11Feb18:
Posted the last 43 pieces from Barbarino.
Short dances, but also a piece with multiple variations on "Une Jeune
Fillette". That completes Barbarino. 05Feb18: Posted
another 50 pieces from Barbarino.
Mostly short dances, but also a very substantial battle piece. 30Jan18:
Posted cleaned up copies of Barbetta
Intavolatura de liuto (1585) and
Intavolatura di liuto (1603). 28Jan18:
Posted another 50 pieces from Barbarino.
Mostly galliards and a few courantes. 21Jan18:
Posted another 50 pieces from Barbarino,
including a couple of new (to me) fantasies by Milano and other really
good stuff. 03Jan18:
Completed the encoding of a charming set of modern
pieces in renaissance style for 6-course lute, mostly of
moderate difficulty, by Laudon Schuett. 24Dec17:
Completed another 50 pieces from the Barbarino
Lute MS,
including passamessos, galliards, and romanescas. This
includes
some very nice fantasies, toccatas, and tientos by Lorenzino Tracetti
and others. I am past the ½ way mark, now. Merry Christmas! 11Dec17:
Posted an
edition of Giacomo Gorzanis' 5th book, a very clear but not
error-free autograph MS dated 1567. Also posted a
cleaned-up copy of the MS.
The MS has 16-bar passemezzi antici and moderni in all keys, with their
16-bar saltarellos, as well as several napolitane and one ricercar. 03Dec17:
Posted pages 51-100 of the Barbarino
Lute MS, which takes up up to p. 131 of the document. 18Nov17:
Posted Gorzanis Gorzanis v.4 Opera Nova de Lauto
(1579). This
starts with 6 interesting fantasies. 10Nov17:
Posted cleaned-up facsimile of Gorzanis v.4 Opera Nova
de Lauto (1579). 06Nov17:
Posted pages 1-50 of the Barbarino
Lute MS (c. 1600). There are close to 300 large
pages in this MS, of which I have posted 72. The
MS is rather difficult to read, but not impossible. It has many errors,
and several missing pages, meaning that some pieces are fragmentary. The
first 50 pieces include a wide variety of types -- many vocal
intabulations and liturgical pieces, a few fantasies, exercises, etc.
05Nov17:
Posted Gorzanis third
volume (1564). These required significnt re-barring, which
Douglas Towne has done very well. 03Nov17:
Posted Gorzanis v.2
(1563). It has similar content. For this volume, I have
started
with Douglas Towne's intabulation, checked against the original, and
found to be virtually error-free. Also, I find that Towne has shown
excellent taste and judgment in his editorial decisions, almost all of
which I agree with. 30Oct17:
Posted Giacomo Gorzanis Intabolatura di liuto, v.1
(1561). It consists mostly of dance suites: passamezzos,
padoanas, and saltarellos, but there are four very nice ricercars at
the end, the last three of which were expertly encoded
by
Douglas Towne. He has actually fully encoded all three Gorzanis books,
but I only found his work when I was nearly done with v1. 06Oct17:
Posted a cleaned-up version of the Barbarino
MS, a 320 pager in Italian tab. A fronimo edition
is my next project. 08Sep17:
Posted an edition of v3
and v4
of Galilei's 1584 MS, thus completing the work on this MS. V3
consists
entirely of 55 galliards by Galilei. According to Luis Gasser, the
galliards might be intended as a fourth
piece in a suite composed of passamezzo, romanesca, and saltarello. The
galliards are not tied to any particular suite of passamezzo,
romanesca, saltarello, so the performer is presumably free to pick
whichever he or she wants. Galliard
53, entitled "Fiordiligi", appears
to be an "homage" to, or parody of, Crécquillon's "Ung gay bergier". In
v3, Galilei fully wrote out all repeats instead of using repeat marks.
To
save space and to help clarify the structure of these
galliards, I have substituted repeat marks for repeated sections.
V4
contains random airs, galliards, and allemands. These are titled as "di
diversi" but otherwise not attributed to any particular composer. If
anyone can identify the composer of any of these, I would appreciate
the help. 30Aug17:
Posted intro
to Luis Gasser doctoral thesis
on Galilei's Libro d'intavolatura di liuto. This is a very valuable
resource for those who want to put together a performance of Galilei's
music. 26Aug17:
Posted v2
of Galilei's Libro d'Intavalotura di liuto (1584). As v1 was
a
collection of passamezzi antici, with paired romanescas all minor keys,
with paired saltarellos, v2 contains the corresponding passamezzi
moderni, with corresponding romanescas, in all major keys. The
saltarellos meant to be paired with these are the same ones,
correspondingly, as the ones in v1. 17Aug17:
Posted 2
additional lute ensemble pieces (allemandes) by Tobias Hume,
encoded by
: Hatton's Choice and George's
Delight. Also posted several pieces that had been missing from my
edition
of Galilei's Fronimo (1584) and added edited
midis produced by
, who also kindly kindly
pointed out the omissions. The midis on my site are all
auto-generated from the fronimo software and serve mainly to give a
general idea of what a given piece might sound like. 14Aug17:
Posted my edition of Vincenzo Galilei's autograph MS Libro
d'intavolatura di liuto (1584), v.
1.
This includes a romanesca in AbM with 100 variations, grouped
in
sets of 4. If you consider it a single piece, it is arguably the
longest lute piece ever written. However, it is best to think of all
these passamezzos and romanescas, with their many variations, as
something that a performer can pick and choose from to put together a
performance. Galilei clearly demonstrates a genius for an
infinite variety of unique settings of the passamezzo and
romanesca pattern. In 1991, Luis Gasser did a careful analysis of the
1584 Galilei MS as a DMA thesis. I hope to post this soon. 14Aug17:
Posted an arrangement for theorbo by
of an Elaias
Reusner Passacaglia, originally written for Baroque lute. 21Jul17:
Posted cleaned-up copies of v.2,
v.3,
and v4
of Galilei (1584). 14Jul17:
Posted cleaned up copy of v.1
(of 4) of Vincenzo Galilei's autograph MS Libro d'intavolatura di liuto
(1584)., consisting of 131 pages of Italian tab, consisting of
a
variety of passemezzos, romanescas, and saltarellos in every possible
key,. Galilei was demonstrating that the lute was
best
conceived as an equal-tempered instrument, as Bach did with his
"Well-Tempered Clavier". 11Jul17:
Posted some beautiful
reconstructions by
of Barbetta pages that
had the corner torn off. 10Jul17:
Posted cleaned-up copy of Phalèse
Theatrum Musicum (1571). A massive collection (250
pages) in very clear French tab.
The copy I had to work with at first was very
low-resolution and barely legible. Thanks to Arne Harder and
Jean Bernard Roy for directing me to a much better copy. 03Jul17:
Posted cleaned up copies of Phalèse "Chansons reduictz en tablature",
vs.1,
2,
3,
and 5.
V.4 appears to be missing, but if anyone has it, I'd like to have a
copy! As these are very legible and already in French tab, I
do not feel a great urgency to do fronimo editions of them. I have done
an edition of v1
in the past, though. 01Jul17:
Completed Giulio
Cesare Barbetta Novae Tabulae Musicae (1582).
High quality stuff, though mostly a bit challenging to play.
Barbetta's intabulations are well put together.
Because a
rather large corner was ripped off the book, I had to do some fancy
reconstruction of the last 4 pieces, but fortunately, there were other
sources I could draw on. 23Jun17:
Did transcriptions for lute of the 5 bandora fantasies from British
Library MS 31392. Also, posted cleaned
up facsimile
of Giulio Cesare Barbetta Novae Tabulae Musicae (1582).
Lovely pieces. Working on an edition of same, about ¼ of the
way
through. 16Jun17:
Added 5 bandora fantasies from British
Library MS 31392. Thanks to Anne Burns of LSA for
providing the additional pages. 12Jun17:
Completed Vincenzo
Galilei "Intavolature de lauto", v. 1 (1563). The
facsimile is in very rough shape -- barely--but at last--legible.
I include a
majorly cleaned-up copy of it, which amounts to a
reconstruction in places.
It contains intabulations of 24 madrigals by
various
composers as well as 6 ricercars by Francesco da Milano. The
music is of high quality, remarkably error-free and moderately
difficult. 26May17:
Completed Volume
13 - Sacred songs. That completes the entire
Dlugorai lute book. 22May17:
Completed Volume
12 - Latin and Italian songs.
I am indebted to John Robinson and Catherine Liddell for
helping
me identify some maddeningly familiar but heretofore unidentified
pieces. 06May17:
Completed Volume
11 - German songs. 13Apr17:
Completed Volume
10 - Chorea.
The word "chorea" means "dance" in Latin. So it could be a
fairly
non-specific label. However, most of the pieces in this
collection appear to be allemandes, though there are also some Polish
dances, and some of the pieces have a triple second section, a
"proportio" or a saltarello. 26Mar17:
Completed Volume
9 - Voltes. 21Mar17:
Completed Volume
8 - Ballets. A ballet in this time period
appears to be a short, light-weight dance, usually in duple time like
an allemande but sometimes triple or with triple sections. Thanks to
Catherine Liddell for pointing out other instances of ballets in
Ballard (1609-1622), Vallet (1616), and one in Francisque
(1600),
f. 31vb. Also, many thanks to John Robinson for his careful preparation
of concordances and other helpful comments on the pieces in this
volume. This volume, like the others, is rife with errors,
but
with a little imagination it is possible to suss out what was probably
intended. There are so many errors in rhythm flags that at
times
I have not notated all of my corrections as the piece would then be
hard to read. I have noted any errors in notes. 14Mar17:
Back on the Dlugorai Lute book. Completed Volume
7, the section on courantes.
As with the rest of this volume, I had to struggle with careless and
corrupt scribery (rhythm flags were pretty arbitrary), but there are
many charming pieces in the volume nonetheless. 05Mar17:
Completed the third
and final volume of Donaueschingen, with 120 pages of German
tab, as well as its
facsimile.
It consists of a few dances and fantasies, but mainly
consists of
vocal intabulations of pieces by many European composers. 09Jan17:
Completed the second
Donaueschingen volume, consisting of 162 pages of German tab.
I have also posted the original v2
facsimile.
V. 2 contains 136 pieces., many intabulations of
works by
Cipriano de Rore and Orlando di Lasso. It also includes
copies,
in German tab, of all of Matelart's 1579 volume, including his added
parts to create duets to Milano pieces and 13 solo fantasies of his
own., as well as miscellaneous pieces by other composers. Again, I am
grateful to Arthur Ness and John Robinson for invaluable assistance in
sorting out puzzling aspects of the work and for help in finding
related source documents. 21Nov16:
Completed the first
of three volumes of the Donaueschingen Lute Book.
This is a very large German tab source, consisting of three
volumes of about 150 large pages each, written for lutes of 6 to 8
courses. I am also including a cleaned-up version of the
original v1
facsimile. The handwriting is unusually clear, and the music
has
very few errors. It was apparently compiled and written by
three
doctors of the time. The first volume contains 117 pieces,
including many secular and religious vocal intabulations, as well as
some fantasies and many dances. The tab format is somewhat
ususual in that the notation allows accessing any position of the 8
courses on the fingerboard. In many of the pieces, it also
contains tenuto marks (dots or small crossed before the notes to be
held) and also right hand fingering dots. In putting out this
edition, I have received
significant help and encouragement from Arthur Ness,
John Robinson,
and Catherine Liddell,
who is the one who turned me on to the MS. 11Oct16:
I took a break from Dlugorai and completed work on Attaingnant's
collection: Dix-huits
Basses danses (1530). This is a collection of 63 pieces,
including various dances, mostly very easy ones. Jason Kortis
did the encoding, which was entirely error-free, so far as I could
tell, and I edited it to my preferred format. 16Sep15:
Completed work on the 6th
section of Dlugorai,
containing galliards. Herbert Speck also set these pieces, and John
Robinson set several of them. I completed my versions before
consulting theirs, then checked mine against theirs. In those
cases where I thought they had a preferable version to mine, I noted
the editorial changes with their initials [hs] and [lhr]. In
doing this section of Dlugorai, I received considerable help and
encouragement from John Robinson and Catherine Liddell., which is much
appreciated. I should also mention that John Robinson has been very
helpful in providing tables of contents for all the Dlugorai sections
and for identifying composers, common titles, and concordances for
many, if not most, of them. 31Aug16:
Completed work on the 5th
section of Dlugorai,
consisting of "intradas". After a discussion with John
Robinson
and Catherine Liddell, I have come to the conclusion that, for purposes
of this lute book, an intrada is simply a piece that can be used to
start of introduce something, not otherwise a specific type.
That
being said, most of the pieces in this section of Dlugorai appear to be
allemandes, accompanied by a lesser number of galliards and other
triple time pieces, and a few vocal intabulations. The
quality
seems still to be quite poor, but there is an occasional gem to be
found here. 23Aug16:
Completed work on the 4th
section of the Dlugorai Lute Book, devoted to pavanes. 29Jul16:
Completed the first three sections of the Dlugorai Lute Book, a massive
MS
consisting of 530 pages of music for 8-course lute, in a somewhat
idiosyncratic form of German tablature, divided into different
sections. The first
section consists of preludes and various exercises, samples
of cadential endings ("cadentia" and "finales"), etc. The second
consists of "fugae", which seem more like preludes than fugues, and
passamezzi. The third
consists of fantasies plus one galliard. The scribe is quite careless,
especially in the
placement and value of the rhythm flags, so a fair amount of
interpretation and modification has been necessary to produce a
reasonable result. Frequent
line errors indicate that some of
the pieces may have been copied from sources in French or Italian tab.
After
I completed my edition of these first three parts, I discovered that
John Robinson had covered much of the same ground in his editions for
LSA and Tree. In comparing our editions, I found that we
agreed
on about 90% of the corrections, which was very reassuring, because
John is a very able and experienced editor. In those spots
where
I liked his corrections better than mine, I put his initials
[jhr] in the footnotes documenting the corrections. I retain
full
responsibility for any errors in my editions, however. I hope
they are few. 12Jul16:
Completed v.6
and v.7
of Silva de Sirenas, which completes the book. V6. contains, on the
whole, simpler pieces. There are 22 "sonetos", which appear
to be
vocal intabulations, not particularly related to the sonnet form or the
Italian sonnetto. V.7 contains more difficult and lengthy
pieces,
including variations on conde claros, guardame las vacas, and la folia
("Pavana"). 09Jul16:
Completed v.5
of "Silva de Sirenas", consisting of 33 fantasies, mostly of very high
quality and strictly contrapuntal. These include several
parodies
of liturgical works. 06Jul16:
Completed v.s 3
and 4
of "Silva de Sirenas". V.3 consists of motets and cancions.
Here
the vocal part is written out in mensural notation. The text
underlay is a little hard to read and not accurately aligned with the
notes, so it's a bit of a challenge and involves some guesswork.
I did my best, but welcome any corrections. V.4
consists of
lute duets. Only 3 of them are for equal lutes; the others
are
for lutes a minor third, a fourth, and a fifth apart. For
these,
I have provided arrangements for equal lutes, the lower lute having 7-9
courses. Luckily, the volumes in "Silva de Sirenas" are incredibly
accurate. So far I have encountered only a handle of errors
in
the entire work. 24Jun16:
Completed v.s 1
and 2
of Valderrábano's "Silva de Sirenas". These are polyphonic
pieces, including many settings of liturgical pieces of one kind or
another, burt also some villanellas, sonetos, and romances..
For
each piece, the composer has specified a line in the polyphony to be
sung. Notes to be sung are colored red, and the words are given
underneath. In v.1, these are given without words.
In v.2,
where the bulk of these pieces reside, I have created a mensural staff
above the tab, with what I hope is reasonably accurate text underlay.
Fortunately, Valderrábano has been pretty careful in his
placement of the words. The source
facsimiles, somewhat cleaned up, are also available on my
site. 19May16:
Completed all 120
fantasies
from Mertel. These are very high quality stuff. The
authorship of
all the Mertel materials is not specified by Mertel. Robert
Spencer and others have found the composer of about a third of the
materials. I have tried to incorporate these data into my files. 31Mar16:
Completed all the preludes from Hortus
Musicalis Novus (1615).
Just a note on right hand fingerings: I did not
attempt to
alter or correct these, although on rare occasions they appeared to be
wrong. I did, however, correct what I took to be wrong or
missing notes or incorrect rhythm markings -- also quite rare,
as
the volume is very accurate. Mathias Rösel has kindly
provided
a
translation of the Latin preface to the book. 24Mar16:
All 222 pieces from Danzig
MS 4022 (1621)
are now posted. I would like to reiterate the wonderful job Magdalena
Tomsinska has done in helping me edit these pieces. She has gone
through all of them meticulously, correcting my many errors and making
many crucial suggestions. As I mentioned, I have also posted a facsimile
of the MS. 13Mar16:
First
100 Mertel Preludes now posted. Also, posted
a facsimile
of the original. Starting at #72,
Mertel
introduces the double dot in his right-hand fingerings. A
study
of these fingerings is interesting in showing how the middle finger of
the right hand is used. The middle finger appears always to be used on
an accented beat, while the index finger (denoted by a single dot) is
usually on an an unaccented beat, except when the forefinger is used
for convenience in hitting a higher string next to a lower one, in
which case it may appear on an accented beat. 11Mar16:
Posted a couple of instructional videos on using the fronimo
tab
editing software. The first shows how to set up convenient
shortcut keys; the second is a live demonstration of the
entire process of editing
a medium-length lute piece in fronimo. I recommend
you watch these in full screen mode. 07Mar16:
Posted
v.6 (1615) of "Airs de differents autheurs", thus completing
the collection.
01Mar16: Posted v.5
(1614) of Ballard's "Airs de differents auteurs". 26Feb16:
Posted v.4
(1613) of Ballard's "Airs de differents auteurs". 20Feb16: Posted v.3
(1611) of Ballard's "Airs de differents auteurs".
Another editorial point: In the original, all of
the airs
end in a long (quadruple semibreve), with a fermata or corona
over it. It seems clear that it would have made no sense to
sing
the songs this way, so I assume this was just a way of showing that it
was the end of a piece. This means the individual performer
will
have to decide what to do about the length of the final note. I have
given my interpretations, but the performers should take these with a
grain of salt.
16Feb16:
Posted v.2
(1609) of Ballard's "Airs de differents auteurs".
Editorial note addendum: I continue to put in dotted bar
lines
and time signatures. The sparse bar lines in the originals
are
not very meaningful rhythmically, since they only mark the beginning of
text lines, and many text lines begin with a pickup note or two, and
where this is the case, I have left them out. I think early
music
performers are used to seeing modern editions with bar lines
and
time signatures where these are not present in the original and have
learned not to take them too seriously. 10Feb16:
Posted v.1
(1608) of Ballard's "Airs de differents auteurs". I
also corrected some text underlay issues in v.7. 05Feb16:
Posted v.7
(1622) of Ballard's "Airs de differents auteurs",
containing 64 airs de cour. This is the last of 7 volumes put
out
by Ballard, each containing a large number of airs, the total number
being 422. These were painstakingly and very accurately encoded and
edited by Douglas Towne, who also put in the text underlay for the
pieces--altogether a monumental piece of work. In their original form,
these are mostly unmeasured. I have taken it upon myself to
insert dotted bar lines and time signatures. As a performer,
I
have found these visual aids helpful, though others may find them
annoying. Those who prefer the unmeasured versions can find them in the
very clear and accurate source
facsimiles. 31Jan16:
Mynshall
Lute Book (1600) posted, along with its cleaned-up
facsimile.
This book may be useful in providing concordances but
contains
very little that is new. Also, its scribe is extremely sloppy
about barring and rhythm flags, so there are multiple errors per page.
Some pieces were actually indecipherable (by me); others
required
a lot of work. 27Jan16:
Sampson
Lute Book (1610) posted, along with a
cleaned-up facsimile of same. It contains several
duets and many familiar English pieces. 26Jan16:
Brogyntyn Lute
Book
(c. 1600) completed. This source has a number of familiar
dances
and some lute duets, but the bulk of the MS consists of lute song
accompaniments. It appears to have been intended as "Part
Book 2"
of a collection, the other parts of which are lost. However,
most of the other parts of the songs and duets are available
elsewhere. I have brought in these other parts from other
English
MSS and especially from Philip Brett's book of consort songs to make
for complete pieces. So reconstructed, the lute
songs are
excellent pieces. There are also many where I was not able to
find the other parts, so if anyone has access to these, I would
appreciate the help. I have
posted a cleaned-up
copy of the source facsimile. 25Jan16:Posted
#'s 1-100
(out of 222) of the Danzig MS 4022 (1621). I have been most
pleased to collaborate with Magdalena Tomsinska on this edition as
co-editor. As she has studied these pieces extensively and even made an
excellent CD of pieces from the collection [link included], I
consider her the leading expert on the MS. The MS is notable
for its extensive collection of Polish music and other European pieces
and a few English ones. Almost all of the pieces are dances
of one kind or another or vocal intabulations. They are written for
Renaissance lute of 6 to 9 courses. I have also included a
cleaned-up
facsimile of this document. 05Jan16:
Posted the complete Hirsch
Lute Book (1595).
This is a rich source of English lute music, but also of
European
pieces. All but two pieces are for 6-course lute. All are
untitled, but many are familiar pieces by Dowland, Byrd, Allison,
Holborne, Milano, etc. About half of the pieces in the MS are
fantasies; 14 are anonymous. Many of these are very interesting,
beautiful, and well put together. I have also posted a
cleaned-up
version in facsimile. 24Nov15:
Completed work on Jean Paul Paladin Tabulature de Lutz
(1549).
Most of the pieces are fairly simple. There are some vocal
intabulations of French chansons, followed by some good fantasies and
dances, presumably by Paladin himself, ending with a lengthy "battle",
intended for 6-course lute with the 6th course down a whole note.
I have also made an arrangement for 7-course lute. I have a
cleaned up version of
the source
facsimile,
as well. 30Sep15:
Completed work on the Siena
lute book (ca. 1590).
It contains 155 pieces, mostly
by Francesco da Milano and contemporaries with a similar polyphonic
style -- a truly wonderful collection. I am greatly indebted to Jason
Kortis, who encoded the vast majority of the pieces in 2003 -- a major
piece of work taking more than four months -- to Arthur Ness, John
Robinson, and others, who helped me finding source documents
for
the pieces and helped identify many of the untitled or
unattributed pieces.
Most of the pieces are
fantasies or ricercars, but there are 22 intabulations of French
chansons and a very few dances. Only some of the pieces are titled or
attributed, but many have been identified from other sources. All the
pieces are for 6-course lute, except at the
end of the MS there are several unmeasured pieces for
7-course
lute which present a
considerable interpretive challenge, as they also contain many puzzling
rhythm notations. I did the best I could,
but I also included unmeasured
versions of these pieces that are
unedited apart from a few corrections of wrong notes. 27Aug15:
Completed work on Corkine's Second book of ayres (1612), containing 18 lute songs and
12 pieces
for lyra viol, including one duet. I made arrangements of these
for 7-course lute. This includes one
rather extraordinary lute song,
and which the singer tries to dissuade a maiden from her vow of
life-long chastity. The argument is that if she does not put out, she
is doomed to the eternal shame of dancing in hell with bob-tail apes,
and that she would be better off lying with every passing peasant than
to suffer that fate. There is also a vocal intabulation of the popular
tune "Come live with me and be my love", with words attributed to
Christopher Marlowe. I took the liberty of creating a
lute song version of this piece.
08Aug15: Posted Sixt Kargel's book (Novae Elegantissimae... 1574) in French tab, and a very clean facsimile of same in Italian tab. The book has very few errors in the original. It starts with 4 fantasies by the composer and proceeds with vocal intabulations of chansons, madrigals, napolitane, motets, and passemezzi. Most are by Ordando di Lasso. All are somewhat challenging to play because of the diminutions and occasional high positions they contain, but of high quality. It includes an interesting version of Susanne ung jour, written in a major "key" instead of the customary minor.
19Jul15: Completed edition of Antoine Francisque's Trésor d'Orphée. It starts with a highly ornamented version of Susanne un jour and contains a few passamezzos, preludes, fantasies, gavottes, and a number of voltes and courantes. Some pieces are in an alternate tuning. I also have the original facsimile, which is in excellent shape.
10Jul15: Completed work on all but one frottola from Bossinensis Tenore e Contrabassi, v.2, 55 in all. The one I have not yet been able to figure out is #40 Quando andaratu al monte, by G.B. Zesso.The structure of this piece is hard to figure out, partly because it has 2 "da capos" in it, and it is not clear what should be done about them. Anybody have any ideas?
25Jun15: Completed my edition of the works of Francesco da Milano, filling out the collection to include all the pieces in the Ness volume as well as others that surfaced after its publication, kindly provided by John Robinson, who also encoded many of the pieces. Carlo Stringhi also contributed many of the pieces in the collection. I have been able to check all but a handful of the pieces against source facsimiles, which I hope has minimized any errors. This collection includes many duets not previously on my site as well as many of Milano's vocal intabulations, which are very well constructed. Some pieces are ornamented versions of the basic work. I have put an "o" in the file name to designate these. Others are parodies or works based on a known Milano piece. These are marked with a "p". Works of questionable attribution that might be by Milano, I have marked with a "q" and, finally, new works not contained in the Ness volume, I have marked with an "x".
Of course I, and the entire lute community, owe Arthur Ness a great debt for the excellent scholarship found in his 1971 edition of Milano's works. Ness has also been very helpful to me in answering several queries I have had in connection with the work on the Milano project.
26Apr15: Posted facsimile of Bossinensis Tenore e contrabassi v.2 (1511).
13Apr15: Posted edition of Franciscus Bossinensis Tenore e contrabassi (1509). This contains 12 short ricercari, but the bulk of the work consists of 70 frottole of different types -- strambotti, barzellette, odes, sonnetti, and capitoli. These formes fixes present non-trivial problems in their repeat structure and text underlay. I was greatly aided by consulting Benvenuto Disertori's (1954) work on the subject, La frottola nella storia della musica, and William Prizer's (1975) article in the LSA Journal, as well as some very useful tips from . With this help, I was able to identify the structure of most of the frottole in the collection. For the outliers, I did what seemed logical. I have been as careful as I know how to be, but please let me know if you find any errors in my editions. The 26 short ricercars found at the end of the work serve as introductions to the various frottole.18Mar15: Posted edition of Ochsenkuhn Tablaturbuch auff di Lauten (1558) in German and French tab. did most of the heavy lifting, having carefully and painstakingly encoded the entirety of the 200+ pages in German tab. I have double-checked it against the original facsimile and also cleaned up the facsimile a bit more for easier readability. All the pieces are very high quality stuff, and there are almost no errors in the original. All the pieces are polyphonic vocal intabulations, including several secular works Ochsenkuhn was unique in using the capability of German tab to separate the parts of his pieces by putting each part on a separate line. If 2 or more parts play the same note at the same time, Ochsenkuhn duplicates the note on all the lines that are playing it at that moment. This makes this book valuable in showing how parts in tab are separated, and would, in theory, make it possible to reconstruct the mensural polyphonic model of each piece. It certainly also serves as a useful guide to playing the pieces. If you want to see the German tab, you can find it here, or you can check out the facsimile.
04Mar15: I know it's a bit late, but I posted lute song versions of "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire" and "Have yourself a merry little Christmas", a couple of my faves. These were for a Christmas gig.
18Feb15: Posted facsimile of Ochsenkuhn Tablature auff di Lauten (1558). I did a little cleanup to make it more readable, though I expect few will read it, as it consists of over 200 pages of German tab, mostly vocal intabulations of religious works. I am working with Arne Harder on a French tab edition.
12Feb15: Completed edition of Vincenzo Galilei Fronimo Dialogo (1584). Göran Crona did careful work in creating his edition of this work. I have added a few pieces not present in that edition, proofread each piece note for note against the original facsimile and by listening to each, and inserted the copious number of tenuto marks that are found throughout the work. Also, this edition, like all of mine, is in French tablature, which some may find easier to read then the original Italian. Unfortunately, the facsimile I had to work from was of very poor quality, with an excessive number of smudges, drop-outs, bleed-throughs, and, sadly, many dark lines vertically spanning all the pages from scratches on the microfilm. I have also posted that facsimile, on which I have attempted some cleanup, though it is still in rough shape. Arne Harder provided a better copy, which I have yet to post, as it still needs cleanup, and I am on to the next project. Fronimo contains over a hundred pieces, all of excellent quality. It mostly consists of intabulations of 3 to 6-part vocal pieces of the time, but it also contains a few lute duets, and ricercars in every conceivable mode. There are a couple of "puzzle fugues", one in mensural notation, the other in tab. I could not figure out how to make sense of these, but was finally able to with the help of Arne Harder..
25Jan15: Posted somewhat cleaned up facsimile of the Braye Lute MS from Yale University Beinecke Library.
21Jan15: Posted cleaned-up edition of Bossinensis Tenore e contrabassi, v. 1 (1509). This contains an amazing number of frottole as well as 25 ricercari, all in Italian notation. The ricercari appear to be intended as intros to the various vocal pieces.
18Jan15: Posted edition of Rotta's Intabolatura di lauto, v.1 (1546). For this, I am greatly indebted to , who did an excellent edition of this work in Spanish tab and thus saved me a lot of work on data entry. For the volume of encodings he has produced over the years, Jason is surely one of the unsung heroes of creating accessible lute music. My edition, in French tab, contains the massive, perhaps obsessive, quantity of tenuto marks present in the second edition of this volume (rendered as X's after the notes to be held).. These give a crystal clear view of the voice leading in the pieces. The pieces range in difficulty from fairly easy to challenging and include padouanas, passamezzi, galliards, saltarellos, ricercars, and vocal intabulations. All were checked against the originals. There are few errors in the original document and few in Kortis's edition, which was obviously done with great care.
14Jan15: Posted cleaned-up copy of Rotta's Intabolatura di lauto, v.1 (1546). It is in Italian tab. Fronimo edition will follow.
09Jan15: Posted an edition of Chansons reduictzs en tabulature de lut (1546). Most of the pieces are fairly easy. An exception is the massive Battle piece, which is one of the most ambitious of type I have seen..
02Jan15: Posted cleaned-up copy of Phalèse Chansons reduictzs en tabulature de lut (1546). This contains intabulations of many popular tunes, as well as fantasies, praeludia, and a very long bataille. The pagination is a bit wonky. Rather than trying to correct it, I have let the file names reflect the page numbers given in the original. Thanks to for pointing out the error in page numbering.
08Dec14: Completed edition of Casteliono Intabolatura de leuto (1536). This contains some excellent pieces by dall'Aquila, Borrono, and Milano. It contains fantasies, toccatas, pavanes, and saltarellos. There are very few errors in this source, which makes life easier.
24Nov14: Posted cleaned-up facsimile of Casteliono Intabolatura de leuto (1536), for those that like Italian tab. French tab edition to follow.
14Nov14: Completed edition of Emanuel Adriaenssen Pratum Musicum (1584). I could not find a clean copy of the 1592 printing. Included are 60 vocal and lute ensemble pieces by various composers. It is unclear which of these pieces may have been originally composed by Adriaenssen himself. I have to commend Alain Veylit for the excellent work he did encoding these pieces, especially the songs and lute ensemble pieces, which require a lot of work in aligning the different parts. His solutions are always careful and musical. I also checked the pieces against the facsimile original and found very few errors. I took the liberty of making lute songs out of the vocal pieces by creating lute accompaniments that do not double the top vocal line.
28Oct14: Posted a cleaned-up facsimile version of Emmanuel Adriensen Pratum Musicum (1584).
21Oct14: Completed edition of the Doni Lute MS (1640), as well as a cleaned-up but low-res version of the source. This is a collection of solo pieces for 14-course archlute, though most of the pieces can be played on instruments of fewer courses. Sylvain Bergeron has created an excellent CD with a selection of pieces from this source. The collection contains 80 pieces: many courantes, galliards, and toccatas, and a smattering of other types of pieces, such as chaconnes. Some of these pieces, especially the chaconnes, have few or no bar lines and rhythm flags, which makes interpreting them rather difficult., so I have set these aside for the time being and have included only those I feel reasonably certain of interpreting correctly. The pieces vary greatly in difficulty. Some of the toccatas are especially interesting and difficult, including two by Kapsberger. I should mention that I have been getting very significant help from , , and in interpreting some of the idiosyncrasies of this and the de Bellis MSS.
03Oct14: Completed edition of the de Bellis MS (1615). I also provide a cleaned-up grayscale source for this MS. This MS contains mostly quite easy pieces for 13-course archlute, although many of the pieces can be played on lutes with fewer courses. There are several corantos, allemands, sarabandas, etc. Mostly rather light fare. It was a very difficult MS to clean up and to read, since it is light and of low contrast, and covered with artifacts. It is particularly of interest because more than half of the pieces are meticulously fingered for left and right hand and also contain ornaments and tenuto marks. I have included these fingerings and marks in my edition.
27Aug14: Completed my edition of Piccinini Intavolatura di liuto, v.2 (1639). I have also provided a cleaned-up version of the source. As in the first edition, all the pieces appear to be by Piccinini himself. The pieces in this volume are mostly fairly easy, some being written for 10-course lute and archlute up to 13 courses, but many for lutes with fewer courses. Some of the toccatas and ricercars are quite interesting and beautiful, reflecting a transition between renaissance and baroque styles. These are highly contrapuntal, yet with more baroque-like harmonies.
24Aug14: John Robinson kindly made available a link to an important Italian tab MS in high resolution, the deBellis MS of 1615.
05Aug14: Completed Terzi's v.2 (1599). Also posted a cleaned-up source for v.2. Volume 2, unlike v.1, is thoroughly notated as to right hand fingering and also as to tenutos. Terzi shows the latter by putting a + just to the right of the exact note or notes which is/are to be held. This is more specific than the more general practice of just putting in a line to show a tenuto. In my edition of this volume, I have used lines, but I have made sure that they start on the exact note that had the + next to it and have tried to guess where the note should end. This gives an unusually clear picture of the voice leading in the pieces.
27Jul14: Completed 50 pieces from Terzi's v.2 (1599) (halfway there). Content is similar to v.1.
20Jul14: Added a tutorial on rapidly encoding tab files using Fronimo.
01Jun14: Completed edition of Giovanni Antonio Terzi Intavolatura di liutto, v.1 (1593). Also posted a cleaned-up source for this volume, for those that like to read Italian tab. This volume contains several religious and secular vocal intabulations, mostly in 5 or 6 parts, so the harmony is sometimes rather thick and difficult to play. It also contains several great duets. One part of most may also be played as a solo. There are 11 Merulo canzones, which are excellent, and several fantasies by Terzi. These are not overly difficult, compared to the vocal intabulations. Also, there are several very inventive passemezzi, galliards, allemands (balli tedesci), courantes, and saltarelli.
12May14: Added different intabulations of the Lochamer Liederbuch, done by , mostly for 5-course lute in G.
16Apr14: Completed an edition of Robinson's Schoole of Musicke (1603). This is a delightful collection of mostly quite easy English pieces, some of them exhaustively notated as to right and left hand fingering. I have preserved the fingerings in my edition.
13Apr14: Completed my edition of the Euing Lute Book. It consists almost entirely of famous English lute pieces, 71 of them. The spreadsheet has also been updated to include all recent postings.
07Apr14: Corrected the Lochamer Liederbuch pieces and added pieces from the Buxheimer Orgelbuch and the Breslau MS, all intabulated by for an alternate tuning in C with the 4th course lowered a half-step; I have also arranged these for normal renaissance tuning.
05Apr14: With the kind help of , I have reviewed and corrected my edition of the da Crema pieces against the source facsimiles.
03Apr14: Posted cleaned up copy of Giovanni M. da Crema's Intabolatura (1546). I have moved my Fronimo edition of this work to sources/crema/intabolatura_de_lauto_1546.
31Mar14: Posted cleaned-up copy of the lute solos from the Euing Lute Book. These consist of the first 68 pages from the book. The remainder of the folios are tab chord diagrams for different figured bass notations on theorbo. This copy of the Euing book was one I obtained in the early '60s. I am posting it, as it is much clearer than any I have found online.
25Mar14: Completed Testudo Gallo Germanica.
19Mar14: Another 50 pieces of Testudo Gallo Germanica posted. Not too many left.
15Mar14: Posted some intabulations of keyboard pieces from the Lochamer Liederbuch (1460), done by , for an alternate tuning with the 4th course down a ½ step. These fit very nicely onto a 6-course lute. I have also rearranged these for normal Renaissance tuning.
13Mar14: Posted another 50 pieces of Testudo Gallo-Germanica. Well over ½ way.
26Feb14: Posted first 50 pieces of Testudo Gallo-Germanica. Many errors in this document, particularly in the English pieces. The c and the e look almost identical and have required a lot of judgment calls. Also the rhythm flags are extremely sloppy as to value and placement. More judgment calls.
16Feb14: I posted all the missing pages of Testudo, including the intro.
15Feb14: Wow! several people have sent me the missing pages, specifically Neil Morrison, Arne Harder, and Sigmar Salzburg. Many thanks for this help, which will enable me to complete the project. Arne Harder pointed out that Bayerische Staatsbibliothek also has an online version.
13Feb14: Posted a cleaned-up facsimile of G.L. Fuhrmann Testudo Gallo-Germinica (1615). This is a much clearer copy than anything I have found online, but it takes a lot of work to get rid of spots, etc. According to Julia Craig-McFeely, there should be 6 more pages, #s 185-190. They are missing in my copy and in the ones I have found online. Does anyone have these?
10Jan14: Completed Herbert of Cherbury book. One of the many great finds from this book are some wonderful fantasies by one Cuthbert Hely.
26Dec13: Posted another 100 pieces from the Herbert of Cherbury book. Only 43 left! Merry Christmas!
13Nov13: Posted the first 100 pieces from the Herbert of Cherbury lute book.
28Oct13: Posted complete facsimile of Herbert of Cherbury lute book. This is a rich source of English lute music (180 pages), including many pieces unique to this source by Philip Rosseter, Jakub Reys, Robert Johnson, Daniel Bacheler, Charles Bocquet, René Saman, Diomedes Cato, Laurenzino Tracetti, Vincento Pinti, John Coprario, Gabriel Bataille, Ennemond Gaultier, and others. The copy is sometimes barely legible, with some pages later in the MS missing staves at the bottom, requiring a bit of creativity in the editing. Alain Veylit made a beautiful edition of it in PDF format awhile back. I plan to make my own edition. It's going to take awhile, but it's worth it.
23Oct13: Completed posting a cleaned-up and paginated copy of Gabriel Bataille's "Airs de differents autheurs", volumes 1-7. This is a treasure trove of airs de cour in French tab, several hundreds of them. Preceding the first bar of each piece the tab shows the first note to be sung in the voice part. Sometimes, this implies a lute tuned to A. Or it may simply be transposed.
05Sep13: Completed a major revamp and correction of my nearly 10,000 files. I have standardized the library notation, adding library sigla to my designations. Alternate names for a document or library are now separated by colons. Footnotes are simplified to omit comments. They are in three parts: 1. Publisher or library 2. Document 3. Editor and encoder credits. These are separated by double spaces. Comments and remarks are, along with other data, contained in the Section Annotation part of Fronimo (go to edit/secions/section annotations). This may not make a great deal of difference to many users, but the standardization should make it easier to construct the database for this site.
26Jul13: Completed edition of Margaret Board Lute Book consisting of 192 pieces. The first part of the document is very accurate; a little over half way through, a different scribe takes over, and then it becomes very sloppy, with many wrong notes, absent or incorrect rhythm flags or flags with missing dots, and many line errors. In this section, there are also a number of pieces with alternate tunings. Despite the inaccuracies, though, many of these later pieces are quite lovely, and most are fairly simple.
25Jun13: Posted cleaned-up facsimile of the Margaret Board Lute Book.
08Jun13: Completed edition of Kapsberger's Intavolatura di Liuto, v.1 (1611), consisting of 8 toccatas, 12 galliards, and 12 correntes. All very unusual pieces, especially the toccatas, which are quirky and unlike anything else I have encountered from that time period -- or any time period. None of the music is especially difficult to play, especially the dances, which are generally quite easy and charming. About half are playable on 7 courses; the rest can be played on a 9- or 10-course instrument.
05Jun13: Posted facsimile of Kapsberger's Intavolatura di Liuto, v.1 (1611) thanks to , who kindly sent it to me froim Brazil.
04Jun13: Completed edition of the Barley lute book. This contains the usual flowery dedication, but if I were Lady Lucie Sussex, I'd be embarrassed by it. The pieces are great -- fine versions of popular galliards, pavanes, and allemandes by Francis Cutting and John Dowland. But there were so many errors that it was obviously a quick and dirty job. The right hand fingering is very erratic and often wrong, and there are many line errors -- notes, and even whole chords one line too high or low. Plus many wrong notes. Obviously, printing standards were much lower in the 16th century, and Barley never bothered to proofread it. Nevertheless, the music is great.
02Jun13: Posted cleaned-up facsimile of the lute section of William Barley's "New booke of Tabliture".
30May13: Posted revised version of Mus.ms.1512. This source contains 77, mostly very easy, pieces, originally encoded by , and now proof-checked against the original, with some editorial additions. I discovered that what looks like a firmata sign is actually a sign for a breve or dotted semibreve, depending on the meter of the piece. That explains the oddity of seeing what looks like a lot of firmatas all over the place in these pieces. Also, there is a peculiar + sign over certain notes which I have interpreted as a tenuto mark. This MS is pretty amazing, in that there are no cross-outs or corrections on it, yet there are only a handful of errors in the entire 142-page document. This must have been some copyist, considering that most manuscripts, and even printed works, contain at least an error per page, on average.
24May13: Posted cleaned-up facsimile of Bayerischer Staatsbibliothek Mus.ms.1512.
16May13: Completed edition of Melchior Newsidler's Intavolatura, v. 2, containing 12 vocal intabulations, 2 passamezzi, and 4 ricercars. All fairly hard. The last ricercar is particularly interesting.
10May13: Completed edition of Melchior Newsidler's Intavolatura, v. 1, containing 16 vocal intabulations, 2 passamezzi, and 4 ricercars. All high quality stuff. Many errors were corrected on the original by an unknown helpful person, blotting out what was in the original. However, the corrections seem valid. Next: v.2
01May13: Posted cleaned-up facsimile of Melchior Newsidler's Intavolatura, v.1 and v. 2 (1566).
22Apr13: Posted French tab edition of Melchoir Newsidler's Teutsch Lautenbüch., containing a number of religious and secular vocal intabulations, three fantasies by Newsidler, and three very inventive passamezzi/saltarelli. Although the source is very clear, the letters Newsidler uses in his German tab bear little resemblance to ordinary letters. t looks like l, h like g, d like nothing in particular, e quite like o, g like p. r, s, and v look quite alike. He also has a way of intabulating for 7-course lute, which took me a little time to figure out. Fortunately, the original contains relatively few errors.
30Mar13: Posted cleaned-up facsimile of Melchoir Newsidler's Teutsch Lautenbuch (1574) in German tab. A French tab edition is upcoming.
12Mar13: CUL Dd.5.78.3 completed. A lot of wonderful favorites, here. I would like to give special thanks to Neil Morrison, who gave me a great deal of help with pieces by Daniel Bacheler, many of whose pieces are uniquely represented here.
20Feb13: Half way through CUL Dd.5.78. 77 of 155 pieces. The source is posted online. Many fewer mistakes in this source.
08Feb13: Completed my edition of CUL Nn.6.36b. It contains excellent stuff, including many Daniel Bacheler pieces of exceptional quality not found anywhere else. I am working on providing an even better version of the facsimile of this MS. Next major project will be CUL Dd.5.78., of which I expect to post the facsimile soon, once I have neatened it up.
16Jan13: Completed my edition of CUL Dd.9.33c.
05Jan13: Posted facsimile of Thomas Robinson Schoole of Musicke.
20Dec12: Posted facsimile of CUL Nn.6.36b. The original version of this had the top line of each page mostly or entirely blotted out. Thanks to the good offices of , I got hold of a better copy of this, and in this copy the MS is almost all there, so I have posted a cleaned-up copy of it. I am working on a Fronimo edition of Nn.6.36. Neil has been very helpful in clarifying some sticky points.
04Dec12: I just finished a little more than half of CUL Dd.9.33c (ff. 1-50v of 95), including 74 pieces, so far. MS is in terrible shape (worse than Dd.2.11), with edges and bottom sometimes torn off or illegible, so I had to work with concordances and sometimes guesswork to fill in the missing bits. But the quality of the material is extremely high.
Although I have tried to be as accurate as possible, I'm sure many errors remain. I have cited the original source (MS or otherwise) whenever I knew it, and the original contributor/entabulator, though over the years much of this data has been lost. If you feel you are the one that originally contributed a particular piece and have not been acknowledged in a footnote for having done so, or if you know the source of a particular piece for which a source is not cited or wrongly cited, please email so I can update the footnote. Also, if you find errors in any of the pieces, can you please email me and, if possible, attach the modified version?
Many people have helped with this effort in a variety of ways, for which I am extremely grateful. Click here to see the Corrections and Contributors Honor Roll.
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I hope you get and give a great deal of pleasure from playing these pieces!
Sarge Gerbode
You can email me at: with any comments, corrections, or special requests.
If you are curious about my other identity as a psychiatrist and philosopher, you can find out more about me by clicking here.
