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.
19Jul16:
Completed the Barberis
Lute book (1549), v.10.
This contains fantasies and vocal intabulations. It also
contains
two duets and some pieces for alternate tunings, as well as four pieces
labeled as fantasies for 4-course guitar, but which are probably
branles. In general, the book is of poor quality, with a
number
of errors. Also, the composers fantasies are not particularly
interesting. The duets required a lot of work for the parts
to be
even playable with each other, and even so the result is marginal.
I have provided version of the alternate tuning pieces for
normal
tuning.
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. gAlso, posted
a facsimile
of the original. gStarting 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: gPosted 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. 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.
16Dec15: Completed work on Paladin's second book, Livre de tablature de luth (1560). This contains vocal intabulations of madrigals and chansons, as well as some well-crafted fantasies and parodies. and a few dances. I also posted a cleaned-up version of the facsimile in Italian tab.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.
05Sep15: Posted an edition of John Danyel "Songs for the lute, viol, and voice" (1605), with its facsimile. These are songs of amazing quality, quite comparable to Dowland at his best. It is a shame that so little of Danyel's music survives. His lyrics are very interesting and intelligent , and his settings display an excellent sense of counterpoint, in which each part has its own interest, yet all easily playable. Also, his text underlay is meticulous; the poetry fits the words perfectly, in all the parts. A couple of the pieces use alternate tunings. I have made arrangements of these in standard tunings.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.
20Aug15: Posted an edition of William Corkine's First booke of ayres (1610). This contains 12 lute songs and 12 solo works for lyra viol, all high quality and relatively free of errors. I also made arrangements for 7-course lute for the lyra viol pieces. I also posted facsimiles of his first and second book of ayres. These are of quite poor quality, necessitating some judgment calls in making the edition.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
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. The 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.
