very few plucked instruments, and only a handful of
fragmentary musical compositions, survive from before 1500. The absence of artifacts and
musical sources prior to 1500 has been a point of demarcation in the study of early plucked
instruments, although current research is seeking to explore the continuity of instrumental
practice across this somewhat artificial divide. In contrast, perhaps as many as thirty thousand
works—perhaps even more—for lute, guitar, and vihuela survive from the period 1500–1800.
The music and musical practices associated with them are not well integrated into general
histories of music. This is due in part to the use of tablature as the principal notation format until
about 1800, and also because writers of general histories of music have for the most part
ignored solo instrumental music in their coverage. (For example, the Oxford Anthology of
Western Music, Vol. 1 (2018), designed to accompany chapters 1–11 of Richard Taruskin’s
Oxford History of Western Music, does not contain a single piece of instrumental music prior to
Frescobaldi [1637]). Contrary to this marginalized image, lutes, vihuelas, and guitars were a
revered part of courtly musical culture until well into the 18th century, and constantly present in
urban contexts. After the development of basso continuo practice after 1600, plucked
instruments also became frequent in Christian church music, although the lute was widely
played by clerics of all levels, particularly during the Renaissance. It was also one of the
principal tools used by composers of liturgical polyphony, in part because tablature was the
most common way of writing music in score. From the beginning of music printing, printed
tablatures played a fundamental role in the urban dissemination of music originally for church
and court, and plucked instruments were used widely by all levels of society for both leisure and
pleasure. After 1800, the lute fell from use, the guitar was transformed into its modern form with
single strings, and tablature ceased to be the preferred notation for plucked instruments.
General

There is no single-volume general history of plucked instruments to 1800. Smith 2002 (cited
under *Current Studies*) provides a comprehensive general history of the lute until the end of
the Renaissance, with abundant music examples. The article Ness and Kolczynski 2001 (under
*Current Studies*) in New Grove gives an authoritative overview of the surviving sources of lute
and vihuela music—effectively a history of lute music in its own right. Despite not including the
guitar and vihuela in the title, Schlegel and Lüdtke 2011 (under *Current Studies*) does provide
a global account of European plucked instruments, even though its emphasis is on the
instruments themselves. The book includes a broad social and organological history, with a
conspicuously large number of color plates, but it does not venture into questions of repertoire
and musical style. First published in 1976, Pohlmann 1982 (under *Current Studies*) provides a
useful catalogue of information about instruments of the lute family, repertoire, and related
literature. The most complete overview and detailed study of the guitar until 1800 is Tyler and
Sparks 2002 (under *Current Studies*). Due to the paucity of global studies, some of the older
histories, such as Chilesotti 1891 (under *Legacy Works*), are still useful and are occasionally
cited, along with Grunfeld 1969 and Tonazzi 1974 (both under *Legacy Works*). Many of their
observations remain valid despite the research that has been conducted subsequently.

Current Studies

These works, even though one is over thirty years old, offer authoritative overviews that are up-
to-date and reliable. They are highly recommended as starting points for research that can be
reliably complemented with articles from *Oxford Music Online[http://
www.oxfordmusiconline.com/]*.

Ness, Arthur, and Catherine Kolczynski. “Sources of Lute Music.” In The New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians. 2d ed. Vol. 23. Edited by Stanley Sadie, 39–63. London: Macmillan,
2001. [ISBN: 9780333608005]

A detailed overview of lute and vihuela sources divided by region, placing them within a
stylistic context. If new to the area, read the opening of each section first, and then return to
the detailed descriptions to find information on composers, notation, and the instruments
represented. Available online by subscription from *Oxford Music Online[http://
www.oxfordmusiconline.com]*.

Pohlmann, Ernst. Laute, Theorbe, Chitarrone: Die Instrumente, ihre Musik und Literatur von
1500 bis zur Gegenwart. 5th ed. Bremen, Germany: Eres, 1982. [ISBN: 9783872043924]
 A catalogue of sources of music for instruments of the lute family, theoretical writings,
musicological studies, tablature types, instrument types, and an index of historical lute makers
and surviving instruments. Most of the content about sources has been superseded by newer
materials, but other sections, such as the list of makers and instruments, are still of value.

Schlegel, Andreas, and Joachim Lüdtke. Die Laute in Europa 2: Lauten, Gitarren, Mandolinen
und Cistern. Menziken, Switzerland: The Lute Corner, 2011. [ISBN: 9783952323212]

With parallel texts in German and English, and with the collaboration of nine other writers, the
book is packed with valuable information about instruments of the lute family, vihuelas, and
guitars. It covers the construction, fretting, and tuning of these instruments, detailed
discussion of ten families of instruments, and a history of the lute and guitar from c. 1200 to
the present.

Smith, Douglas Alton. A History of the Lute from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Lexington, VA:
The Lute Society of America, 2002. [ISBN: 9780971407107]

A history of the lute and vihuela from ancient times to the end of the Renaissance, with the
period of notated lute music from c. 1500 organized by geographical region. One particular
strength is the effective contextualization of the work of individual lutenist composers, linking
detailed musical characteristics to social milieu.

Tyler, James, and Paul Sparks. The Guitar and its Music: From the Renaissance to the
Classical Era. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. [ISBN: 9780198167136]

This is a comprehensive history of the guitar from its early development through to c. 1800. It
is based firmly on a detailed examination of musical sources, and is a practical book for
players as well as the general reader. It provides the best available introduction to the hitherto
neglected area of the 18th-century guitar.

Legacy Works

The following contributions continue to have lasting value, although specific details of
composers, sources, and musical style should also be cross-referenced with more modern
writings.

Chilesotti, Oscar. Lautenspieler des XVI Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1891.

A pioneering study of lutenists of the 16th century by one of the important foundation scholars
of lute music. The book comprises an introduction to the lute repertoire followed by some 135
 pieces of lute music in guitar transcription, forming a remarkable anthology of music. Reprint,
Bibliotheca Musica Bononiensis, IV/31 (Bologna: Forni, 1976).

Grunfeld, Frederic V. The Art and Times of the Guitar: An Illustrated History of Guitars and
Guitarists. New York: Collier Books, 1969.

Somewhat journalistic and idiosyncratic in places, this is a nonscholarly attempt to put the
history of the guitar into a literary and social context from the beginnings of civilization through
to its own time. It incorporates an impressive depth of iconographical representations.

Tonazzi, Bruno. Liuto, Vihuela, Chitarra e strumenti similari nelle loro intavolature: Con cenni
sulle loro letterature. Ancona, Italy: Berben, 1974.

This still-useful handbook explains the many kinds of lute, vihuela, and guitar tablatures to
1800, with insights about individual notational characteristics and performance, along with a
useful appendix of facsimiles.

Reference Works, Catalogues, Databases

The primary challenge facing scholars and performers of early plucked instruments remains
achieving bibliographic control over the vast number of sources housed in libraries and private
collections throughout the world. There have been several attempts at a complete catalogue,
and here one must distinguish between those that offer only lists of sources (with occasional
descriptions), those that include an inventory of titles, and those that include a thematic
catalogue of incipits. Ness and Kolczynski 2001 offers a broad historical overview of the most
important printed and manuscript sources, but it was intended neither to be comprehensive nor
to include inventories/incipits. Brown 1965 is an indispensable catalogue of printed instrumental
sources, giving a complete title index of all lute, guitar, and vihuela tablatures printed before
1600. Boetticher 1978, part of the RISM project, was the first attempt to catalogue the enormous
number of surviving manuscript sources, and while it lists many sources that were previously
unknown, its usefulness is limited by only describing the physical characteristics of the
manuscripts, without listing the works they contain or providing incipits. Another attempt at a
complete catalogue, Meyer, et al. 1991–1999, is organized according to the country where the
manuscripts are currently located, takes account of much scholarship produced since
Boetticher, and includes an inventory of the works in each. These have been augmented by
Coelho 1995, a catalogue of all Italian lute and theorbo sources from the 17th century, giving
descriptions, titles, and incipits for each manuscript in both tablature and transcription. For
English lute sources, McCraig-Feely 1993 (rev. 2000) contains much detailed information about
formats and scribes, as well as indexes of titles, composers, and dateable elements in the
sources. For the important collection of lute manuscripts in Kraków, Poland, originally from the
Prussian State Library in Berlin but lost during World War II, see Kirsch and Meierott 1992.
Guitar and lute music scholarship published in North American periodicals is listed in Smith and
Eagleson 1990. Lyons 1978 and McCutcheon 1985 are bibliographies of both sources and
scholarship, although much of their original function has been superseded by online catalogues
and databases such as Gary Boye’s **Music for the Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela**. Among the
growing concerns of lute scholars is the need to record the individual peculiarities that
distinguish each surviving copy of printed sources, and to catalogue each different version of
concordant and cognate works. The work done by John H. Robinson in the quarterly “**Music
Supplement**” that he has prepared for Lute News over the last twenty-five years has made
substantial inroads into that particular area of knowledge.

Boetticher, Wolfgang. Handschriftlich überlieferte Gitarren- und Lautentabulaturen des 15. bis
18. Jahrhunderts. RISM, Series B, Vol. 7. Munich: Henle Verlag, 1978.

A descriptive catalogue of lute and guitar manuscripts preserved in libraries throughout the
world. As such, it is a central resource for scholarship, even though it does not include title or
thematic inventories of the contents of each manuscript.

Boye, Gary R., comp. *Music for the Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela (1470–1799)[http://
applications.library.appstate.edu/music/lute/home.html]*. [class:webLink]

A constantly evolving online listing of the basic bibliographical details of thousands of

manuscript and printed sources of music, including details of the instrument(s) for which each
is written and the tablature type. A growing number of entries mention significant secondary
literature and give detailed inventories of the contents

Brown, Howard Mayer. Instrumental Music Printed before 1600: A Bibliography. Cambridge MA:
Harvard University Press, 1965.

A chronological inventory of printed sources of instrumental music that gives full

bibliographical details, an inventory of titles, identification of concordances, notation,
performing medium, and location. Indispensable for the serious players and researchers.

Coelho, Victor. The Manuscript Sources of Seventeenth-Century Italian Lute Music. New York:
Garland, 1995. [ISBN: 9780815313823]

A study of the corpus of 17th-century Italian lute and theorbo manuscripts, together with a
descriptive catalogue, inventory of titles and incipits, and detailed studies of the history,
provenance, and contents of each one.
Kirsch, Dieter, and Lenz Meierott, ed. Berliner Lautentabulaturen in Krakau. Mainz, Germany:
Schott, 1992. [ISBN: 9783795718589]

After decades of being considered irretrievably lost during World War II, a substantial
collection of lute sources from Berlin reappeared in the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków. Their
importance is amplified by their absence from research conducted since their disappearance.
This catalogue describes them in detail and provides inventories of their contents.

Lyons, David B. Lute, Vihuela, Guitar to 1800: A Bibliography. Detroit Studies in Music
Bibliography 40. Detroit: Information Coordinators, 1978. [ISBN: 9780911772937]

A bibliography focusing on scholarly writings that draws together in a single source a large
amount of the pioneering scholarship concerning early plucked instruments and their music.

McCutcheon, Meredith. Guitar and Vihuela: An Annotated Bibliography. RILM Retrospectives 3.

New York: Pendragon, 1985. [ISBN: 9780918728289]

An extensive annotated bibliography of guitar and vihuela history by period and nation,
players, composers, makers, iconography, construction, periodicals, musical sources, and
modern editions. The bibliography is not restricted to the period before 1800, and includes
much material pertaining to later periods.

Meyer, Christian, Tim Crawford, François-Pierre Goy, et al. Sources manuscrites en tablature:
Luth et theorbe (c. 1500–c.1800). Collection d’Etudes Musicologiques, Vols. 82, 87, 90 and
93. Baden-Baden, Germany, and Bouxwiller, France: Koerner, 1991–1999.

An ambitious series aiming to complete, amplify, and extend the initial work presented in
Boetticher 1978. The sources are arranged by country: 1. France and Switzerland; 2.
Germany; 3.1. Austria; 3.2. Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, and the Ukraine.
Provisional work completed on the subsequent volumes is available *online [https://w1.bnu.fr/
smt/sommaire.htm]*.

Ness, Arthur, and Catherine Kolczynski. “Sources of Lute Music.” In The New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians. 2d ed. Vol. 23. Edited by Stanley Sadie, 39–63. London: Macmillan,
2001. [ISBN: 9780333608005]

An overview of lute sources divided into sections on a regional basis, providing an overview of
the extant sources in the context of the stylistic development of lute music and practice,
followed by a description of many sources, with pertinent information about composers
represented and idiomatic features of the notation and the instruments for which they are
 intended. Available online by subscription from *Oxford Music Online[http://
www.oxfordmusiconline.com]*.

Robinson, John H. “Music Supplement to Lute News.” Lute News.

Since April 1993, in each quarterly edition of The Lute Society newsletter, Lute News, John
Robinson has provided a monographic study of a source, a composer, or a work, presenting
all the music known, together with invaluable detail of sources, cognates, and concordances.
Now totaling over one hundred such supplements, their combined scholarly value is indeed
significant.

Smith, Dorman H., and Laurie Eagleson. Guitar and Lute Music in Periodicals: An Index.
Berkeley, CA: Fallen Leaf Press, 1990. [ISBN: 9780914913160]

Nearly eight hundred pieces of music for guitar or lute published in six US periodicals (up to
December 1988) are listed by composer, title, medium, and source or arranger.

Editions and Facsimiles

Modern editions of individual manuscripts or printed sources, or the collected works of individual
composers, are too numerous to list individually. These editions generally include transcriptions
into modern notation of the original tablature. The largest single series of such editions is the
Corpus des luthistes français. Many other volumes are either individual publications or included
within larger series of national repertories and monuments of music. These editions began to
appear at a time when tablature notation had fallen from use and was considered obsolete, and
when transcriptions were seen as the only way to unlock the treasures of this repertoire for
scholarly examination. Many of these are listed in Pohlmann 1982, McCutcheon 1985, and
Ness and Kolczynski 2001. With the resurgence of early plucked instrument performance,
tablature notation has once again become the standard notation used by players of the lute,
vihuela, and early guitars. Around 1980, a few publishers began producing facsimile reprints of
original sources, notably Editions Minkoff (Geneva), Studio per Edizione Scelte (S.P.E.S.)
Editori (Florence), and Boethius Press (UK), as have a handful of international lute societies,
some of which have published substantial collections, editions, and facsimiles. Many of these
publishers have now disappeared, but the remainder of their stock can still be found. As a result
of the change, there is less momentum today to produce modern editions in modern notation,
even though it does help integrate the tablature repertory into the musical mainstream. Libraries
are increasingly digitizing their collections of early prints, and many of these are freely available
from their websites. **Early Music Online** offers a selection of the lute tablatures from the
British Library in digital facsimile, and the **Lute Society of America** has an extensive listing of
works available in facsimile, with effective links to the source materials, both manuscripts and
prints.

*Early Music Online[https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-teaching/departments-and-

schools/music/research/research-projects-and-centres/early-music-online/]*.[class:dataSet-
database]

A joint project between the British Library and Royal Holloway, University of London, to digitize
a significant number of printings of early music, including a good number of the tablatures for
renaissance lute in their collection.

Lute Society of America. *Digital Tablature Facsimiles Links[http://

lutesocietyofamerica.wildapricot.org/Tab-Facsimiles/]*. [class:dataSet-database]

This page gives links to copies of hundreds of tablature sources for lute, early guitar, and
vihuela. It provides direct links to many library copies and includes links to copies of the same
source in different libraries to facilitate detailed comparison.

McCutcheon, Meredith. Guitar and Vihuela: An Annotated Bibliography. RILM Retrospectives 3.

New York: Pendragon, 1985. [ISBN: 9780918728289]

This extensive bibliography includes a very good listing of modern lute editions up to 1985.

Ness, Arthur, and Catherine Kolczynski. “Sources of Lute Music.” In The New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians. 2d ed. Vol. 23. Edited by Stanley Sadie, 39–63. London: Macmillan,
2001. [ISBN: 9780333608005]

References to many modern editions and facsimiles are embedded into this most
comprehensive article and make it a key starting point for research. Available online by
subscription from *Oxford Music Online[http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com]*.

Pohlmann, Ernst. Laute, Theorbe, Chitarrone: Die Instrumente, ihre Musik und Literatur von
1500 bis zur Gegenwart. 5th ed. Bremen, Germany: Eres, 1982. [ISBN: 9783872043924]

The chapters of this general reference devoted to published editions and facsimiles continue
to be useful and a reliable way to locate them.

Collections of Essays

The still-unresolved issues of cataloguing, transcribing, and editing lute music were the focus of
an international colloquium held in Paris in 1957. The published outcome of this event, Jacquot
1958, was the first of a series of conference reports that have become central contributions to
lute, vihuela, and guitar scholarship. Vaccaro 1984 marks the second French lute conference of
note, while Grijp and Mook 1988 contains the proceedings of a similar event held in Utrecht in
1986 and presents the ideas and work of another generation of researchers. Coelho 1997 is
another excellent collection that was not conceived as conference proceedings, but simply as a
state-of-the-art account of lute, vihuela, and guitar scholarship. Dugot, et al. 1999 is a similar
collection of twenty-five studies from the forefront of current scholarship.

Coelho, Victor, ed. Performance on Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela: Historical Practice and Modern
Interpretation. Cambridge Studies in Performance Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1997. [ISBN: 9780521455282]

Strongly focused on performance practice, this collection follows a loosely chronological order,
with chapters authored by distinguished specialists. It covers aspects of 15th-century lute
practice, continuing with chapters addressing Italian lute instruction books, the interpretation of
16th- and 17th-century solo lute music, and accompanied song. Further chapters address
vihuela performance practice in the 16th century, and the guitar in 17th-century Italy through
to the mid-19th century.

Dugot, Joël, et al., eds. Luths et luthistes en Occident: Actes du Colloque 13–15 mai 1998.
Paris: Cité de la Musique, 1999. [class:conference-proceeding]

The proceedings of a French conference following those of 1957 and 1980, this volume
presents twenty-five essays in French and English grouped into five sections. Eight essays
are devoted to each of the principal areas—“History, Genres, Sources” and “People, Works”—
and deal predominantly with 16th- and 17th-century topics. The remaining sections deal with
iconography, organology, and the lute in modern times prior to the early music revival.

Grijp, Louis Peter, and Willem Mook, eds. Proceedings of the International Lute Symposium,
Utrecht 1986. Utrecht, The Netherlands: STIMU Foundation for Historical Performance
Practice, 1988. [class:conference-proceeding]

From another celebrated lute conference, the studies in this volume are groped in sections
focusing on (i) repertoire and performance practice, (ii) organology, and (iii) tuition. It includes
some highly significant studies by Howard M. Brown, Arthur Ness, Lyle Nordstrom, Louis
Peter Grijp, Paul O’Dette, Ray Nurse, Joël Dugot, Michael Lowe, Anne van Royen, Anthony
Bailes, and Willem Mook.

Jacquot, Jean, ed. La luth et sa musique. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, 1958. [class:conference-proceeding]
 Proceedings of the international colloquium of the CNRS held in Paris in September 1957,
centering around problems surrounding the building, performance, and edition of lute music,
with the aim of coordinating future research and facilitating the vast repertoire of the lute in
modern editions. One of the aims of the conference was to establish consensus on
transcription and editing methods of lute sources.

Vaccaro, Jean-Michel, ed. Le luth et sa musique II: Tours, Centre d’Études Supérieures de la
Renaissance, 15–18 septembre 1980. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, 1984. [ISBN: 9782222032199] [class:conference-proceeding]

This volume presents the proceedings of a conference whose purpose was to resolve
questions concerning the scholarly editing of lute music, a continuation of the 1957 conference
instigated by Jacquot. In addition to discussing bibliography, cataloguing, transcription, and
editing, there are repertoire-based studies of 15th-century lute practice, French baroque lute
music, works of composers from Dalza to Weiss and Haydn, performance practice, and lute
building.

Vaccaro, Jean-Michel, ed. Le Concert des voix et des instruments à la Renaissance, actes du
XXXIVe Colloque international d’études humanistes, Tours, Centre d’études supérieures de la
Renaissance, 1–11 juillet 1991. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, 1995. [ISBN: 9782271050670] [class:conference-proceeding]

This important conference, focusing on the close relationships between instrumental and vocal
music of the Renaissance, brought together many eminent scholars of Renaissance music,
and included several important contributions focusing specifically on lute-accompanied song,
intabulations, the composition of fantasias, iconography, and the participation of lutes in
ensembles.

Biographies

Not many lutenists and early guitarists are documented well enough to permit their lives to be
reconstructed as biographies. Where it is possible, these biographies serve to tell us about the
specific individuals, as well as conveying many other aspects of their lives that were possibly
part of a common experience. Distinguishing the commonplace from the exceptional is not
always simple and must be done with caution. Nonetheless, understanding something of the
individuals who produced the repertory preserved from centuries ago inevitably contributes to a
deeper understanding of the people and their musical production. The ten figures chosen here
are all composers whose music survives. Prior to this time, the only lutenist who could be added
to this group is Pietrobono de Burzellis (b. 1417–d. 1497). Among the ten discussed below, the
earliest is the legendary Francesco Canova da Milano (b. 1497–d. 1543), followed by others
born in the first decades of the 16th century: the Italians Vincenzo Galilei and Fabrizio Dentice,
and the Transylvanian Valentin Bakfark. In comparison to many of these, the life of English
lutenist John Dowland (b. 1563–d. 1626) is copiously documented. A pair of Italians ostensibly
born in the 1580s, Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger and Bellerofonte Castaldi, traverse the
centuries and represent the first generation of theorbo players whose influence across Europe
was extensive. Born around 1615, precisely the moment when they were making their mark, the
Italian guitarist Francesco Corbetta became a master of the new Italian style but migrated to
France, where he was able to contribute to the development of a French guitar style. The legacy
of the Spanish guitarist Santiago de Murcia, born in 1673, shows the adoption of the French by
Spanish players, the coexistence of this style alongside a native Spanish style, and the way that
these were transmitted to the New World. An almost exact contemporary of J. S. Bach, Sylvius
Leopold Weiss was the most famous lutenist of his time, employed in the court orchestra of the
Elector of Saxony in Dresden, and possibly the most prolific lute composer of all time.

Canguilhem, Philippe. Fronimo de Vincenzo Galilei. Centre d’Études Supérieures de la

Renaissance, Collection “Épitome musical.” Paris and Tours: Minerve, 2001. [ISBN:
9782869311015]

Vincenzo Galilei (b. c. 1520–d. 1591) was among the best known of Florentine lutenists.
Despite a paucity of biographical documentation, Canguilhem draws many insights from
Galilei’s writings, particularly his treatise Fronimo, which instructs in the art of making
intabulations. Despite only a cursory focus on Galilei’s role in the development of monody and
his pioneering work as an experimental scientist, the study adds significant insights to Galilei
as lutenist and musician.

Coelho, Victor. “G. G. Kapsberger in Rome, 1604–1645: New Biographical Data.” Journal of the
Lute Society of America 16 (1983): 103–133.

An illuminating study of the life and activities of the famous Venetian-born musician of noble
Germanic origin. The author touches upon previous statements made by Doni (1647),
Hawkins (1776), Ambros (1878), Fortune (1954), and Witzenmann (1980), and follows with a
study of the musician’s activities and relationships in Rome, primarily regarding his role as
servant to Cardinal Francesco Barberini at the court of Pope Urban VIII.

Dolata, David. “Bellerofonte Castaldi (1580–1649) of Modena: Musician, Poet and Adventurer.”
Acta Musicologica 79 (2007): 85–111.
 This portrait delves deeply into the personal life and adventures of Castaldi, the Modenese
musician, poet, and polymath of noble birth. Of the information known about him, much comes
from his own lengthy, detailed publications and written correspondence. This study briefly
touches on the personal milestones, relationships, opinions, and series of events that marked
the life of this free noble artist who was unhindered by courtly obligations.

Fabris, Dinko. Da Napoli a Parma: Itinerari di un musicista aristocratico. Opera vocali di Fabrizio
Dentice, 1530ca–1581. L’Arte Armonica, Serie II, Musica Palatina, Vol. 3. Rome: Accademia
Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Milan: Skira, 1998.

Son of nobleman musician Luigi Dentice, Fabrizio was raised in Naples, until exiled in 1552. In
Rome the Dentici became celebrity performers among the nobility and beyond. In 1559 they
performed at the Madrid court with an itinerant troupe. One of the renowned lutenists of his
time, Fabrizio is also documented in Barcelona, Milan, and at the court of Parma in 1569,
where he appears to have remained until 1581.

Hall, Monica. “Francesco Corbetta, a Biography.” The Lute 54 (2013): 18–48.

A chronological study of the life and activities of the most famous guitarist of the 17th century.
Translations of Corbetta’s own various writings contained in prefaces to his tablature
publications are given, as are numerous correspondences and firsthand accounts of his
playing from various phases of his career. His multiple travels to Paris and his activities at the
English court from the 1660s onward are covered in detail.

Király, Peter. “Valentin Bakfark.” In Beiträge zur Musikgeschichte der Siebenbürger Sachsen.
Vol. 1. Edited by K. Teutsh, 7–47. Kludenbach, Germany: Gehann-Musik-Verlag, 1999. [ISBN:
9783927293168]

Correcting inaccuracies in earlier biographies, Király rectifies what is known of Bakfark (b.
c.1530–d. 1576). Born in Transylvania and son of a German lutenist, Bakfark was apparently
trained in Budapest by an Italian, and later developing his career at the Polish court between
1549 and 1565. He then served Maximilian II in Vienna for several years until moving to
Padua in 1570. He died with his family in the plague of 1576.

Pavan, Franco. “‘The court, which is nothing but a show, now comic and more often tragic’: New
Documents on the Last Years of Francesco da Milano.” The Lute 50 (2010): 34–59.

An enlightening study offering newly discovered documents that uniquely touch upon the
personal character, life, and professional duties of Francesco, particularly in his final years. An
appendix is included with translations of the newly discovered correspondences and letters.
 Still left open to mystery are details surrounding the death of the great lutenist and the location
of his grave.

Poulton, Diana. John Dowland. Rev. ed. London: Faber, 1982 [ISBN: 9780571180226].

An authoritative biography of one of the most famous of all English lutenists. Poulton
speculates widely about Dowland’s uncertain origins before tracing his life in England, his
various travels through Europe, his friends and patrons, and the influence of his life
experience on his music. Several chapters of the book are also devoted to a careful analysis
of his music and its sources.

Smith, Douglas A. “A Biography of Silvius Leopold Weiss.” Journal of the Lute Society of
America 31 (1998): 1–48.

A comprehensive study of the great German lutenist’s life and activities from his birth in
Grottkau and early court appointment near Breslau as a teenager, to his travels in Italy, and
finally to his engagements at the Saxon court in Dresden. It includes a translation of his
correspondence with Mattheson, details regarding his relationships with J. S. Bach, Quantz,
and others, plus information regarding his invention of the thirteen-course lute.

Vera, Alejandro. “Santiago de Murcia (1673–1739): New Contributions on His Life and Work.”
Early Music 36.4 (2008): 597–608.

This recent research brings Santiago de Murcia further out of the shadows than any of his
Spanish contemporaries. It questions the evidence that suggests he might have traveled to
Mexico. It shows him to have spent the greater part of his life in Madrid and that, despite the
promise of his early career, he was unable to achieve lasting success, finally dying in poverty.

Middle Ages

Various forms of plucked instruments were in use in Europe during the Middle Ages. The oud
was introduced from the Middle East during this period and was quickly transformed into new
round-backed instruments of different names and sizes. The lute and the smaller gittern were
the most universal among them. The citole was the most prominent among flat-backed
instruments of the period until the development of the vihuela in the 15th century and, in turn,
the guitar. Young 2000 discusses the differences between instruments and the difficulties of
establishing the precise identity of each, especially trying to match names from written sources
with artistic representations. Very few medieval stringed instruments survive, and an equally
small amount of written music from before 1500, but in recent years there has been growing
interest in investigating performance practices, instrument manufacture, and the development of
notation systems for lutes and other plucked instruments. Coelho and Polk 2016 provides an
investigation into early instrumental practice in general, straddling the divide between unwritten
and written musical traditions, but earlier works such as Prizer 1980, Page 1981, and Minamino
1986 are more focused on the lute. The fragmentary manuscripts of lute tablature before 1500
are presented splendidly in Young and Kirnbauer 2003, while Lewon 2013 investigates early
lute practice in detail. Corona Alcalde 2015 (cited under *Vihuela*) brings together detailed
information about the lute in medieval Spain for the first time since Poulton’s pioneering 1977
article.

Coelho, Victor, and Keith Polk. Instrumentalists and Renaissance Culture, 1420–1600: Players
of Function and Fantasy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016. [ISBN:
9781107145801]

A wide-ranging study of the various traditions of instrumental music from the early to the late
Renaissance, employing a broad cultural narrative and analysis of performance, interwoven
with eighteen detailed case studies (five of them specifically on the lute or vihuela), close
readings of eighteen central sources, and an analysis of instruments as portrayed in images.

Fallows, David. “15th-century Tablatures for Plucked Instruments: A Summary, A Revision, and
a Suggestion.” The Lute Society Journal 19 (1977): 7–33.

A critical examination of the principal extant sources of 15th-century tablature. New dates are
suggested for some of these sources on the basis of close readings. Fallows also discusses
15th-century performance practice for solo lute and the renowned lute duos. He argues that
numerous pieces in the Buxheim Organ Book, as well as the Segovia and Perugia
manuscripts, may have represented the music played by such lute duos.

Gallo, F. Alberto. Music in the Castle: Troubadours, Books, and Orators in Italian Courts of the
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
[ISBN: 9780226279688]

A penetrating study of musical life in Italian courts from the 13th through 15th centuries.
Included are Gallo’s invaluable translations of primary source material documenting the
performing style of the renowned 15th-century lutenist Pietrobono de Burzellis. It includes vivid
descriptions of Pietrobono’s performance style, the type of music he played, and the profound
level of musical artistry and divine wisdom that he had attained.

Lewon, Marc. “The Earliest Source for the Lute: The Wolfenbüttel Lute Tablature.” Journal of the
Lute Society of America 46 (2013): 1–70.
 A study of five polyphonic pieces (including three fragments) first discovered in 2011 from a
manuscript originating in the monastery of St. Cyriakus, Braunschweig, Germany. Included is
a detailed analysis of the notation, which Lewon argues is a form of tablature, complete
transcriptions into staff notation and French tablature, a musical and historical analysis of the
pieces, plus the original facsimiles.

Minamino, Hiroyuki. “Conrad Paumann and the Evolution of Solo Lute Practice in the Fifteenth
Century.” Journal of Musicological Research 4 (1986): 291–310.

This article, mostly derived from existing studies, discusses the development of solo lute
music in the 15th century and the transition from a plectrum-based linear style toward
polyphonic playing using the fingers. It introduces some of the known lute virtuosi of late-15th-
century Italy, and discusses the role of the German organist and lutenist Conrad Paumann (b.
1410–d. 1473), in this process.

Page, Christopher. “The 15th-Century Lute: New and Neglected Sources.” Early Music 9 (1981):
11–21.

A brief overview of late-15th-century sources dealing with descriptions of the lute and lute
technique, including new translations from the original Latin of Paulirinus (c. 1460) and
Tinctoris (c. 1481–1483), and a brief look at the culture of lute playing in 15th-century England,
including the presentation of then newly discovered 15th-century documents that include
instructions for tuning a lute, among other notable items.

Prizer, William F. “Lutenists at the Court of Mantua in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth
Centuries.” Journal of the Lute Society of America 13 (1980): 5–34.

An archival study of lutenists in the service of Isabella d’Este, patroness and lover of the lute
and viola. It contains a brief biographical sketch of each known lutenist, a description of the
types of lute that would have been used, and a study of their performance practices, based
largely on original, detailed communications from the Gonzagas and d’Este regarding their
lutenists, instruments, and various musical needs at court.

Young, Crawford. “Lute, Gittern, and Citole.” In A Performer’s Guide to Medieval Music. Edited
by Ross. W. Duffin, 355–375. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. [ISBN:
9780253337528]

A good general overview of plucked instruments before 1500, touching upon the three main
plucked instrument types seen in iconography. Included is a general overview of various late
medieval terminology in relation to lute instruments, an overview of the general shapes found,
 and potential tunings for the instruments, in addition to questions of performance practice such
as playing technique and possible repertory.

Young, Crawford, and Martin Kirnbauer. Frühe Lautentabulaturen im Faksimile: Early Lute
Tablature in Facsimile. Winterthur: Amadeus, 2003. [ISBN: 9783905049916]

A facsimile edition of several of the earliest lute manuscripts, with discussion (in English and
German) of late-15th-century plucked instrumental performance practice. The provenance,
context, and notational characteristics of each manuscript are analyzed, together with the
implications for performance practice. This includes playing techniques, instruments,
intabulation techniques and cantus-firmus improvisation. Included is an in-depth look at known
players, with listings and translations of much primary and secondary source material.

Renaissance Lute

The advent of printing and the development of tablature were important factors in the
proliferation of plucked instruments during the Renaissance, especially the lute. It was favored
because it had an enchanting sound, and because it was portable, suitable for polyphonic
music, and excellent as an accompanying instrument. Thousands of lutes were built, hundreds
of volumes of music were published during the 16th century and into the 17th, and a large
amount of music also survives in manuscript collections. The lute was used in the courtly and
aristocratic sphere and also by the urban bourgeoisie throughout Europe. Smith 2002 provides
a pan-European perspective of the lute and its repertory, while O’Dette 2007 gives precise
details on the instrument itself. Studies of individual national repertories of lute music are given
in Vaccaro 1981, Spring 2001, and Burgers 2013 for France, Britain, and the Low Countries,
respectively. Much important research of the lute is contained in doctoral dissertations that are
frequently cited, even though never published as books; these can often be accessed
electronically through specialist providers, however. Many studies of the lute focus on detailed
aspects of the instrument, its music, and its social context. Key writings on individual composers
and musical genres can be found easily in major reference works. The works cited here are
indicative of some of the principal current research areas, and provide a representative work
from each area, mostly published within the last twenty years. Among recent studies of historical
lute making, Sisto 2010 presents a large body of previously unknown information about one of
the leading dynasties of 16th-century luthiers. Among studies of music and musical style,
Ballman 2011 ventures into the often-neglected genre of intabulations, focusing specifically on
Lasso. Specific repertory studies deal principally with abstract genres such as the fantasia and
ricercar, dance music, variations, and songs with lute accompaniment. Source studies such as
Vanhulst 1988 look at the printing of lute music, while Lüdtke 1999 offers an in-depth
examination of the one of the most important Renaissance collectors of lute music. Pedagogy
and instruction materials are analyzed in works such as Fabris 1997. Information about the lute
and guitar within the areas of social history and patronage are often embedded within studies
not limited to these particular instruments.

Ballman, Christine. Le luth et Lassus. Brussels: Académie Royale de Belgique, 2011. [ISBN:
9782803102839]

A detailed study of the intabulation of vocal polyphony of Orlando de Lassus by numerous

contemporary lutenists. It provides a survey of the Lassus works that were intabulated
principally for the lute, but also for the cittern and keyboard. It examines the printed and
manuscript sources that preserve these intabulations, and the way that specific lutenists
approached their task with regard to technical, theoretical, and performance-based aspects.

Burgers, Jan W. J. The Lute in the Dutch Golden Age: Musical Culture in the Netherlands 1580–
1670. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013. [ISBN: 9789048519392]

This is the first history of Dutch lute music, focused on the splendid lute culture in the
Netherlands during the late 16th and 17th centuries. After a general introduction, the
contribution of the Antwerp printer and publisher Pierre Phalèse is considered, followed by a
detailed study of lutenists Joachim van der Hove, Nicholas Vallet, Constantijn Huygens, and
others, with further chapters examining sources, lute making, and other cultural
manifestations.

Fabris, Dinko. “Lute Tablature Instructions in Italy: A Survey of the Regole from 1507–1759.” In
Performance on Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela: Historical Performance and Modern Interpretation.
Edited by Victor Coelho, 16–46. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997. [ISBN:
9780521455282]

An analysis of all the surviving prints and manuscripts from the end of the 15th century until
1750 that contain rules that provide practical instruction on lute playing. It synthesizes
information from some fifty sources over a 250-year period and presents clear summaries,
many in point form. It looks particularly at instructions on how to read tablature, theoretical
manuals and rules for intabulation, and the channels of popular dissemination.

Lüdtke, Joachim. Die Lautenbücher Philipp Hainhofers (1578–1647). Abhandlungen zur

Musikgeschichte 5. Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999. [ISBN:
9783525279045]
 The extraordinary manuscript collection of lute music of Augsburg patrician Philipp Hainhofer
(b. 1578–d. 1647) is studied in meticulous detail in a book that provides a biographical portrait
of the collection’s owner and its cultural context, together with extensive study of the history
and provenance of the collection, an analysis of the music and musical genres, and a full
inventory with concordances.

O’Dette, Paul. “Plucked Instruments.” In A Performer’s Guide to Renaissance Music. 2d ed.

Edited by Jeffery Kite-Powell, 170–186. Bloomington, University of Indiana Press, 2007.
[ISBN: 9780253348661]

A thorough and pragmatic overview of plucked instrumental performance practice from

roughly the mid-15th to the mid-17th century. The entire spectrum of the fretted plucked
instrumental family is covered, including the tunings, playing techniques, construction,
repertoire, and history of lutes, vihuelas, guitars, theorboes, archlutes, and wire-strung
instruments used during each respective period and place. First edition published in 1994
(New York: Schirmer, pp. 139–153).

Sisto, Luigi. I liutai tedeschi a Napoli tra Cinque e Seicento: Storia di una migrazione in senso
contrario. Rome: Instituto per la Storia della Musica, 2010. [ISBN: 9788895349084]

This is one of a group of recent Italian studies concerned with lute making in 16th-century Italy
and the role of German craftsmen in that development. In this case, the book center’s on lute
makers from Füssen in southern Germany who traveled to Naples as journeymen, stayed
there, and played an important part in furnishing the city’s players with high-quality lutes.

Smith, Douglas Alton. A History of the Lute from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Lexington, VA:
Lute Society of America, 2002. [ISBN: 9780971407107]

This is the most comprehensive study of the Renaissance lute and its antecedents. Smith
treats Renaissance lute music by country and gives an excellent overview of the principal
composers of each nation, and their output. For a general book it balances musical, practical,
and stylistic insights, and has a large number of music examples to illustrate the text. It also
deals in similar fashion with the vihuela in Spain.

Spring, Matthew. The Lute in Britain: A History of the Instrument and its Music. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001. [ISBN: 9780198166207]

A monumental work documenting the development of the lute from the Middle Ages through to
its full flowering in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, and its eventual decline later in the
17th century. It touches upon the role of the lute in society, its use in ensembles and song
 accompaniment, and major players and composers. It contains musical examples and
iconography, plus an abundant bibliography, including source material.

Vaccaro, Jean-Michel. La musique de luth en France au XVIe siècle. Paris: CNRS, 1981. [ISBN:
9782222026266]

This book is the central reference point concerning the Renaissance lute in France, providing
an outstanding contribution to scholarship. The first section of the book deals with the lute in
French society, instruments, sources, and pedagogy, while the following three sections are
repertory studies of intabulations, dance genres, and the abstract original music, both
preludes and fantasias.

Vanhulst, Henri. “Les mises en tablature o]riginales dans le Theatrum musicum de Pierre
Phalèse (Louvain, 1563).” In La musique, de tous les passetemps le plus beau: Hommage à
Jean-Michel Vaccaro. Edited by François Lesure and Henri Vanhulst, 343–368. Paris:
Klincksiek, 1988.

This study exemplifies the attention in recent scholarship to lute arrangements of vocal
polyphony. Vanhulst examines the first of the lute books that were also printed by Phalèse
himself. Not merely their publisher, Phalèse was also a collector and the arranger of the 1563
publication. In addition to repertory analysis, Vanhulst also reveals the intabulation and
editorial methods used to make pleasing lute versions of polyphonic chansons, aided with
comparative transcriptions.

Vihuela

The plucked vihuela de mano was a guitar-shaped instrument that flourished principally in Spain
and its territories from the mid-15th century, much of the time alongside the four-course guitarra,
which was described as “nothing more than a vihuela without its first and sixth strings” by Juan
Bermudo. The five-course guitar of the 17th century was an amalgamation of the earlier
instruments, the result of modification and fusion. The common modern notion that the five-
course guitar “replaced” the vihuela is somewhat misleading. The accompanying change was
musical more than anything else, a preference in the 17th century for light strummed music
instead of dense polyphony. The vihuela de mano derives from the bowed fiddles that were
played throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, and the guitarra was little more than a small
vihuela that played the discant part in duos habitually played on the gittern (a small lute),
eventually assuming its name. The vihuela was the predominant plucked instrument of 16th-
century Spain, although Corona Alcalde 2015 shows that the lute also flourished there.
Romanillos and Winspear 2002 provides extensive documentation of makers, while Bordas
1995 is a pioneering study of the guilds of makers in Madrid. More than seven hundred vihuela
compositions survive in seven printed books complemented by a smaller number of
manuscripts. Ward 1953 remains the most comprehensive study of nearly all aspects of the
vihuela, especially repertoire, although Griffiths 2009 integrates important new perspectives,
especially concerning the vihuela in urban society, beyond the courtly sphere with which it is
traditionally associated. The newly discovered vihuelas of the last decades are examined in
detail in Dugot 2004, while Rey 1997 collates many of the references to the instrument in
Spanish literature. Fiorentino 2013 continues and extends arguments concerning improvised
composition, particularly upon preexisting grounds, as a contrast to the other musical genres
that derived from polyphonic imitation learned through the process of intabulation. The
proliferation of the vihuela in other parts of Europe is discussed in Minamino 2004 and Morais
2006.

Bordas, Cristina. “La construcción de vihuelas y guitarras en Madrid en los siglos XVI y XVII.”
La guitarra en la historia 6 (1995): 47–67.

An examination of the guild of violeros in Madrid from its establishment in the mid-16th century
until the end of the 17th, giving an indication of its organization and statutes, what can be
learned about instruments design and manufacture from the examination rules, the
terminology they used to describe the different components of the instruments, and a detailed
examination of the accounts of two makers.

Corona Alcalde, Antonio. El laúd en la España cristiana. Madrid: Sociedad de la Vihuela, 2015.
[ISBN: 9788461739219]

For a long time, there was a widely held view that the vihuela was preferred in Spain over the
lute because of its associations with the Moors who dominated southern Spain for seven
centuries. This new book documents the large numbers of lutes in Spanish artworks, as well
as references to players and makers of lutes in Spain, principally during the 15th and 16th
centuries.

Dugot, Joël, ed. Aux origines de la guitare: La vihuela de mano. Paris: Musée de la Musique,
2004. [ISBN: 9782914147231]

An anthology of essays in French, principally focusing on matters pertaining to the vihuela as

an instrument: its development and decline, organology, makers and making, and a detailed
examination of the known surviving vihuelas.

Fiorentino, Giuseppe. “Folía”: El origen de los esquemas armónicos entre tradición oral y
transmisión escrita. Kassell, Germany: Reichenberger, 2013. [ISBN: 9783937734996]
 Present in Spanish polyphony preceding the earliest written sources of instrumental music, the
folia and related grounds became a significant part of Spanish instrumental music, particularly
for variations. This book examines the folia not only as a ground bass, but also as a central
factor in the development of a harmonically grounded musical language, expanding outward
from instrumental practice.

Griffiths, John. “The Vihuela: Performance Practice, Style, and Context.” In Performance on
Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela: Historical Practice and Modern Interpretation. Edited by Victor
Coelho, 158–179. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997. [ISBN:
9780521455282]

The study places vihuela playing in its historical and social context, especially the diverse
social groups who used the vihuela for their recreation and edification. It also examines some
of the specific areas where individual taste and ability influenced performance, whether in
embellishment, arranging polyphony, learning to improvise fantasia, or accompanying song,
as well as considering other relevant aspects of instruments and playing technique.

Griffiths, John. “Hidalgo, Merchant, Poet, Priest: the Vihuela in the Urban Soundscape.” Early
Music 37 (2009): 355–366.

Older traditional studies of the vihuela locate the instrument firmly within the courtly context.
Based on evidence mainly from notarial records, this study shows the widespread use of the
vihuela within the urban soundscape, its role in the transmission of vocal polyphony beyond its
normal reach, and as an instrument for recreational use across a broad sector of residents of
Spanish cities.

Minamino, Hiroyuki. “The Spanish Plucked Viola in Renaissance Italy, 1480–1530.” Early Music
32 (2004): 177–193.

Vihuelas, plucked and bowed, reached Italy soon after they developed in Spain. This was due,
in particular, to the Aragonese rule of Naples during the period, and the ascent of a Spanish
Pope, Rodrigo Borgia, as Alexander VI. The article traces the evidence and iconography of
the vihuela in Italy.

Morais, Manuel. “A Viola de Mão em Portugal (c. 1450–c. 1789).” Nassarre 22 (2006): 393–462.

By far the most comprehensive study available of the vihuela in Portugal from the 15th
through to the 18th century. It covers social history, players, makers, the ordinances for the
manufacture of instruments and strings, and iconography. The article is in Portuguese.
Rey, Pepe. “Nominalia: Instrumentos musicales en la literatura española desde La Celestina
(1499) hasta El Criticón (1651).” In Los instrumentos musicales en el siglo XVI. Edited by
Alfonso de Vicente, 41–100. Avila, Spain: Fundación Cultural Sta. Teresa, 1997.

Not exclusively devoted to the vihuela, this Spanish article is a treasure chest of literary
references to musical instruments during the long 16th century. It gives a thousand references
to musical instruments, drawn from a close study of a hundred literary works in which musical
instruments figure prominently.

Romanillos, José Luis, and Marian Harris Winspear. The Vihuela de Mano and the Spanish
Guitar: A Dictionary of the Makers of Plucked and Bowed Musical Instruments of Spain (1200–
2002). Guijosa, Spain: Sanguino Press, 2002. [ISBN: 9788460761419]

This book provides the most comprehensive information available about Spanish vihuela and
guitar makers for as long as records of them have survived. It is an encyclopedic collection of
information based on previously published material, a variety of informants, and the primary
research of the authors themselves. As a distinguished guitar maker, Romanillos favors using
the term vihuela for all instruments made with double courses until c. 1800.

Early Guitars

The guitar developed its name and characteristic shape around 1500. Its name came from the
small medieval lute known as the gittern, guitarra in Spanish, and its shape from the vihuela.
Initially, it was a small vihuela that played the part traditionally played by the gittern in lute duo
ensembles. Throughout the 16th century it was normally strung with four courses. It was used in
both the popular and courtly spheres, with a written repertory similar to the lute and vihuela.
During the 17th and early 18th centuries, a fifth course of strings was added to the guitar. Guitar
music to about 1650 is mostly strummed, and written only with chord symbols. After 1650,
strumming was combined with individual plucked notes to create a mixed style that persisted
well into the 18th century. Later in the 18th century, guitars were increasing built with six
courses, and by 1800 had become single strung. Tyler and Sparks 2002 covers the entire span
of the life of the early guitar to this point. Predominant themes in studies of later guitar music
revolve around national styles, improvised and extemporized performance, stringing, and
studies of individual composers. Valdivia Sevilla 2015 offers a comprehensive view of the
strummed repertory in Spain, while the latter Spanish style is covered in individual studies of
composers such as Gaspar Sanz and Santiago de Murcia. Aleixo 2017 brings new light to the
guitar in later 18th-century Spain. Different aspects of the enigmatic early Italian guitar style are
explored in Veneziano 2003, while Gavito 2015 looks in depth at the role of improvisation in this
repertoire. The birth of the midcentury mixed style is the focus of Eisenhardt 2015. French guitar
music can best be see through players such as Robert de Visée or Francesco Corbetta, whose
influence in France is made manifest in the biography Hall 2013. The broader social history of
the guitar in the 17th and 18th centuries is given good coverage in Coelho 2006. The strummed
style of guitar playing was significant in advancing theoretical and practical thinking about
harmony (Christensen 1992). The stringing of the five-course guitar continues to be polemical
among players and scholars. Boye 1997 is one of the numerous studies that look at this issue.

Aleixo, Ricardo. La guitarra en Madrid (1750–1808): Con un catálogo de la música de ese

periodo conservada en bibliotecas madrileñas. Madrid: Sociedad Española de Musicología,
2017. [ISBN: 9788486878399]

This Spanish book is an important contribution to understanding the development of the guitar
in the least-studied period of its history. It examines the growing popularity of the guitar
throughout Madrid, and its role in the court, as well as the instrument and its music precisely
when the guitar had regained its sixth course and was on the brink of transformation into a
single-strung instrument.

Boye, Gary R. “Performing Seventeenth-Century Italian Guitar Music: The Question of an

Appropriate Stringing.” In Performance on Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela: Historical Practice and
Modern Interpretation. Edited by Victor Coelho, 180–194. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1997. [ISBN: 9780521455282]

Early guitars were strung in a variety of manners, particularly concerning the lower two
courses, which were sometimes strung in octaves and other times in unison, with both strings
either at the higher or lower octave. This issue continues to plague modern scholars and
performers, and invariably leads to awkward leaps in certain melodic lines. Boye gives a clear
exposition of the various options.

Christensen, T. “The Spanish Baroque Guitar and Seventeenth-Century Triadic Theory.”

Journal of Music Theory 36 (1992): 1–42.

Using the Spanish repertory of dance music to be played with rasgueado strumming and
preserved chiefly in 17th-century guitar books, the author explores the commonly used chord
formulas and argues for them being influential in the development of triadic theory that
became the universal theoretical system of Western music.

Coelho, Victor. “The Baroque Guitar: Players, Patrons, Paintings, and the Public.” In The World
of Baroque Music: New Perspectives. Edited by George Stauffer, 169–184. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2006. [ISBN: 9780253347985]
 This is a textbook-style general chapter on the baroque guitar that covers the guitar and its
music in France, Italy, Spain, and the New World, with good musical description and an
emphasis on iconography. It is a good starting point for understanding the guitar and its music
in the broader context of music in the 17th century in particular.

Eisenhardt, Lex. Italian Guitar Music of the Seventeenth Century: Battuto and Pizzicato.
Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2015. [ISBN: 9781580465335]

The central aim of this book is to trace the birth of the battuto-pizzicato guitar repertoire
through its emancipation from the confines of the strummed style. In the process, the author
also cannot avoid giving something of a global study of Italian guitar music. It is the work of a
practitioner who blends his performance experience with scholarly depth to enlighten many
aspects of instrumental practice.

Gavito, Cory. “Oral Transmission and the Production of Guitar Tablature Books in Seventeenth-
Century Italy.” Recercare 27 (2015): 185–208.

This article examines improvisation practices in strummed guitar music through a stockpile of
widely-known harmonic sequences and chord progressions. Gavito notes how 17th-century
musicians framed this repertory into an almost intuitive language and demonstrates the
centrality of strummed tablature songs in 17th-century songwriting. He proposes a distributive
and adjustable songwriting model rather than the author-centric model that is so often
assumed to be the compositional practice.

Hall, Monica. “Francesco Corbetta: A Biography.” The Lute 53 (2013): 18–48.

One of the most significant guitarists of the 17th century, Corbetta was born in Pavia in 1615
and is thought to have died in Paris around 1580. He traveled widely and is well documented
in Italy, France, and England. This article brings together the diverse materials into a coherent
picture.

Tyler, James, and Paul Sparks. The Guitar and its Music: From the Renaissance to the
Classical Era. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. [ISBN: 9780198167136]

An outstanding treatment of every aspect of the guitar from its genesis until about 1800. Its
first two parts examine the four-course and five-course guitars, country by country, with
appendices on practical matters such as reading tablature and stringing. The third section of
the book provides an excellent overview of the guitar, especially the six-course instrument, in
the second half of the 18th century.
Valdivia Sevilla, Francisco Alfonso. La guitarra rasgueada en España durante el siglo XVII.
Málaga, Spain: Servicio de Publicaciones y Divulgación Científica de la Universidad de
Málaga, 2015. [ISBN: 9788497478960]

A study of the guitar in 17th-century Spain, especially the strummed rasgueado repertory that
has not been previously been the subject of extensive research in comparison to the better-
known Spanish printed sources in the punteado style. The author considers the social context
of the guitar, musical education, the guitar in the theater and the court, and the musical genres
associated with it.

Veneziano, Giulia, ed. Rime e Suoni alla Spagnola: Atti della Giornata Internazionale di Studi
sulla chitarra barocca, Firenze, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 7 febbraio 2002. Florence: Alinea,
2003. [ISBN: 9788881256747] [class:conference-proceeding]

A set of six studies on early guitar music in Italian (4), Spanish (1), and English (1), dealing
with the early Neapolitan associations with the guitar and its migration to Florence,
performance practice and the role of the guitar in developing the notion of basso continuo, the
poetic anthologies with guitar accompaniment in the Biblioteca Riccardiana, and the problems
involved in attempting to reconstruct this repertory.

Theorbo, Chitarrone, and Archlute

From the 1580s, Italian lute makers and players began experimenting with ways to extend the
bass range of the lute. This gave rise to various instruments with extended necks and a second
pegbox. The archiliuto, chitarrone, and tiorba had up to eight long additional bass strings,
generally unfingered and off the fingerboard. Ambiguities concerning the development and
nomenclature of these instruments has led to many studies aimed at clarification. The most
significant difference between them, despite their very similar construction, results from using a
reentrant tuning that is produced by stringing the two highest courses an octave lower than was
customary on the lute. Smith 1979 shows that the Italian archlute maintained the tuning of the
Renaissance lute plus the added diatonic basses. In contrast, the chitarrone and theorbo had
the upper two courses tuned an octave lower. Only in partial agreement, Meucci 2009 claims
the archlute to have been invented by Piccinini in 1595, and that it was this instrument that was
later called tiorba or theorbo. The long-necked lutes with reentrant tuning were ideal for use as
continuo instruments, but they also generated their own solo repertoire that exploited the
reentrant tuning in a highly idiomatic fashion. Mason 1989 provides an overview of the early
Italian solo repertoire, with the music of Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger and 17th-century
theorbo performance in Italy examined in detail in Coelho 1987. The studies by Cantalupi, Le
Cocq, and Sayce in the *Continuo Playing* section at the end of this bibliography explore the
early use of the theorbo in Italy, France, and England in its role as an accompanying instrument.
Valdivia Sevilla 2006 casts new light on the use of theorboes and archlutes in Spain, while
Wenkel 2002 takes a close look at a theorbo owned by the most outstanding German lutenist of
the 18th century.

Castaldi, Bellerofonte: Capricci a due stromenti. 2 vols. Edited by David Dolata. Recent
Researches of Music in the Baroque Era 141, 142. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2006.

Dolata’s edition of this impressive 1622 book, engraved by the author himself, presents a
variety of virtuosic theorbo music, including some of the earliest single-movement sonatas, the
only known duos for theorbo and tiorbino, and strophic dance songs with tablature that are a
fine example of the distinctive elements of the repertory of an early 17th-century poet, singer,
and lutenist. It aptly complements Dolata’s biography of Castaldi (Dolata 2007, cited under
*Biographies*).

Coelho, Victor. “Frescobaldi and the Lute and Chitarrone Toccatas of ‘Il tedesco della Tiorba.’”
In Frescobaldi Studies. Edited by Alexander Silbiger, 137–156. Durham NC: Duke University
Press, 1987. [ISBN: 9780822307112]

A study of the influence of lute and theorbo music, particularly Kapsberger, in the development
of the idiomatic keyboard toccata, epitomized by the compositions of Frescobaldi. In addition
to historical information showing the ways in which Frescobaldi and Kapsberger may have
come into contact, the majority of the study is an analytical exposition of Kapsberger’s music
and the features that it shares with the later keyboard works.

Mason, Kevin. The Chitarrone and its Repertoire in Early Seventeenth-Century Italy.
Aberystwyth, UK: Boethius Press, 1989. [ISBN: 9780863141546]

An extensive study of the Italian theorbo in the first half of the 17th century, dealing with its
origins, terminology, physical form, stringing, and tuning, and its use as a solo instrument and
for accompanying solo song and ensemble music in both church and chamber. The author
includes substantive lists of all known prints and manuscripts from 1589 to 1659, as well as a
comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary source material.

Meucci, Renato. “Alessandro Piccinini e il suo arciliuto.” Recercare 21 (2009): 111–133.

Meucci explores the activity of Alessandro Piccinini as an innovator in the development of the
archlute and chitarrone in the closing years of the 16th century. The article challenges the
conclusions of numerous other scholars during the last sixty years and, with the incorporation
 of new evidence, concludes that Piccinini was in fact the key player in the development of
these long-necked instruments in the 1590s.

Smith, Douglas Alton. “On the Origin of the Chitarrone” Journal of the American Musicological
Society 32-33 (1979): 440–462.

A pioneering attempt to untangle the often-confusing nomenclature of long-necked lutes in the

late 16th and early 17th centuries. Smith shows the chitarrone, later more commonly known
as the tiorba, to have been invented in the later 1580s in Florence, with its reentrant tuning of
the highest two courses, and single strings on its bass octave that distinguish it from the
archlute invented by Piccinini in the same years.

Valdivia Sevilla, Francisco Alfonso. “El Archilaúd en España: Una obra inédita en la Biblioteca
de Catalunya.” Hispanica Lyra 3 (2006): 8–15.

In a landscape more typically populated by guitars and vihuelas, Valdivia summarizes the
evidence confirming the presence of theorboes and archlutes in 17th-century Spain and
includes an otherwise unknown yet substantial composition for archlute preserved in
Barcelona.

Wenkel, Wolfgang. “The Conservation, Restoration and Reconstruction of S. L. Weiss’s (?)

Theorbo.” Journal of the Lute Society of America 35 (2002): 51–73.

A detailed study of a theorbo originally made by Giovanni Tesler (Ancona, 1615) and later
reconstructed by Thomas Edlinger II (Prague, 1715). The instrument was owned by Sylvius
Leopold Weiss and was most likely commissioned by Weiss himself. The interior and exterior
features of the instrument are examined in detail, as is the history of its construction and
restorations.

Baroque Lute—France

The essential defining feature of the baroque lute is its tuning in D-minor with the six principal
courses tuned in ascending order A-d-f-a-d’-f’, and the addition of up to five additional diatonic
bass courses below the low A. At the height of its popularity, the French lute had eleven
courses. The distinctive baroque instrument developed in the first instance through
experimentation with tuning during the first decades of the 17th century with the use of a variety
of tunings, today known collectively as the accords nouveaux. To achieve the classic baroque
lute tuning, the highest course of the renaissance lute in G was lowered a tone to f’, and the fifth
and sixth course were each tuned up a tone: G to A, and c to d. This process has been
documented systematically by Schulze-Kurz 1990, and on the website by Goy and Schlegel,
**Accords nouveaux**. Exploiting the harmonic resonance of this new tuning, 17th-century
lutenists developed a distinctly French style known as the style brisé, explained in detail by
Spring 2005, and that also had a profound influence on the development of French harpsichord
composition, as shown by Ledbetter 1987. The French style was adopted and adapted in
Germany, where the lute also enjoyed widespread use until about 1750, when it started to
wane. Research on this era of lute playing has focused on instruments, individual performer-
composers and their music, musical sources, and performance practice. Lowe 1976 and
Lundberg 1999 show how the French baroque lute was a transformation of earlier instruments,
adapted to eleven courses. Samson 1982 provides details about performing on such
instruments from the writings of one of the acknowledged masters of the time, while Meyer 2001
addresses the dissemination of the French style.

Goy, François-Pierre, and Andreas Schlegel. *Accords nouveaux [http://

www.accordsnouveaux.ch]*. 2008–2011. [class:webLink]

A website by two of the leading researchers into the process by which the tuning of the
renaissance lute (intervals: 4–4–3–4–4) was transformed into the D-minor tuning of the
baroque lute. This was through the experiments of French lutenists and their “new tunings.”
The website has numerous pages that introduce the tunings and their history together with a
number of facsimiles and other resources.

Ledbetter, David. Harpsichord and Lute Music in 17th-century France. London: Macmillan,
1987. [ISBN: 9780333427552]

The fundamental premise of this book is to demonstrate with clarity and precision the way in
which French lute music played an important role in forging the language associated with the
distinctive language of French harpsichord music. The perspective of a harpsichordist author
coming to understand the subtleties of the French lute style makes this book particularly
enlightening.

Lowe, Michael. “The Historical Development of the Lute in the 17th Century.” Galpin Society
Journal 29 (1976): 11–25.

Lowe outlines the physical changes in lute design during the period from c.1600 onward.
Reference is drawn from surviving instruments and iconography, plus other original source
material such as tablatures, treatises, and original written correspondence. The developmental
aspects addressed include changes in string length, body size and shape, stringing, tuning,
repertory, and the musical function of lutes, particularly in France, England, and Italy.
Lundberg, Robert. “Les Luths des Dieux: The Enigma of the French Lute.” In Luths et luthistes
en Occident: Actes du colloque organisé par la Cité de la Musique,  13–15 mai 1998. 319–
326. Paris: Cité de la Musique, 1999. [class:conference-paper]

This article presents the observations of a master luthier concerning the diversity of lutes used
in 17th-century France and the resulting difficulty of trying to define the essential
characteristics of French baroque lutes. It emphasizes the eclectic nature of the lutes used in
France, from old Italian lutes rebuilt through to new designs and experimental instruments.

Meyer, Christian. “Die Verbreitung der Lautenmusik im 17. Jahrhundert — Einige Bemerkungen
zum Werk des Lautenisten Johann Gumprecht.” Die Laute 5 (2001): 1–19.

A biographical study of the Strasburg lutenist Johann Gumprecht (b. 1610–d. 1697) that
addresses the background of French lute music and culture in Strasbourg, as well as the life
and works of Gumprecht, and other lutenists active in Strasbourg, including Valentin Strobel
(b.1611). The thorough study of Gumprecht’s surviving works includes transcribed excerpts in
staff notation.

Samson, Bill. “Charles Mouton’s ‘Avertissement’ from Pièces de Luth (1699).” The Lute 22
(1982): 17–20.

A full translation from French to English of the introductory treatise contained in Mouton,
Pieces de Luth (Paris, 1699). The treatise is for eleven-course lute using the typical 17th-
century D-minor tuning. Topics addressed include tuning, right- and left-hand technique, and
ornamentation.

Schulze-Kurz, Ekkehard. Die Laute und ihre Stimmungen in der erste Hälfte des 17.
Jahrhunderts. Arbeiten zur Musik- und Kulturgeschichte 1. Wilsingen, Germany: Tre Fontane,
1990.

This book concerns the lute and its tunings in the first half of the 17th century. Its first part
focuses on the different types of lute of the period, and the second examines the more than
twenty different tunings that were used during the period. It is richly documented with original
texts and gives a complete overview of the surviving repertoire, a detailed description of the
relevant musical sources, and an extensive list of original lutes of surviving 17th-century
instruments.

Spring, Matthew. “The Development of French Lute Style 1600–1650.” In From Renaissance to
Baroque: Change in Instruments and Instrumental Music in the Seventeenth Century. Edited
 by Jonathan Wainwright and Peter Holman, 191–210. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. [ISBN:
9780754604037]

The lute and its repertory are examined through its transition from its old form used for
polyphonic music into a series of new tuning configurations intended for new styles of music.
Included is an extensive list of lute tablature publications from 1584 to 1638, and an analysis
of the compositional changes that took place and how these relate to constructional changes
made to the instrument and to changes in playing technique.

Baroque Lute—Germany, Central and Northern Europe

The assimilation of French lute music in Germany and central Europe led to a significant
musical production in these geographical areas, representing the culmination of the lute’s life in
Europe around the middle of the 18th century. German lute makers worked with players to build
lutes of up to thirteen courses that were played by the leading lutenists. Research on this era of
lute playing has focused on instruments, individual performer-composers and their music,
musical sources, and performance practice. Lowe 1976 (cited under *Baroque Lute—France*)
shows how the French baroque lute was a transformation of earlier instruments, adapted to
eleven courses. German baroque lutes were characteristically of thirteen courses, and their
development during the period 1650–1750 is traced systematically by Lundberg 1999, with
further perspectives presented in Martius 2002. Hellwig and Hellwig 2011 explores and
documents the instruments of unparalleled beauty by Hamburg luthier Joachim Tielke. The most
universally famed German lutenist, of course, was Sylvius Leopold Weiss, whose main
biography, Smith 1998, is listed under *Biographies*, but complemented here by Legl 2000,
which examines specific aspects of his life and travels, and Crawford 2006, which makes a
detailed study of the two principal sources of his music. Another German lutenist and theorist,
also a contemporary of Weiss and J. S. Bach, Ernst Gottlieb Baron, is the object of Farstad
1997, while Frankish contemporaries Falckenhausen, Hagen, and Durant are studied in
Domning 2004. Weiss’s connections in central Europe are explored by Kapsa and Madl 2000,
the contributions of the Bohemian aristocrat lutenist Johann Anton Losy are studied by Vogl
1980, and the fifty-year sojourn in Sweden of German lutenist David Kellner is documented by
Sparr 2018.

Crawford, Tim. “Sylvius Leopold Weiss and the Dresden and London Manuscripts of His Music.”
Journal of the Lute Society of America (2006): 1–64.

Between them, the Dresden and London Weiss manuscripts, substantially autographs, contain
approximately four hundred individual movements, mostly unknown from other sources, and
 containing some sixty of the one hundred sonatas by Weiss that survive. Crawford explores
the compilation of these manuscripts, including their history, contents, scribes, and compilers.
Appendices provide a complete catalogue of the contents of the manuscripts, and the paper
types from which they were assembled.

Domning, Joachim. “Die Lautenkunst in Franken im 18. Jahrhundert.” Die Laute 8 (2004): 1–48.

This overview of the culture of lute playing at the court of Bayreuth remains one of the most
thorough sources of biographical information concerning the lutenists Adam Falckenhagen (b.
1697–d. 1754), Bernhard Joachim Hagen (b. 1720 d. 1787) and Paul Charles Durant (fl.
1756–1759). It also contains an inventory of all known sources of music by these Frankish
lutenists.

Farstad, Per Kjteil. “Life and Works of Ernst Gottlieb Baron (1696–1760).” Journal of the Lute
Society of America 30 (1997): 43–82.

This study traces the life of a distinguished German lutenist and music theorist from his
childhood in Breslau, his years of study in Leipzig and Jena, extensive travels throughout
Germany, and his positions as court lutenist in Saxon-Gotha, Eisenach, and Berlin from 1738
until his death. Farstad explores Baron’s influential lute treatise of 1727 and his music as
exemplification of the galant style, and also catalogues his surviving works.

Hellwig, Friedemann, and Barbara Hellwig. Joachim Tielke: Kunstvolle Musikinstrumente des
Barock. Berlin: Deutsche Kunstverlag, 2011. [ISBN: 9783422070783]

Born in Königsberg, Joachim Tielke (b. 1641–d. 1719) worked in Hamburg producing exquisite
stringed and plucked instruments. Most of them are highly decorated, which might explain, in
part, the large number that survive today. This study examines information concerning Tielke’s
workshop, his staff and clients, his techniques employed to construct and decorate his
instruments with precious materials, and their sound.

Kapsa, Václav, and Claire Madl. “Weiss, the Hartigs and the Prague Music Academy: Research
into the ‘Profound Silence’ Left by a ‘Pope of Music.’” Journal of the Lute Society of America
33 (2000): 47–86.

This article illuminates the connections between 18th-century German lutenists and the
musical life in other parts of central Europe. It centers around the Hartig family in Prague and
the Academy through which they promoted concerts. It reveals Weiss’s connection with the
family and other relevant Prague citizen, including the lute maker Thomas Edlinger and
lutenist Count Johann Anton Losy.
Legl, Frank. “Zwischen Grottkau und Neuburg—Neues zur Biographie von Silvius Leopold
Weiss.” Die Laute 4 (2000): 1–40.

This biographical portrait of Weiss explores certain aspects of the lutenist’s life, including his
date and place of birth, presenting the contradictory information that prevents their definitive
confirmation. Furthermore, the study addresses Weiss’s travels during the years 1715–1718,
especially to Kassel and Düsseldorf. The appendix presents original correspondence and
documentation pertaining to Weiss’s travels and activities.

Lundberg, Robert. “The German Baroque Lute, 1650 to 1750.” Journal of the Lute Society of
America 32 (1999): 1–34.

An examination of the development, constructional details, and tonal characteristics of the D-

minor lute as it was known in German-speaking lands from c.1650 to 1750. Included are
several images of surviving historical lutes, as well as an appendix of detailed measurements
of surviving instruments gathered by Grant Tomlinson. The topics addressed include bridge
placement, soundboard thickness, baring, and rib construction.

Martius, Klaus. “Sebastian Schelle and the Swan-Necked Lute.” Journal of the Lute Society of
America 35 (2002): 23–50.

A documentation of the ten known surviving instruments of Nuremberg luthier Sebastian

Schelle, and a brief study of the features found in the instruments. The author analyzes rib
construction, string length, rosettes, internal barring, bridge design, and bridge placement on
surviving lutes and theorboes built between 1719 and 1755. Tables are provided with exact
dimensions (lengths, widths, depths) of all the surviving Schelle instruments.

Sparr, Kenneth. “*David Kellner: A Biographical Survey[http://www.tabulatura.com/

davidkellner.pdf]*. 2018. [class:webLink]

First appearing in The Lute (vol. 29, 1989, pp. 3–35) this study was substantially revised in
1997, and incrementally extended up until June 2018. It traces the life of German-born Kellner
(b. c. 1670–d. 1748), who lived in Sweden for over sixty years, both as a soldier and musician.
It examines the figured bass treatise for which he is most famous, as well as his lute music,
published in 1747.

Vogl, Emil. “Johann Anton Losy: Lutenist of Prague.” Journal of the Lute Society of America 13
(1980): 58–86.

An in-depth study of the life and works of one of the most prominent lutenists from central
Europe. The biography of the Prague lutenist Johann Anton Losy (d. 1721) begins with a
 thorough history of the aristocratic Losy family, and then continues into an informative study of
Johann Anton’s works, playing style, and personal character.

Accompanied Song

Lutes, vihuelas, and related guitars have long served as ideal instruments to accompany the
voice. An excellent account of earlier traditions is presented by Gallo 1995. Written lute songs
survive from the very beginnings of tablature notation around 1500 in Italian sources, and a little
later in France. Most of this music was arranged from vocal polyphony, most commonly with the
soprano voice used as a solo melody and the lower voices intabulated into an accompaniment.
The notational format does not always make it clear whether the solo vocal part should also be
doubled by the accompanying instrument. The only songs from this period that can be
considered original are found in Spanish vihuela sources from the 1530s, inasmuch as they
were conceived from the outset as solo songs with instrumental accompaniment. There is
ample evidence of the practice of singing to the lute, vihuela, and guitar throughout the 16th
century, as discussed in the contributions of Brinzing (on German and Dutch artworks), Fabris
(on the origins of the Neapolitan villanelle), and others in Schwindt 2003. These unwritten
practices, as Griffiths 2015 argues, are not always recognized in general histories of music, but
are integral to the current of change in Italy at the end of 16th century. The role of the lute in
Italian song c. 1600 is expertly handled by Mason 1997, and that of singing to the guitar by
Jensen 1985. The preciously conceited French court air, or air de cour, of the same period is
examined in detail for the period 1570–1655 by Durosoir 1991. The English ayre, best known
today through the lute songs of John Dowland, has been dealt with in recent years with a focus
on music and text relationships by both Toft 1993 and Fischlin 1998. An engaging contextual
study of the same repertoire is provided in Kenny 2008.

Coelho, Victor. “*The Players of Florentine Monody in Context and in History, and a Newly
Recognized Source for Le nuove musiche[https://sscm-jscm.org/v9/no1/coelho.html]*.”
Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music 9.1 (2003).

A study of the development of late-16th-century accompanied song that offers a sharper

picture of the style leading up to Caccini’s Le nuove musiche. By pointing to earlier sources
that contain songs with tablature accompaniment, including a then newly discovered
manuscript in Paris (F-Pn Vmd7 137.305), the author is able to compare the harmonic,
rhythmic, and textual aspects of the songs, and to describe the musical background and social
climate in which they emerged.

Durosoir, Georgie. L’Air de Cour en France, 1571–1655. Liège: Mardaga, 1991.

 An authoritative study of some three thousand surviving French airs that grew from the
chanson tradition and that remained in fashion for some eighty years. The repertoire is
approached from both the poetic and musical viewpoints, as well as in its social context.
Several chapters are devoted to the accompanied air, with exemplified discussion of the
interrelated versions surviving as vocal polyphony and as accompanied solo songs.

Fischlin, Daniel. In Small Proportions: A Poetics of the English Ayre, 1596–1622. Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 1998. [ISBN: 9780814326930]

Fischlin offers a strongly poetic examination of the literary devices and attributes of the
English lute ayre, as cultivated by Dowland and his contemporaries. He aims to elaborate a
poetics of the ayre as a blend of music and text, to permit interpretation of the ayre’s lyrics
through a heightened understanding of the distinctive literary features that characterize the
genre and give it its unique identity.

Gallo, F. Alberto. Music in the Castle: Troubadours, Books, and Orators in Italian Courts of the
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
[ISBN: 9780226279688]

A three-dimensional study of musical life in Italian courts during three centuries. Included are
Gallo’s invaluable translations of primary source material documenting the performing style of
the renowned 15th-century lutenist Pietrobono of Ferarra. The author
provides vivid descriptions of Pietrobono’s style of extemporized performance and reaffirms
the profound level of artistry and divine wisdom that he had attained.

Griffiths, John. “Singer-Songwriters, the Lute, and the Stile Nuovo.” In Passaggio in Italia: Music
on the Grand Tour in the Seventeenth Century. Edited by Dinko Fabris and Margaret K.
Murata, 53–64. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2015. [ISBN: 9782503535685]

Given the prevalence and well-documented practice of singing to the lute throughout the 16th
century, Griffiths argues that the level of stylistic novelty afforded to the development of
monody in Florence around 1600 requires a reassessment in light of our increasing
knowledge of 16th-century lutenist-singers.

Jensen, Richard d’A. “The Guitar and Italian Song.” Early Music 13 (1985): 376–383.

This study is an introduction to the types of 17th-century Italian song with guitar
accompaniment. They are preserved in two formats, either with both melody and figured bass,
or simply as song texts with guitar chords. Performance depended upon prior knowledge of
 the melodies and strumming style, or improvised singing according to formulae such as the
chaconne or folia.

Kenny, Elizabeth. “The Uses of Lute Song: Texts, Contexts and Pretexts for ‘Historically
Informed’ Performance.” Early Music 36 (2008): 285–300.

An enlightening examination of the social role, context, and style of English lute song
performance from c.1600 to 1620. Kenny compares printed lute songs with versions in a
professional player’s manuscript—Oxford, Christ Church Mus.439, notated with unfigured
bass notation in lieu of tablature—to make both a critical analysis of the songs, and to explore
the significance for modern interpretation and improvisation.

Mason, Kevin. “Per cantare e sonare: Italian Lute Song at the End of the Sixteenth Century.” In
Performance on Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela: Historical Performance and Modern Interpretation.
Edited by Victor Coelho, 72–107. Cambridge Studies in Performance Practice. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997. [ISBN: 9780521455282]

A detailed and thorough study that examines the surviving repertory of Italian songs with lute
tablature accompaniment within the period c.1570–1603. An analysis of the surviving repertory
is given, primarily addressing accompanying techniques and methods of intabulation. Musical
examples are given from Adriaensen (1584), Fiorino (1571), Vecchi (1980), Giovanelli (1588
and 1589), the Cavalcanti lute book (c.1590), and Anerio (1591).

Schwindt, Nicole, ed. Gesang zur Laute. Trossinger Jahrbuch für Renaissancemusik 2. Kassel,
Germany: Bärenreiter, 2003. [ISBN: 9783761816127]

Devoted to diverse aspects of lute song, this volume comprises five essays in German and six
in English, predominantly concerning the identity, development, and practice of solo singing to
the lute during the 16th century, prior to the advent of the so-called seconda prattica, and with
a pair of fine essays on the English lute songs of Dowland and Campion. This volume
challenges some of the accepted historiography of Renaissance solo song.

Toft, Robert. Tune thy Musicke to thy Harte: The Art of Eloquent Singing in England 1597–1622.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. [ISBN: 9780802028488]

A book that addresses the rhetorical art and practice of English lute song during its golden
age. The author paints a picture of a historical performance style through a
careful examination of the meaning of English song texts, based on a thorough examination
of historical sources. He draws largely from 16th-century poetic and musical texts. A glossary
of 16th-century descriptive rhetorical terms and an extensive bibliography close the book.
Performance Practice

As contemporary historical performance practices develop, there has been a broadening of the
areas that are encompassed in this field. These range from specific questions of instrumental
technique through to matters of style and the aesthetics of performance. Between these are
technical questions pertaining to tuning and temperament (Dolata 2016), ornamentation and
embellishment, arranging vocal music for instrumental performance (Göllner 1984), the
application of the principles of rhetoric to enhance interpretation (Toft 1985, Hancock 2011), and
understanding the social context of performance (Kenny 2008). Performance practice on
medieval instruments is discussed broadly in Young 2000, plucking technique on the
Renaissance lute and the aesthetics of tone quality in Beier 1979, various aspects of the
instrumental technique of the baroque lute in Torres 2003, and baroque guitar in Eisenhardt
2015. In various ways, all of these topics are covered in the individual essays in Coelho 1997.
Because of the exponential development of *Continuo Playing* in recent years, studies
pertaining to this area have been included in a separate section.

Beier, Paul. “Right-Hand Position in Renaissance Lute Technique.” Journal of the Lute Society
of America 12 (1979): 5–24.

This article uses text-based and pictorial evidence to show the development of thumb-under
plucking technique around 1500, a clear derivative of plectrum technique. This remained in
use throughout the 16th century, but players changed around 1600 to a thumb-out position,
with the right hand closer to the bridge. Beier argues that these changes resulted from
changes in musical style, instrument design, and musical taste.

Coelho, Victor, ed. Performance on Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela: Historical Practice and Modern
Interpretation. Cambridge Studies in Performance Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1997. [ISBN: 9780521455282]

A number of the chapters of this book deal specifically with practical questions of performance
practice, especially pertaining to plectrum performance on medieval lutes, 16th- and 17th-
century lute music, and music for vihuela and early guitar. The remaining chapters on English
and Italian lute song deal more with the contextual dimensions of performance.

Dolata, David. Meantone Temperaments on Lutes and Viols. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2016. [ISBN: 9780253021236]

An exploration of tuning on early fretted instruments that extends beyond the theoretical and
provides practical guidance for musicians today. The book is divided into three sections that
deal with (1) the history of tuning on fretted instruments; (2) the theory and mathematical
 aspects of the various meantone and other tuning systems; and (3) today’s practitioners, with
an array of guidance on strings and their tuning.

Eisenhardt, Lex. Italian Guitar Music of the Seventeenth Century: Battuto and Pizzicato.
Rochester, UK: University of Rochester Press, 2015. [ISBN: 9781580465335]

Although primarily conceived as a book on the development of the mixed strummed and
plucked style of the mid-17th century, Eisenhardt’s practical experience as a guitarist leads
him into discussions of many aspects of guitar performance practice, ranging from the vexed
question of tunings to matters of strumming, plucking, and ornamentation. Throughout, he
combines practical experience with close examination of iconographical and musical sources.

Göllner, Marie Louise. “On the Process of Lute Intabulation in the Sixteenth Century.” In Ars
iocundissima: Festschrift für Kurt Dorfmüller zum 60 Geburtstag. Edited by Horst Leuchtmann
and Robert Minster. 83–96. Tutzing, Germany: Schneider, 1984. [ISBN: 9783795203993]

Göllner examines the 16th-century practice of arranging vocal polyphony into solo lute
tablature, with an overview of the two main treatises on lute intabulation by Le Roy
(1568/1574) and Galilei (1568/1584). She also analyzes the intabulation techniques used in
various chanson arrangements found in the Hans Herwart manuscript collection in the
Bavarian State Library, and gives examples in tablature and mensural notation.

Hancock, Wendy. “Thomas Mace and a Sense of ‘Humour’: The Case for Expression in
Seventeenth-Century English Instrumental Music.” The Lute 51 (2011): 1–39. I

This study addresses 17th-century musical rhetoric and performance practice. A wide range of
excerpts are drawn from primary sources such as Morley (1597), Robinson (1603), Butler
(1636), Simpson (1659), Mace (1676), and others. Hancock explores in detail the notion of
“humours,” followed by a discussion of the use of ornamentation, dynamics, and tactus for
expressive purposes. Several musical examples are provided in score format.

Kenny, Elizabeth. “The Uses of Lute Song: Texts, Contexts and Pretexts for ‘Historically
Informed’ Performance.” Early Music 36 (2008): 285–300.

This study of English lute song performance practice from c.1600–1620 uses comparisons
between printed lute songs and those contained in manuscripts of known professional
provenance (namely Oxford, Christ Church Mus. 439). Selected songs are analyzed, including
some written with unfigured bass notation in lieu of tablature, along with broader questions of
social role and context to make enlightening points regarding modern interpretation and
improvisation in this field.
Toft, Robert. “An Approach to Performing the Mid 16th-Century Italian Lute Fantasia.” The Lute
25 (1985): 3–16.

An enlightening study of 16th-century solo lute performance practice that relates rhetorical

figures from texts and treatises on music theory and singing (using excerpts from Vincentino
[1555], de Tyard [1555], Zarlino [1558], Castiglione [1559], and others) to selected musical
excerpts of lute fantasias by Francesco Canova da Milano (b. 1497–d. 1543). A brief analysis
of musical rhetorical grammar and its implications for performance is given.

Torres, George. “Performance Practice Technique for the Baroque Lute: An Examination of the
Introductory Avertissements from Seventeenth-Century Sources.” Journal of the Lute Society
of America 36 (2003): 19–48.

A study and English translation of the surviving French printed and manuscript sources of the
17th century that contain information on lute technique, including books by Perrine, D.
Gaultier, Gallot, and Mouton. Topics covered include left- and right-hand technique, sound
production, and plucking and arpeggiation methods, plus finer aspects of ornamentation and
interpretation.

Young, Crawford. “Lute, Gittern, and Citole.” In A Performer’s Guide to Medieval Music. Edited
by Ross W. Duffin, 355–375. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. [ISBN:
9780253337528]

While a substantial part of this article is devoted to untangling many of the terminological
confusions about the main medieval plucked instruments, Young also explores aspects of
performance practice, such as playing technique and possibilities about the repertory with
which they may have been associated. This is one of the few generic explorations of the
performance practice of the lute before 1500.

Continuo Playing

From the dance music and harmonic patterns used as a basis for improvising variations, it is
clear that 16th-century players of lutes, vihuelas, and guitars understood tonal principles and
practical harmony long before it was fully explained by theorists. The development of long-
necked theorboes and archlutes was partially in response to the need for powerful lutes with
strong deep basses that could be used to provide accompaniments to solo and ensemble
music, whether voices or instruments. The practice of improvising such accompaniments while
reading the bass line, sometimes annotated with figures to help specify the chords, became
known as thoroughbass, figured bass, or basso continuo. It became one of the principal uses of
the various types of lutes and guitars from its development in the 1580s right through the 17th
and 18th centuries. Cantalupi 2006, Le Cocq 2005, and Sayce 1995 are historically grounded
studies and aim to provide insight into the way that theorboes and archlutes were used,
respectively, in Italy, France, and England. While it is clear that the ambition of these writers is
not merely historical, Pesci 1996 takes a more openly didactic stance and uses a newly found
treatise from the 18th century to set up some principles for modern players. North 1987, while
strongly rooted in historical traditions and practices, is clearly designed for modern performers.

Cantalupi, Diego. La tiorba ed il suo uso in Italia come strumento per basso continuo. Rev. ed.
Cremona, Italy: Edizioni MV Cremona, 2006.

The most detailed study to date on the development of the theorbo and its role in basso
continuo in 17th-century Italy. The birth and development of the instrument in the late 16th
century and its later role in musical ensembles and theater is analyzed, together with the role
and practical function of the theorbo in ensembles, according to historical sources, and the
instrument’s peculiar construction and tuning.

Le Cocq, Jonathan. “The Early Air de Cour, the Theorbo, and the Continuo Principle in France.”
In From Renaissance to Baroque: Change in Instruments and Instrumental Music in the
Seventeenth Century. Edited by Jonathan Wainwright and Peter Holman, 191–210. Aldershot,
UK: Ashgate, 2005. [ISBN: 9780754604037]

This study argues that continuo realization on lute and theorbo was practiced in France from
quite early in the 17th century. Evidence includes untexted internal sections of bass line in
some airs de cour, differences between polyphonic and lute song versions of other airs, and
some pieces simply notated for melody and bass. Similarly, there is evidence of the theorbo
being used in France from as early as 1610.

North, Nigel. Continuo Playing on the Lute, Archlute and Theorbo. London: Faber, 1987. [ISBN:
9780571100460]

The most authoritative modern treatise on playing the long-necked members of the lute family,
with immensely practical instruction in how to use them as continuo instruments, balancing
knowledge from historical sources with personal experience as a highly accomplished
continuo player.

Pesci, Marco. “Nuove proposte di prassi esecutiva fondate su un inedito trattato di basso
continuo per arciliuto.” Recercare 8 (1996): 5–58.
 This study emanates from the discovery of a previously unknown treatise on continuo
accompaniment on the archlute. Anonymous, but incorporated in a manuscript compiled by
the composer Girolamo Chiti, it is one of the relatively few Italian continuo treatises for plucked
instruments. The contents of the manuscript are presented in detail and compared with other
sources that verify it as an accurate reflection of Italian practice.

Sayce, Lynda. “Continuo Lutes in 17th and 18th-Century England.” Early Music 23 (1995): 667–
684.

A study of the types of lute used in England for thoroughbass accompaniment. Many primary
source examples are given in addition to detailed descriptions of the various instruments and
their possible roles in accompanying. Considerable attention is given to the twelve-course
double-headed lute, the English theorbo, and the archlute, as well as the use of the Italian
theorbo in England.