Lute

(Arabic ‘ūd; Fr. luth; Ger. Laute; It. lauto, leuto, liuto; Sp. laúd).

A plucked chordophone, made of wood, of Middle Eastern origin (see

‘Ud) which flourished throughout Europe from medieval times to the 18th
century. Broader, generic uses of the term are discussed in §1.

1. The generic term.

2. Ancient lutes.
3. Structure of the Western lute.
4. History.
5. Tunings.
6. Technique.
7. Ornamentation.
8. Repertory.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

KLAUS WACHSMANN (1), JAMES W. McKINNON, ROBERT

ANDERSON (2), IAN HARWOOD, DIANA POULTON/DAVID VAN
EDWARDS (3–4), LYNDA SAYCE (5), DIANA POULTON/TIM
CRAWFORD (6–8)

Lute (ii)

1. The generic term.

In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system (Sachs and Hornbostel,

A1914) the term ‘lute’ covers those ‘composite chordophones’ – string
instruments in which a string bearer and a resonator are ‘organically united’
and cannot be separated without destroying the instrument – in which the
plane of the string runs parallel with the soundtable (figs.1 and 2). This
definition excludes harps and zithers but includes pluriarcs (or bow lutes)
(see Gabon, fig.2), lyres of various sorts and ‘handle lutes’ proper. The
following excerpt from Hornbostel and Sachs (from the GSJ translation,
with minor alterations) shows the classification of handle lutes: for their
complete classification of lute types see Chordophone.

321.3 Handle lutes: the string bearer is a plain handle; subsidiary

necks, as e.g. in the Indian prasārinī vīnā are disregarded, as are
also lutes with strings distributed over several necks, like the harpo-
lyre, and those like the lyre-guitars, in which the yoke is merely
ornamental
321.31 Spike lutes: the handle passes diametrically through the
resonator
321.311 Spike bowl lutes: the resonator consists of a natural or
carved-out bowl – found in Persia [now Iran], India, Indonesia
321.312 Spike box lutes or spike guitars: the resonator is built up
from wood – found in Egypt (rabāb)

1
321.313 Spike tube lutes: the handle passes diametrically through
the walls of a tube – found in China, Indochina [now Vietnam]
321.32 Necked lutes: the handle is attached to or carved from the
resonator, like a neck
321.321 Necked bowl lutes (mandolin, theorbo, balalaika)
321.322 Necked box lutes or necked guitars: (violin, viol, guitar) NB
a lute whose body is built up in the shape of a bowl is classified as a
bowl lute
321.33 Tanged lutes: the handle ends within the body resonator

Common usage also excludes bowed instruments (such as the violin).

However, the Hornbostel-Sachs classification provides suffixes for use with
any division of the class of chordophones to indicate the method of
sounding; thus, for example, a violin if played with a bow is classified as a
bowed lute.

Spike lutes and necked lutes differ from each other by the manner in
which neck and resonator are assembled. Fig.3 illustrates possibilities of
assembly as found in a series of instruments of the lute family (played with
a bow) from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. If the neck clearly passes
through the resonator, as it does in the first four examples, the label ‘spiked
lute’ applies. But in six cases the handle is ‘attached’, and in this sense the
instruments are ‘necked lutes’. However, the examples show that there are
several transitional forms to which neither label applies well; hence a third
category has been added to the Hornbostel-Sachs classification above,
under the code 321.33, for instruments in which, as Hornbostel himself
described it, ‘the handle ends within the body’.

Sachs ascribed the earliest types to a period from the 4th to the 2nd
millennium bce, basing his conclusion on cultural geography. Seen in the
perspective of human development, lutes are in any event a comparatively
late invention. Because the use of a bow to play string instruments is even
more recent – the earliest documentation dates from around the end of the
1st millennium ce – the discussion of ancient lutes in §2 deals exclusively
with plucked instruments.

Lute (ii)

2. Ancient lutes.

Two types of ancient lute are clearly distinguishable: the earlier long-
necked lute and the short-necked lute. There is a wide range of difference
within each type, but the most common features of the long-necked lute are
an unfretted, rod-like neck and a small oval or almond-shaped body, which
before the advent of wood construction was fashioned from a gourd or
tortoise shell. In many early examples where the table is of hide, the neck
or spike is attached to it by piercing it a number of times in the manner of
stitching. The strings, usually two, are attached at the lower end of the
spike in varying ways and are bound at the top by ligatures from which

2
hang decorative tassels. Pegs were not used until comparatively late in the
instrument's history.

The long-necked lute is now thought (by Turnbull and Picken, for
example) to have originated among the West Semites of Syria. Turnbull
(A1972) has argued convincingly for its earliest appearance being that on
two cylinder seals (see fig.4a) of the Akkadian period (c2370–2110 bce); on
one the lute is in the hands of a crouching male who plays while a birdman
is brought before a seated god. In contrast to the draped female harpists,
the lutenists of early Mesopotamia are men, sometimes shown naked or
with animals. None of these instruments has survived, but the lute's
popularity is attested by many objects of the Babylonian period. The Louvre
possesses a Babylonian boundary stone, found at Susa, which shows
bearded men with bows on their backs playing the lute in the company of
such animals as the lion, panther, antelope, horse, sheep, ox, and an
ostrich. In the the early 2nd millennium bce the lute is also attested for the
Hittite Old Kingdom: a sherd from Alishar Höyük has preserved the end of a
neck with two strings hanging from it.

The lute first appeared in Egypt as a result of Hyksos influence, which

opened the country to Western Asiatic ideas. In the New Kingdom (1550–
1070 bce) the long-necked lute was often represented in banquet scenes,
played either by men or women. The two main types of instrument, with
round (usually a tortoise shell) or oval soundbox, appear in a scene now at
the British Museum showing details of the frets and soundholes as well as
the plectrum. The earliest Egyptian evidence of the lute to survive is a
soundbox now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and there is a well-
preserved instrument from the Theban tomb of the singer Harmose in the
Cairo Museum (Dynasty 18, 1550–1320). The lute had a function in ritual
processions such as those depicted in the Luxor temple at the festival of
Opet, when a number of players performed together. It appeared more
often, though, in the chamber groups that featured at court functions and
official banquets. The end of the neck is sometimes carved with the head of
a goose or falcon. This probably had religious significance, as is clearly the
case when a Hathor head is carved. The dwarf-god Bes, himself probably
of Asiatic origin, is an adept at the lute, and satirical scenes show it in the
hands of a crocodile.

Greco-Roman lutes (see Pandoura), which are depicted in a number of

Hellenistic sculptures and on late Roman sarcophagi, are comparatively
rare. They appear to have at least three strings, plucked with the fingers,
and a thick unfretted neck. (The evidence indicating this last feature,
however, may be influenced by the sculpture medium.) One depiction, a
terracotta in the Louvre (see fig.4c), shows the body tapering to form the
neck in the manner of the short-necked lute. The surviving representations
from Byzantium, most notably a 5th-century mosaic from the former
imperial palace of Istanbul and a 6th-century mosaic from a church near
Shahhat, Libya, show lutes of the pandoura type.

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 The short-necked lute, which is characterized by a wooden body
tapering off to form the neck and fingerboard, probably also originated in
Asia. There are only rare representations of it until the first centuries bce. A
number of statuettes and reliefs (see Geiringer, A1927–8, pls.1–3) are
preserved from the Gandhara culture of the time, named from an area in
north-west India under the influence of Greek civilization; these show short-
necked lutes with a pear-shaped body, a frontal string-holder, lateral pegs
and four or five strings plucked with a plectrum. The Sassanid lute or
barbat, as shown on a 6th-century silver cup from Kalar Dasht, was of this
type. Apparently these instruments are related to those lutes that spread
eastwards to China and Japan, as well as to the Arabian ‘ūd, the immediate
ancestor of the European classical lute.

Lute (ii)

3. Structure of the Western lute.

The structure of the Western lute evolved gradually away from its
ancestor the Arabian ‘ūd, though some features have remained sufficiently
consistent to constitute defining characteristics. Chief among these are: a
vaulted back, pear-shaped in outline and more or less semicircular in cross-
section, made up of a number of separate ribs; a neck and fingerboard tied
with gut frets; a flat soundboard or belly in which is carved an ornate
soundhole or ‘rose’; a bridge, to which the strings are attached, glued near
the lower end of the soundboard; a pegbox, usually at nearly a right angle
to the neck, with tuning-pegs inserted laterally; and strings of gut, usually
arranged in paired courses.

The ribs, of which the body is constructed, are thin (typically about 1·5
mm) strips of wood, bent over a mould and glued together edge to edge to
form a symmetrical shell. Although the overall sizes of lutes vary
considerably, there is much less variation in the thicknesses of their
constituent parts, and even very large lutes have ribs of less than 2 mm.
The glue joints between the ribs are reinforced inside with narrow strips of
paper or parchment. Many surviving lutes also have five or six strips of,
usually, parchment glued round inside the bowl across the line of the ribs.
The number of ribs varies according to date and style from only seven to up
to 65, but it is always an odd number because lute backs are built outwards
from a single central rib. Many kinds of wood, even sometimes ivory, have
been used for the back. Maple and yew were the favoured local woods but
exotic woods from South America and East Asia, such as rosewood,
kingwood and ebony, were used as they became available in the 16th
century. The extent of their use by 1566 is revealed in the inventory of
Raimund Fugger (see Smith, B1980). At the lower end, where these ribs
taper together, they are reinforced internally with a strip of softwood bent to
fit, and externally with a capping strip, usually of the same material as the
ribs. At the other end the ribs are glued to a block, often of softwood, to
which the neck is attached. In most pictures of medieval lutes up to about
1500, as in the early ‘ūd, the ribs are shown as flowing in a smooth curve
into the line of the neck and in these cases the end of the neck itself,

4
suitably rebated, may have formed the block to which the ribs were glued.
However, by 1360 there are already some pictures showing lutes with a
sharp angle between neck and body, implying that the separate block,
which is universally present in surviving lutes, was not unknown. The
overlap of these two forms spanned at least 200 years; both forms are
depicted in The Last Judgement by Hieronymus Bosch (c1500, Vienna
Academy). In the later two-part construction the joint is a simple glued butt
joint, secured with one or more nails driven through the block into the end-
grain of the neck. This simple joint proved adequate during the remainder
of the lute's history.

Most surviving lutes from the early 16th century have been re-necked in
later styles but iconographical sources reveal that early necks appear most
often to have been made of a single piece of hardwood such as sycamore
or maple to match the body. In later and surviving lutes after about 1580,
the neck is most often veneered in a decorative hardwood, often ebony,
sometimes striped or inlaid with ivory, on a core of sycamore or other
common hardwood. At first, throughout the medieval period and into the
Renaissance, necks were semicircular or deeper in cross-section. As the
number of courses increased through the 16th and 17th centuries, the
necks became correspondingly wider, necessitating a change of left-hand
position to enable stretches across to the bass strings. This meant that a
thinner neck was more comfortable. Baron (C1727) commented that
Johann Christian Hoffmann (1683–1750) made the necks of his lutes to fit
the hand of their owner, unlike his father Martin Hoffmann (1653–1719),
who made his necks too thick.

Separate fingerboards are often not very apparent in pictures of

medieval lutes, leading to the supposition that they were either made of
boxwood or simply constituted the flat top surface of the neck. Sometimes
when there is a marked change of colour between the ‘fingerboard’ and the
soundboard, the join occurs so far down the soundboard as to be beyond
any possible neck block; a separate fingerboard is therefore structurally
impossible. Instead, the change of colour must result from a protective coat
of something like varnish. Surviving lutes from the 1580s onwards almost
universally have separate ebony fingerboards set flush with the soundboard
and, after about 1600, usually with separate ‘points’ decorating the joint
between the fingerboard and soundboard (see fig.5). The lutes of Tielke in
the 18th century often had multiple ‘points’ (see G. Hellwig, B1980).
Medieval and Renaissance lute fingerboards were usually flat, even the
wide chitarrone and theorbo fingerboards, but from about 1700 makers
started to give a curve to their fingerboards, helping the lie of the frets and
making fingering easier.

At the back of the top end of the neck a rebate is cut out to form a
housing for the pegbox. This same design of joint, with or without a
reinforcing nail into the end-grain of the neck, was used throughout the
history of the lute, as was the basic form of the pegbox: a straight-sided
box, closed at the back, open at the front and tapering slightly in both width
and depth. However, after about 1595 various branches of the lute family

5
also developed different and characteristic pegbox forms in order to
accommodate the longer bass strings needed to extend the range of the
lute downwards. Slender tapering hardwood tuning-pegs were inserted
from the sides. Medieval pegs appear often to have been made of
boxwood, but later, in the 17th and 18th centuries, fruitwood such as plum
seems to have been a preferred material, though these were often stained
black.

The soundboard is a flat straight-grained softwood plate, nowadays

mostly thought of as Picea abies or Picea excelsa (though historically the
types of wood used may have included species of Pinus and Abies) into
which is carved an ornamental rose soundhole, whose pattern often shows
decidedly Arabic influence (see Wells, D1981). However, it is noticeable
that iconography does not support a continuous tradition of rose design
from the Arabic ‘ūd; most medieval pictures of lutes feature gothic designs,
and the frequency of Arabic patterns in the later surviving lutes may reflect
rather the contemporary interest in such designs by artists such as
Leonardo da Vinci and Dürer. The soundboard is often made from the two
halves joined along the centre line, but on larger instruments several pieces
may be used. Most surviving lute soundboards are quite thin, often about
1·5 mm. However, there is some support for the view that the very earliest
soundboards, dating from about 1540, may have been rather thicker, and
that they were made progressively thinner as the number of the supporting
bars was increased (see Nurse, D1986). Early lutes from before the 1590s
usually had no edging to the soundboard. After that, often an ebony or
hardwood strip was rebated into half the depth of the soundboard edge as
a protective measure. Later still, when the fashion for re-using old
soundboards was in sway (see Lowe, B1976), a ‘lace’ of parchment or cloth
with silver threads was often used to wrap the edge, possibly to cover pre-
existing wear.

Bridge designs went through a slow evolution, particularly in the shape of

the decorative ‘ears’ which terminate both ends, but were consistently
made of a light hardwood such as pear, plum or walnut, sometimes stained
black, and were glued directly to the surface of the soundboard. Their
cross-sectional design was very cleverly arranged to minimize stress at the
junction with the thin and flexible soundboard. Holes drilled through the
bridge took the strings, which were tied so that they were supported by a
loop of the same string rather than by a saddle as in the modern guitar.
This has a marked effect on the tone of the instrument, and contributes to
the sweetness of the lute's sound.

The tension of the strings, because they are pulling directly on the
soundboard, tends to cause it to distort. This is resisted by a number of
transverse bars of the same wood as the soundboard, glued on edge
across its underside. These bars, besides supporting the soundboard, have
an important effect on the sound quality. By dividing the soundboard into a
number of sections, each with a relatively high resonant frequency, they
cause it to reinforce the upper harmonics produced by a string rather than
its fundamental tone. This is matched by the strings themselves, which are

6
quite thin compared with those of a modern guitar; a thin string tuned to a
certain note produces more high harmonics than a thicker string tuned to
the same note. Thus the whole acoustical system of the lute is designed to
give a characteristically clear, almost nasal, sound (see also Acoustics, §II,
8).

Lute (ii)

4. History.

The European lute derives both in name and form from the Arab
instrument known as the ‘Ūd, which means literally ‘the wood’ (either
because it had a soundboard of wood as distinct from a parchment skin
stretched over the body, or because the body itself was built up from
wooden strips rather than made from a hollow gourd). The Arab ‘ūd was
introduced into Europe by the Moors during their conquest and occupation
of Spain (711–1492). Pictorial evidence shows Moorish ‘ūd players, and
9th- and 10th-century accounts tell of visits of famous players such as
Ziryāb to the court of the Andalusian emir ‘Abd al-Rahmān II (822–52). The
‘ūd was not confined to Muslims, however, as is shown by illustrations to
the Cantigas de Santa María of Alfonso el Sabio (1221–84) which include
players in distinctive Christian costume (fig.6). However, from pictorial and
written evidence it is clear that by 1350 what we must now call lutes, since
there is no longer any connection with Arab musicians, had spread very
widely throughout Europe, even though trading and cultural links with
Moorish Spain were not well developed. We need to look elsewhere for a
route that would lead to the eventual domination of European lute making
by numerous German families who came originally from around the Lech
valley region and Bavaria. Bletschacher (B1978) has argued that this was
due largely to the royal visits of Friedrich II with his magnificent Moorish
Sicilian retinue to the towns in this valley between 1218 and 1237. The
valley was a main north–south trading route across the Alps, with the
necessary raw materials growing there in abundance, so it would have
been a natural focus for any such development to occur, even more so
following the Venetians' capture of Constantinople in 1204 which so greatly
increased their trading activities with the Near East. The ‘ūd is still in use
although it no longer has frets. Over the centuries it has undergone
structural changes analogous to those of the lute, and thus differs from both
the original ‘ūd and the medieval lute.

As no lutes from before the 16th century have survived, information must
be gathered from pictures, sculpture and written descriptions. These
indicate that the lute has usually had its strings in pairs, and that at first
there were only four such ‘courses’ (fig.7). From the start, lutes were made
in widely different sizes, and therefore of different pitches. Both pictorial
and written evidence point to the use of different sized lutes for treble and
ground duet performance (see Polk, F1992). During the 15th century a fifth
course was added. Masaccio depicted two five-course lutes in his
altarpiece, Virgin and Child (1426; now in the National Gallery, London).
Later, in his De inventione et usu musicae (c1481–3), Tinctoris mentioned a

7
sixth course and there are even tablatures from this period calling for a
seven-course lute, though no contemporaneous pictures show one.

The earliest extant account of structural details for the European lute is
in a manuscript of about 1440 written by Henri Arnaut de Zwolle (see
Harwood, D1960). Arnaut described both the lute itself and the mould on
which it was built, combining the two in the same diagram (fig.8). His
design was unmeasured but instead was worked out in terms of
geometrical proportion, including the positions of bridge, soundhole and
three transverse bars. Almost 200 years later, Mersenne (1636) described
the design and construction of a lute by remarkably similar methods. By this
time the number of soundboard bars had doubled, but the placing of three
of them, as well as that of the soundhole and bridge, corresponds with that
given by Arnaut. There can be no doubt that there was a well-established
tradition of instrument design by geometrical methods, going back to the
‘ūd at least as far as the 9th and 10th centuries (see Bouterse, D1979). It is
perhaps significant that a portrait (1562) of the lute maker Gaspar
Tieffenbrucker surrounded by his lutes and other instruments shows him
holding a pair of dividers. However, when Arnaut's design is compared to
lutes shown in most paintings of the period, it is in fact rather different,
being oddly rounded at the top of the body. The very long neck he specifies
is almost never shown. This suggests that, as an enquiring scholar, he may
have been given the general principles of design by the lute maker(s) he
consulted, but not the exact relationships which determine the precise
shape and which may have been regarded as a craft secret.

Medieval lutes usually had two circular roses, one large and more or less
halfway between the bridge and the neck, as specified by Arnaut, the other
much smaller and higher up the body close to the fingerboard. The large
rose was occasionally of the ornate ‘sunken’ variety, often with designs
similar to some gothic cathedral windows. This may have been intentional,
for Arnaut calls the rose in his drawing ‘Fenestrum’. Around 1480 there was
even a brief fashion for the upper rose to be in the form of a lancet window,
and interestingly just such a rose has survived in the clavicytherium now in
the RCM, London, which has been dated to about 1480 (see E. Wells: ‘The
London Clavicytherium’, EMc, vi, 1978, pp.568–71).

The ‘ūd was, and still is, played with a plectrum, and at first the same
method was used for the lute (see figs.4 and 5). With this technique it was
probably mainly a melodic instrument, playing a single line of music, albeit
highly ornate, with perhaps strummed chords at important points. However,
some of the very early plectra are shown as large and solid looking,
implying that the lute may also have been used as a percussive rhythm
instrument rather like the Romanian cobză, which closely resembles the
very early medieval lute, especially in the wide spacing of the strings at the
bridge and the shortness of the steeply tapering neck (see Lloyd, B1960).
This may explain the early drone tunings (see §5 below).

During the second half of the 15th century, there was a change to
playing with the fingertips, though, as Page (B1981) pointed out, the two

8
methods continued for some time side by side. Tinctoris (c1481–3) wrote of
holding the lute ‘while the strings are struck by the right hand either with the
fingers or with a plectrum’, but did not imply that the use of the fingers was
a novelty. However, the change was very significant for the lute's future
development, for it allowed the playing of several parts at once, and meant
that the huge repertory of vocal part music both sacred and secular
became available to lute players. This function was made easier by the
invention about this time of special systems of notation known as tablature,
into which much of this repertory was transcribed (intabulated). There were
three main kinds of tablature for the lute, developed in Germany, France
and Italy respectively. A fourth early system, ‘Intavolatura alla Napolitana’,
was also used from time to time. Of the four main types the French may
have been the earliest. The German one was probably written during the
lifetime of Conrad Paumann (c1410–1473), the supposed inventor of the
system. Although Tinctoris had mentioned a six-course lute, these first
tablatures, and indeed the very names by which the strings of the
instrument were known, suggest five courses as still the most usual number
at this time.

By about 1500 a sixth course was commonly in use, which extended the
range of the open strings by another 4th to two octaves. This may have
been enabled by improvements in string making. Gut was used for all the
strings and it was usual on the two or three lowest courses to set one of the
pair with a thin string tuned an octave higher, to lend some brilliance to the
tone of its thick neighbour.

By 1500 the first written records confirm the existence of several lute-
making families in and around Füssen in the Lech valley. Most of the
famous names of 16th- and 17th-century lute making seem to have
originated from around this small area of southern Germany. By 1562 the
Füssen makers were sufficiently well established to form a guild with
elaborate regulations which have survived (see Bletschacher, B1978, and
Layer, B1978). A careful reading of these regulations reveals how much
they were predicated on the idea of export. They also show an organized
tendency to keep the trade within individual families, which resulted in
much intermarriage. This was a powerful force for continuity which clearly
lasted for centuries. However, the number of masters who could set up a
workshop in the town was limited to 20, so there was a built-in pressure to
emigrate. It was also precisely this area which was devastated first by the
Peasants' Revolt of 1525, the war against the Schmalkaldic League (1546–
55), and finally by the Thirty Years War which killed more than half the
population of central Europe. It is hardly surprising that lute makers, who
already had international connections, moved away from the area in such
numbers.

Many settled in northern Italy, no doubt attracted by the country's wealth

and fashion but also perhaps by the access to exotic woods imported via
Venice. The tradition of intermarriage meant that they remained together in
colonies and did not become much integrated into Italian society. Luca
Maler (see Maler) was active in Bologna from about 1503; by 1530 he was

9
a property owner of considerable substance and had built up an almost
industrial scale workshop employing mostly German craftsmen (see
Pasqual and Ragazzi, B1998). The inventory compiled at his death in 1552
lists about 1100 finished lutes and more than 1300 soundboards ready for
use; his firm continued trading until 1613. Among several other lute makers
in Bologna were Marx Unverdorben (briefly) and Hans Frei. The main
characteristic of their lutes is a long narrow body of nine or 11 broad ribs
with rather straight shoulders and fairly round at the base. This form is
remarkably close to that proposed by Bouterse (D1979) in his interpretation
of Persian and Arabic manuscripts of the 14th century. The chief difference
is that these Middle Eastern descriptions, like Arnaut's, indicate a
semicircular cross-section, whereas the instruments of Maler and Frei are
somewhat ‘more square’. Often made from sycamore or ash, they
remained highly prized as long as the lute was in use, but became
increasingly rare as time went on. No unaltered example is known to have
survived, for their prestige was such that they were adapted (sometimes
more than once) to keep abreast of new fashions. They have all been fitted
with replacement necks to carry more strings; sometimes the vaulted back
is the only original part remaining (see Downing, B1978).

In Venice, as in Bologna, the German colony kept to its own quarter and
had its own church. By 1521 Ulrich Tieffenbrucker is recorded as present in
the city, and for the next hundred years the Tieffenbrucker family,
especially Magno (i), Magno (ii) and Moisé, as well as Marx Unverdorben
and Luca Maler's brother, Sigismond, dominated lute making in the city
(see Toffolo, B1987). The name Tieffenbrucker was taken from their
original village of Tieffenbruck, but their instruments are usually signed
Dieffopruchar and regional spellings abound with variants such as
Duiffoprugcar and even Dubrocard. Another branch of the Tieffenbrucker
family settled in Padua, including ‘Wendelio Venere’, who has recently
been discovered to be Wendelin Tieffenbrucker, probably the son of
Leonardo Tieffenbrucker the elder. Michael Hartung also worked in Padua
and may have been taught by Wendelin, although Baron (C1727) stated
that he was apprenticed to Leonardo the younger. The typical body shape
of these Venetian and Paduan lutes was less elongated than that of Maler's
and Frei's instruments, and the shoulders were more curved (see fig.10a,
c–f). The first examples had 11 or 13 ribs, but later the number was
increased, a feature associated with, but not exclusive to, the use of yew,
which has a brown heartwood and a narrow white sapwood. For purposes
of decoration, each rib was cut half light, half dark, which restricted the
available width and required a large number of ribs, sometimes totalling 51
and even more. The yew wood was supplied from the old heartland of lute
making in south Germany, and cutting the ribs for Venetian makers became
a valuable source of winter employment there (see Layer, B1978).

The use of geometrical methods of lute design has already been

mentioned, and it has been found by several writers that the shape of these
instruments can be readily reproduced by such means (see Edwards,
D1973; D. Abbott and E. Segerman: ‘The Geometric Description and
Analysis of Instrument Shapes’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.2, 1976, p.7; Söhne,

10
D1980; Samson, D1981; and Coates, D1985). This may account for the
similarity in basic form between instruments of different sizes and by
different makers. By comparison with the modern guitar, these early lutes,
whether of the Bolognese or Paduan type, are distinguished by the
lightness of their construction. The egg-like shape of the lute body is
inherently strong and does not need to be built of very thick materials.
Although the total tension of up to 24 gut strings (for later lutes) can be as
much as 70–80 kg, the well-barred thin soundboard withstands this pull
remarkably well. Though in the 17th century, as Constantijn Huygens's
correspondence makes clear, it was routine to re-bar old lutes as part of
their renovation, this may have had more to do with alterations in barring
layout than structural weaknesses.

The instruction to tune the top string as high as it will stand without
breaking is given in many early lute tutors (though not by Dowland or
Mace). If the highest string is lowered for safety's sake much beneath its
breaking point, the basses will be either too thick and stiff or, if thinner, too
slack to produce an acceptable sound. Wire-wound bass strings which
could ease this dilemma by increasing the weight without increasing the
stiffness are not known to have been available until after 1650, and were
apparently not much used thereafter either. Therefore, as the breaking
pitch of a string depends on its length but not on its thickness, the working
level of a given instrument is fixed within quite narrow limits.

In the second half of the 16th century there was a tendency to build
instruments in families of sizes (and thus pitches), roughly corresponding
with the different types of human voice. The lute was no exception.
Examples of the variety of sizes available around 1600 are shown in fig.9.
The instrument by Magno Tieffenbrucker (fig.9a) has a string length of 67
cm; the string lengths of the instruments shown as fig.9c–g are 29·9 cm, 44
cm, 44·2 cm, 66·6 cm, and 93·8 cm. Strictly speaking, the smallest of these
(fig.9c) should be called a Mandore (see also Mandolin, §1). In England the
nominal a' or g' lute was known as the ‘mean’, and was the size intended in
most of the books of ayres, unless otherwise specified. The only other
names used in English musical sources are ‘bass’ (nominally at d') and
‘treble’, which is specified for the Morley and Rosseter Consort Lessons.
The pitch of these ‘treble’ lutes implied by the other parts was also g' but it
is possible that this music was intended to be played at a pitch level a 4th
higher than that of the mean lute (see Harwood, B1981). This nomenclature
of ‘treble’ has caused some interest and, taken together with a number of
specifically English pictures of small-bodied long-necked lutes, may
indicate a particular English variant (see Forrester, B1994).

It should be noted that although all sorts of sizes were available at most
times, the general trend from 1600 to 1750 was towards larger instruments
for common use. Thus, for example, we might expect Dowland's songs to
be accompanied on a lute of about 58 cm string length tuned to a nominal
g' or a', whereas most French Baroque music of the mid-17th century calls
for an 11-course lute of about 67 cm with a top string at a nominal f', while
the lutes used in Germany in the 18th century were mostly 13-course

11
instruments of about 70–73 cm, also with a nominal top string of f'. Some of
this may represent a drop in the pitch standard, but we must also assume
that string makers had managed to improve their products to increase the
total range available, since these size changes represent considerable
changes in the instruments' requirements. Apart from the development of
overwound strings, this increase in range could only have been achieved
by increasing the tensile strength of the trebles, by making the thick basses
more elastic and flexible or by increasing the density of bass strings,
perhaps by the addition of metallic compounds (see Peruffo, D1991). There
is currently much interest in trying to reproduce these conjectured
developments. It is noticeable from written accounts that the cost of strings
was remarkably high compared to that of the lutes themselves, leading to
the thought that there was more to their manufacture than is now apparent.

Although seven-course lutes appear as early as the late 15th century,

and Bakfark's apprentice, Hans Timme, wanted to buy an Italian seven-
course lute as early as 1556 (see Gombosi, F1935), it was only in the
1580s that they became at all common with the seventh course pitched at
either a tone or a 4th below the sixth (see §5 below). Improved strings are
conjectured to have popularized this greater range, perhaps providing a
better tone and enabling John Dowland, in his contribution to his son
Robert's Varietie of Lute Lessons (1610), to recommend a unison sixth
course:

Secondly, set on your Bases, in that place which you call the sixt
string, or γ ut, these Bases must be both of one bignes, yet it hath
beene a generall custome (although not so much used any where as
here in England) to set a small and a great string together, but
amongst learned Musitians that custome is left, as irregular to the
rules of Musicke.

The same book, reflecting the growing tendency to increase the number
of bass strings, included English and continental music for lutes with six,
seven, eight and nine courses. This only occasionally extended the range
to low C; mostly the extra strings were used to eliminate awkward
fingerings resulting from having to stop the seventh course. These
‘diapasons’ were usually strung with octaves. Already by the early 1600s
the ten-course lute had made its appearance, shown in contemporary
illustrations as constructed like its predecessors, with the strings running
over a single nut to the pegbox, which has to be considerably longer to
accommodate the additional pegs. The pegbox is also usually shown as
being at a much shallower angle to the neck than the earlier Renaissance
lute, a fact borne out by the surviving original ten-course lute by Christofolo
Cocho in the Carl Claudius collection, Musikhistorisk Museum,
Copenhagen (no.96a). Often the paintings of ten-course lutes show a treble
‘rider’, a small extra pegholder on top of the normal pegbox side, designed
to give a less acute angle on the nut for the fragile top string.

Another innovation reported by Dowland in Varietie was the lengthening

of the neck of the instrument:

12
 for my selfe was borne but thirty yeeres after Hans Gerles booke
was printed, and all the Lutes which I can remember used eight frets
… some few yeeres after, by the French Nation, the neckes of the
Lutes were lengthned, and thereby increased two frets more, so as
all those Lutes, which are most received and disired, are of tenne
frets.

Initially this may have been done to improve the tone of the low basses,
but unless stronger treble strings became available at the same time, the
pitch level of these longer lutes must have been lower than the older eight-
fret instruments. Interestingly, one such lengthened neck survived until
quite recently, but when it was ‘restored’ this important source of evidence
for the practice was removed. Sometimes extra wooden frets were glued on
to the soundboard, an invention which Dowland attributed to the English
player Mathias Mason.

It is interesting that Dowland should thus report the prevailing fashion in

lutes as coming from France, for by his death in 1626 France was the
dominant culture musically and was the centre for developments in different
tunings, starting some time around 1620, which led to the 11-course lute.
Lowe (B1986) has suggested that the 11th course may at first have been
only an octave string. The later surviving 11-course lutes mostly appear to
be conversions of ten-course instruments, all done in the same way, by
making the second course single and adding a treble rider for the top string
or ‘chanterelle’ on the top of the normal pegbox treble side. This effectively
gave two extra pegs which were used for the new bass course, but,
because the neck was now too narrow, these strings were taken over an
extended nut which projected beyond the fingerboard and were fastened to
the pegs on the outside of the pegbox. The famous portrait of Charles
Mouton (see fig.12) clearly shows that this was obviously not regarded as a
stopgap measure. This final extra course on the same string-length has
often been attributed to the invention of wire-wound or overspun strings,
first advertised in England by Playford in 1664. However there is
distressingly little hard evidence that these were in fact much used and they
are not mentioned by either Mace or the Burwell tutor even though both
wrote about the choice of strings. As Lowe (B1976) has shown, during the
17th century the French were already buying and converting early 16th-
century Bologna lutes, seemingly because of a new aesthetic which valued
the antique. There are so few surviving lutes with any claim to have been
made in France that it is not possible to be sure what their makers were
producing by way of new lutes at a time when lute playing was so important
to French musical life. One must assume that the French cannot all have
been playing on antique instruments. Indeed the inventory of the French
maker Jean Desmoulins (d 1648) points to a vigorous rate of production
since it lists 249 lutes in various stages of construction as well as 14
theorbos both large and small (see Lay, F1996). Only one lute by this
maker has survived (Cité de la Musique, Marseilles).

Makers working in Italy, where the old tuning held sway, had already
addressed the problem of extending the bass range in the 1590s by the

13
expedient of having longer and therefore naturally deeper-sounding strings
carried on a separate pegbox. The theorbo, chitarrone, liuto attiorbato and
archlute all had extended straight-sided pegboxes carved from a solid piece
of wood set into the neck housing at a very shallow angle and carrying at
their ends a separate small pegbox for these extended bass strings. The
form of all these instruments is very similar, differing mainly in the length of
the extended pegbox, the number of courses carried and whether the bass
courses were double or single. It was therefore only to be expected that this
principle of longer, and therefore unfingered, bass strings should also be
applied to non-continuo lutes. From about 1595 to 1630 various other types
of extended pegboxes were tried for the bass strings. In one version, an
extra piece of neck was added on the bass side which carried its own small
bent-back pegbox. One of these (by Sixtus Rauwolf, 1599, though the
extension may be later) has survived in the Carl Claudius collection,
Musikhistorisk Museum, Copenhagen and there are several paintings
showing this form, including works by Carlo Saraceni (c1579–1620) and
Jan Miense Molenaer (c1610–1668).

More widely adopted was a double-headed lute with curved pegboxes

(see fig.13), one set backwards at an angle rather like the normal lute, the
other extended in the same plane as the fingerboard. This carried four
separate small nuts to take the bass courses in steps of increasing length.
This form usually had 12 courses and was apparently invented by Jacques
Gautier in about 1630 (see Spencer, B1976, and Samson, B1977) but was
not used much by the French who remained largely loyal to their single-
headed lutes. As the author of the Burwell Lute Tutor (c1670) wrote: ‘All
England hath accepted that Augmentation and ffraunce att first but soone
after that alteration hath beene condemned by all the french Masters who
are returned to theire old fashion keeping onely the small Eleaventh’. He, or
she, objected to the length of the longer bass strings and felt that they rang
on too much, thereby causing discords in moving bass lines. It was,
however, widely used in England and the Netherlands until at least the end
of the 17th century. The apparent thinking behind this form was a desire to
avoid the sudden leaps in tone quality between the treble and bass strings
which characterize the theorbo and archlute forms. An important tutor for
this type of lute was Thomas Mace's Musick's Monument (1676), in which it
was classed as a French lute; Talbot (c1695), however, called it the
‘English two headed lute’. For Talbot the ‘French lute’ had 11 courses, with
all the strings on a single head. There has been some discussion as to the
size of these instruments (see Segerman, D1998). Talbot measured the
string length of a 12-course instrument of this type as 59·7 cm;
iconographical sources show all sizes. To date, six examples of this type
have been found with fingered string lengths of between 50 and 75 cm.

This same principle of stepped nuts for bass strings of gradually

increasing length lay behind a specifically English form of the theorbo,
which is also described in Mace and was measured by Talbot (see Sayce,
B1995; Van Edwards, B1995). Unusually for a theorbo this had double-
strung courses in the bass which still further smoothed the transition across
the range. None of these have survived. The French too seem to have

14
developed their own version of the theorbo principle in the 17th century with
a shorter extension than the Italian theorbo and possibly with single
stringing (see Theorbo).

In Italy in the 17th century the drive towards extending the bass range of
the lute was accommodated somewhat more consistently by incorporating
the theorbo design into smaller lutes for solo use. Thus the liuto attiorbato
came to be used in addition to normal lutes and theorbos, and later
archlutes, for accompanying singers and continuo work. Matteo Sellas was
part of another large German family of instrument makers still based in
Italy, and produced very elaborate lutes and liuti attiorbati of ivory and
ebony at his workshop ‘alla Corona’ (at the sign of the crown) in Venice. His
brother Giorgio made equally decorative guitars and lutes ‘alla stella’.
Working in Rome, beyond what might seem to be the natural bounds of
migration from Germany, were David Tecchler, Antonio Giauna and
Cinthius Rotundus, from each of whom has survived an archlute, attesting
this instrument's importance in Rome in the 17th and 18th centuries.

By the beginning of the 18th century, the centre of activity in lute music
shifted from France to Germany and Bohemia. The makers extended the
range of the instrument still further, and by 1719 composers were writing for
13 courses. There were two types of 13-course lutes developed and it is
hard to say which was first, since both are possible conversions from pre-
existing 11-course instruments and so labels are not conclusive. Paintings
of both types are surprisingly rare. In one version a single pegbox was used
like that of the 11-course lute, but, possibly starting as a conversion, a
small subsidiary pegbox or ‘bass rider’ with four pegs to take the extra two
courses was added to the bass side of the main pegbox (see fig.14). This
had the effect of giving between 5 and 7 cm extra length to these two
courses. Commonly these lutes were quite large by previous standards with
70 to 75 cm being the usual string length. From what has been said so far
about stringing this must imply a lower pitch for the main strings. It is clear
from the details of the tablature that Silvius Leopold Weiss composed
throughout his life for this version of the 13-course lute which was
developed by the new generation of German makers, working in Bohemia
and Germany itself. Among the most important at this time were Sebastian
Schelle and his pupil Leopold Widhalm working in Nuremberg (see Martius,
B1996), Martin Hoffmann and his son Johann Christian working in Leipzig,
Joachim Tielke and his pupil J.H. Goldt working in Hamburg (see G.
Hellwig, B1980) and Thomas Edlinger of Augsburg and his son Thomas,
who moved to Prague and set up his workshop there. All these makers
were violin makers as well, reflecting the growing importance of this
instrument at a time when the lute was becoming less in demand.

These makers were also responsible for the other version of the 13-
course lute with extended bass strings, the German Baroque lute (see
Spencer, B1976). This had an ornately curved double pegbox carved out of
a single piece of wood, usually ebonized sycamore. This type did not
usually have a treble rider, but did occasionally feature a small separate
slot carved in the treble side of the main pegbox to take the top string.

15
Typically this kind of lute had eight courses on the fingerboard and five
octaved courses going to the upper pegbox, these five being normally
between 25 and 30 cm longer than the fingered strings. This design
appears to be a modification of the pre-existing Angélique form. Some
apparently early 13-course lutes, such as the 1680 Tielke instrument,
dating from long before the earliest surviving 13-course music (c1719),
seem to be converted ‘angéliques’. Others, such as the Fux conversion in
1696 of a Tieffenbrucker instrument and the 13-course lute of Martin
Hoffmann dating from the 1690s, raise more awkward questions of dating.
An even more elaborate triple pegbox form of this type was also developed
and a few examples have survived, notably by Johannes Jauck, a lute and
violin maker working in Graz, and Martin Bruner (1724–1801) in Olomouc.
These seem to have been functionally the same as the double pegbox
form, and they may have represented a further attempt to obtain a
smoother transition from the treble to bass courses.

Internally, the barring structure behind the bridge was altered by these
makers. Beginning with an increase in the number of small treble-side fan
bars, the characteristic J-bar on the bass side of the Renaissance
soundboard was finally removed and various kinds of fan-barring were
introduced right across this area of the soundboard. These seem to have
had the effect of increasing the bass response. The main transverse bars
were also made slightly smaller and more even in height, maybe with the
same intention. The body outline of these lutes is remarkably similar to that
of the early 16th-century lutes of Frei and Maler and this resemblance may
well have been deliberate, for the old instruments continued to be highly
prized. It was about this time (1727) that the first systematic history of the
lute was written, by E.G. Baron. Referring to the lutes of Luca Maler, he
wrote:

But it is a source of wonder that he already built them after the

modern fashion, namely with the body long in proportion, flat and
broad-ribbed, and which, provided that no fraud has been
introduced, and they are original, are esteemed above all others.
They are highly valued because they are rare and have a splendid
tone.

This echoes the value placed on Maler lutes in the Fugger inventory of
nearly 200 years earlier, which talks of ‘An old good lute by Laux Maler’ and
‘One old good lute by Sig[ismond] Maler’. Baron's comment on the
possibility of fraud is also interesting in this context, since there are several
surviving lutes with supposedly 16th-century Tieffenbrucker labels which
are clearly the work of Thomas Edlinger the younger working in Prague at
about the time Baron was published. Thomas Mace too wrote of Maler ‘but
the Chief Name we most esteem, is Laux Maller, ever written with Text
Letters: Two of which Lutes I have seen (pittiful Old, Batter'd, Crack'd
Things) valued at 100 l [£] a piece’.

In the 18th century a much simpler form of German ‘lute’, the mandora,
emerged with the same string lengths and barring system as the Baroque

16
lute but usually with only six or eight courses in a variety of tunings.
Apparently mainly used by amateurs, it also found a useful niche in
orchestras in place of the 13-course Baroque lute as well as for continuo
and bass lines in sacred music, especially large scale works.

Throughout the lute's history the gut strings have been matched by
movable gut frets tied around the neck. The placing of these frets has
always been a problem to both theoreticians and players, and many
attempts have been made to find a system that will give the nearest
approach to true intonation for as wide a range of intervals and in as many
positions as possible. A number of writers, including Gerle (C1532),
Bermudo (C1555), the anonymous author of Discours non plus
mélancholique (1557), Vincenzo Galilei (Fronimo, 1568) and John
Dowland, put forward various systems, many of which were based on
Pythagorean intervals. Late 16th-century theorists in Italy, as well as 17th-
century writers such as Praetorius and Mersenne, habitually assumed that
the intonation of the lute (and other fretted instruments) represented equal
temperament, whereas keyboard instruments were tuned to some form of
mean-tone temperament (see Temperaments).

Lute (ii)

5. Tunings.

The earliest tuning instructions for the Western lute date from the late
15th century and are mostly for five-course lute. The best known is that of
Johannes Tinctoris, whose De inventione et usu musicae (c1481–3) gives a
tuning of 4ths around a central 3rd. However, as both five- and six-course
lutes are mentioned, the position of the ‘central 3rd’ is unfortunately
ambiguous. Both the Königstein Liederbuch (c1470–73) and an English
manuscript dating from between 1493 and 1509 (GB-Ctc 0.2.13) give
intervals of 4–3–4–4 from bass to treble. Ramis de Pareia (Musica practica,
Bologna, 1482) stated that the most common tuning was G–c–e–a–d', but
mentioned another drone tuning with the lowest three strings tuned to A–d–
a; the trebles were set in various (unspecified) ways. Antonio de Nebrija
(Vocabulario Español-Latino, Salamanca, c1495) apparently gave an
unlikely diminished 5th between the two lowest courses, then 3–4–5, but
the correct translation of his description is disputed. The late 15th-century
Pesaro manuscript (I-PESo 1144) includes tablature for a seven-course
lute with the tuning 4–4–4–3–4–4, as does a manuscript now in Bologna (I-
Bu 596.HH.24, which probably dates from the same period. The latter gives
the tuning E–A–d–g–b–e'–a'.

By around 1500 six courses had become standard; the earliest printed
sources, including Spinacino (1507), Dalza (1508) and Bossinensis (1509
and 1511) require a six-course lute, usually tuned 4–4–3–4–4. Virdung
(Musica getuscht; Basle, 1511) mentioned lutes of five, six and seven
courses, the six-course lute being the most common, and gave a tuning 4–
4–3–4–4, with the sixth course tuned to a nominal A. The fourth, fifth and
sixth courses were tuned in octaves, the second and third courses in

17
unisons, with a single first course. Agricola advocated this pattern in the
first edition of his Musica instrumentalis deudsch (Wittenberg, 1529) but
gave a tuning a tone lower, in nominal G. Occasionally the sixth course was
tuned down a tone, a variation called ‘Abzug’ by Virdung and ‘bordon
descordato’ by Spinacino. In the 1545 edition of Musica instrumentalis
deudsch Agricola stated that a seven-course instrument, with the seventh
course tuned a tone below the sixth course, was preferable to this
scordatura, which was difficult to manage.

This basic six-course tuning, with octaved lower courses, and an interval
of two octaves between the outer courses, remained the norm for most of
the 16th century. Tablature sources with parallel staff notation (from both
the 16th and early 17th centuries) show that the most common nominal
tunings were either in A (A–d–g–b–e'–a') or G (G–c–f–a–d'–g'), though
lutes in other nominal pitches are encountered. There is a considerable
body of literature discussing whether or not these variable pitches were
intended to be interpreted literally. Practical considerations of instrument
availability, together with notational considerations such as the avoidance
of leger lines in the staff notated part, suggest that these apparent lute
pitches were only nominal. Cue notes are often provided in the tablature, to
clarify the relationship of lute pitch to staff notation. The absolute pitch of
the lute was variable; contemporary tutors typically instruct the player to
tune the top course as high as possible, and set the other strings to that.

Surviving 16th-century tablatures for multiple lutes call for a total

‘consort’ of nominal d'', a', g', e' and d', to accommodate all of the variations
encountered in the duet and trio repertories, though Praetorius (Syntagma
musicum, ii, 1618, 2/1619/R) mentioned other sizes too. The intervals
between courses remained the same, irrespective of the size of the lute. A
few lutenists explored other tunings, albeit briefly; these included Hans
Neusidler (1544) whose infamous Judentanz requires a drone tuning;
Barberiis (1549) printed pieces using the tunings 4–5–3–4–4, 5–4–2–4–4,
and 4–4–3–5–4; Wolff Heckel (1562) also used a drone tuning for a
Judentanz and other pieces.

By the 1580s a seventh course, tuned either a tone or a 4th below the
sixth course, was in regular use, and eight-course lutes incorporating both
of these options became common in the 1590s. By the early 1600s ten-
course lutes were in use, with diatonically tuned basses descending
stepwise from the sixth course. Around the same period the octave tuning
of at least the fourth and fifth courses was dropped in favour of unisons,
though the octaves were certainly retained on the lowest courses and
perhaps on the sixth course too. Otherwise the tuning of the six upper
courses remained essentially unchanged, and became known as vieil ton.
There was a brief vogue for cordes avallées tunings in France, used by
Francisque (1600) and Besard (C1603), which involved lowering the fourth,
fifth and sixth courses to give drone-like 4ths and 5ths. These tunings were
used almost exclusively for rustic dance pieces.

18
 In the early years of the 17th century two distinct traditions began to
emerge. The Italians mostly retained the old tuning, adding extra bass
courses (see Archlute) though P.P. Melli and Bernardo Gianoncelli
experimented with variant tunings of the upper courses. Around 1620
French composers began to experiment with several accords nouveaux,
first on ten-course lutes, and later on 11- and 12-course instruments. (With
these new tunings, the interval between the first and sixth courses was
always narrower than the two octaves of vieil ton; they should not be
confused with the cordes avallées tunings, where this interval was always
wider than two octaves.) This experimentation continued until at least the
1670s, and music for over 20 different tunings survives, many of which
were given different names by different scribes or composers (see Schulze-
Kurz, E1990). However, only a handful were common and these included
what is today considered to be the normal ‘Baroque’ D minor tuning. This
did not become standard until the second half of the 17th century; the
tuning commonly known as ‘Flat French’ was equally popular until about
the 1660s. The advantages of the new tunings were increased resonance
and ease of left-hand fingering, though only within a very limited range of
keys. The derivation of these tunings from vieil ton, and the subsequent
emergence of the D minor tuning, has been somewhat obfuscated by
recent editorial methods which transcribe these tunings on the basis of an
instrument whose sixth course is tuned to G. The transition is much clearer
(and transcriptions emerge in less obscure keys) if the sixth course in vieil
ton is considered to be A. Some of the more common tunings are shown in
Table 1. In all of the above tunings (including vieil ton on lutes with more
than eight courses) the basses were tuned diatonically downwards from the
sixth course. The lute had become essentially diatonic in its bass register,
and the tuning of the lowest courses would be adjusted for the key of the
piece. (This was a major factor in the grouping of pieces by key, which led
to the baroque suite.)

The first print to use the new tunings was Pierre Ballard’s Tablature de
luth de différents autheurs sur l’accord ordinaire et extraordinaire (Paris,
1623; now lost). Slightly later collections survive, containing fine music by
Mesangeau, Chancy, Belleville, Robert Ballard (ii), Pierre Gautier (i) and
others, in various accords nouveaux. The tunings were widely used in
England after the 1630s; publications by Richard Mathew (1652) and
Thomas Mace (C1676) use ‘Flat French’ tuning; Mace provided a
translation chart to convert tablatures between ‘Flat French’ and ‘D minor’
tunings. By the 1670s the 11-course single-pegbox lute in D minor tuning
had emerged as the preferred norm throughout much of Europe, and
remained so until the early years of the 18th century, when two further
courses were added, extending the lute’s range down to A'. The last printed
sources to make significant use of variant tunings are Esaias Reusner (ii)
(1676) and Jakob Kremberg (1689).

19
 Lute (ii)

6. Technique.

Several writers of instruction books for the lute have remarked that many
masters of the art were, as Mace put it, ‘extreme Shie in revealing the
Occult and Hidden Secrets of the Lute’. Bermudo had lamented the same
characteristic in teachers: ‘What a pity it is (and those who have Christian
understanding must weep for it) that the great secrets of music die in a
moment with the person of the musician, for lack of having communicated
them to others’. The training of professional players was almost certainly
carried on through some system of apprenticeship, and this may well be
one of the reasons why comparatively few books give really informative
instructions on all aspects of playing technique. Nevertheless, details have
been left by the more conscientious authors that are sufficiently clear to
establish the main characteristics of lute technique in each period.

Although little was written about left-hand techniques, certain basic rules
were mentioned from the Capirola Lutebook (c1517, US-Cn; ed. O.
Gombosi, 1955; see also Marincola, F1983) onwards. The lute must be
held in such a way that no weight is taken by the left hand. The thumb
should be placed lightly on the underside of the neck, opposite the first and
second fingers. The tips of the fingers should always stay as close as
possible to the strings so that each one is ready to take its position without
undue movement. Fingers must be kept in position on the strings until they
are required to stop another string, or until the harmony changes.
Judenkünig went so far as to say they must never be lifted until needed
elsewhere.

In Capirola’s lutebook the player was advised to keep the fingers in

readiness and not to avoid using the little finger; the first finger could be laid
across several strings to form a barré chord. Sometimes a finger was
placed on one string only of a course in order to create an extra voice (a
device also described by Valentin Bakfark and the vihuelist Miguel de
Fuenllana); the right hand would then strike through the whole course as
usual.

It was, however, the German masters who first codified a system of

fingering. Judenkünig gave a series of diagrams of left-hand positions. In
the first of these the hand spans the first three frets and the fourth fret on
the sixth course; the first finger is marked with the six characters of the first
fret in German tablature; the second finger is marked with the next series;
the third finger takes the lower three courses on the third fret; and the little
finger takes the upper three courses as well as the fourth fret on the sixth
course. Each diagram shows the fingers rigidly aligned on the appropriate
fret. A small cross placed above a letter indicates that the finger must be
held down and the following note played with the next finger, whatever fret
it may be on. Judenkünig did not describe the fingering of chords, or cross-
fingering where the counterpoint makes it necessary to depart from the
prescribed alignment. Neusidler (Ein newgeordnet künstlich Lautenbuch,

20
1536) indicated by means of dots the fingering of a number of simple
compositions. In general he followed the rules laid down by Judenkünig, but
he also showed how chords constantly demand the use of fingers on frets
other than those allotted to them in a strict diagrammatic scheme.

In England and France little attention was given to left-hand technique

until the publication of Adrian Le Roy’s tutor Instruction … de luth (?1557,
lost, repr. 1567, also lost, Eng. trans., 1568, see §8(v)), which described
the barré chord as ‘couching’ the first finger ‘along overthwart the stoppe’.
Robinson (C1603) described how to finger certain chord passages and also
how to finger ascending and descending melodic lines. He also added
fingering marks to the first five compositions in his books. Besard (C1603)
described in considerable detail the use of the barré, and half barré, and
also gave advice on how to choose the correct finger for holding notes,
particularly in the bass. Later in the 17th century more complete markings
were given by Nicolas Vallet (Secretum musarum, 1615) and, for a 12-
course French lute, Mace.

Until about the second half of the 15th century most representations of
lute players (where the details are visible) show the strings being struck
with a quill or plectrum. The hand approaches the strings from below the
bridge and lies nearly parallel with them. The plectrum or quill is held either
between the thumb and first finger, or the first and second, or even the
second and third. Gradually the fingers replaced the plectrum. In pictures
dating from about 1480 it is common to see players with the hand in a
slightly more transverse position (see fig.9). For any composition involving
chords the advantage of this change is obvious. Tinctoris observed that
players were becoming so skilful that they could play four voices together
on the lute perfectly.

The earliest printed books gave little information about right-hand

techniques. A dot placed under a note signified that it was to be played
upwards, and the absence of a dot downwards; all passages of single
notes were played accordingly. Later sources specified that the downward
stroke was always taken by the thumb on the accented beat, while the
unaccented beat was taken upwards, usually with the first finger. This type
of fingering was to remain standard practice until about 1600. It was still
mentioned by Alessandro Piccinini (Intavolatura di liuto, et di chitarrone,
1623) and by Mersenne (1636–7), and it survived for runs of single notes
across the lute from bottom to top and for certain other passages until
1660–70.

According to the instructions in the Capirola manuscript (the first to give

any real insight into the playing position of the right hand), the thumb was
held under the second finger, that is, inside the hand. Adrian Le Roy was
the first to mention that the little finger is placed on the belly of the lute,
although many representations of players before 1568 show the hand with
the little finger in this position. Le Roy wrote: ‘the little finger serveth but to
keep the hande from [firm] upon the bealie of the Lute’. From then onwards
it was frequently mentioned. Robinson, for example, said: ‘leane upon the

21
bellie of the Lute with your little finger onelie, & that neither to far from the
Treble strings, neither to neere’. Mace wrote: ‘The 2d. thing to be gain’d is,
setting down your Little Finger upon the Belly, as aforesaid, close under the
Bridge, about the first, 2d, 3d, or 4th. Strings; for thereabout, is its constant
station. It steadies the Hand, and gives a Certainty to the Grasp’. From this
time onwards, portraits of performing lute players always show the little
finger placed either on the soundboard, in front of or behind the bridge, or
on the bridge itself (as in fig.11).

During the Renaissance, chords were usually played with the thumb on
the bass, playing downwards, and the first and second, or the first, second
and third fingers, playing upwards. For chords of more than four notes the
following procedure was given by Le Roy and Besard: for five-note chords
the thumb plays the bass downwards, the third and fourth courses are
raked upwards by the first finger, and the first and second courses are
played respectively by the third and second fingers; six-note chords are
played in a similar way with the thumb playing downwards across both the
sixth and fifth courses. The upper note of two-part chords was generally
taken by the second finger, although Robinson preferred the third.

A single dot under a chord of two or three notes generally means that it
is played upwards with the usual fingers, but without the thumb. Gerle,
however, used a dot under a chord to show that all the notes were to be
played upwards with the first finger, while Judenkünig said that in dance
music full chords may be stroked or strummed with the thumb throughout.
Neusidler also mentioned the ‘thumb-stroke’. Robinson, however,
advocated the third finger for notes farthest from the thumb, the second for
the next note, and the first for those nearest. Besard was the first writer to
describe a new position for the thumb; his directions are translated as
follows in Dowland’s book of 1610:

stretch out your Thombe with all the force you can, especially if
thy Thombe be short, so that the other fingers may be carryed in the
manner of a fist, and let the Thombe be held higher than them, this
in the beginning will be hard. Yet they which have a short Thombe
may imitate those which strike the strings with the Thombe under the
other fingers, which though it be nothing so elegant, yet to them it
will be more easie.

Dowland himself is said to have changed to the ‘thumb-out’ position in

mid-career (Beier, B1979), presumably to take advantage of the
consequent greater stretch, perhaps in connection with the addition of extra
courses. The increase in the number of courses was probably also
responsible for a general shift in the position and movement of the hand.
Besard suggested:

the first two fingers may be used in Diminutions very well insteed
of the Thombe and the fore-finger, if they be placed with some
Bases, so that the middle finger be in place of the Thombe, which
Thombe whilst it is occupied in striking at least the Bases, both the

22
hands will be graced and that unmanly motion of the Arme (which
many cannot well avoide) shall be shunned. But if with the said
Diminutions there be not set Bases which are to be stopped, I will
not counsell you to use the two first fingers, but rather the Thombe
and the fore-finger: neither will I wish you to use the two fore-fingers
if you be to proceede (that is to runne) into the fourth, fift or sixt
string with Diminutions set also with some parts.

Markings comprising a pair of dots or small strokes under the note to

indicate the use of the second finger occur in many manuscripts from the
early 17th century (e.g. Vallet used the latter marking). A single vertical line
or stroke under a note was an indication to use the thumb, to which greater
attention was paid with the increasing number of bass strings. Piccinini
described an apoyando stroke:

The thumb, on which I do not approve of a very long nail, must be

employed in this manner, that every time you sound a string you
must direct it [the thumb] towards the soundboard, so that it is
crushed onto the string below, and it must be kept there until it has
to be used again.

This type of stroke was mentioned by other writers and appears to have
become standard practice during the Baroque period. In fact, such a
technique is almost essential when the thumb has to make rapid jumps
among a number of diapasons. If the thumb is held free, there is no point of
reference from which each movement can be judged accurately.

In the second decade of the 17th century many new technical devices
began to appear. Bataille’s Airs de différents autheurs (iv, 1613) used a dot
for a quasi-rasgueado device in repeated chords (ex.1) that is described by
Mersenne and became extremely common, especially in pieces in
sarabande rhythm: the dot at the top of the chord stands for an upward
stroke with the first finger, while the dot at the bottom stands for a
downward stroke with the back of the same finger (ex.1a). For this device,
sometimes called tirer et rabattre, later composers often distinguished the
second, downward-struck chord by dots next to the notes (ex.1b).

Italy was apparently the first country in which the slur was developed as
part of normal technique instead of being confined to the execution of
graces. Pietro Paoli Melli (Intavolatura di liuto attiorbato libro secondo,
1614) described the action of the left hand, and placed a ligature under
pairs of notes to be slurred, a marking which was always used to indicate
the slur. There seems to be no evidence that the slur was used in France,
England or Germany at this early date, but Mersenne described it in 1636.

Piccinini introduced some individualistic traits into his playing: although

the use of the nails was deprecated by nearly all other writers, Piccinini said
that they should be ‘a little long, in front of the flesh, but not much, and oval

23
in shape’. He played the rapid ‘groppo that is made at the cadence’ with the
first finger alone, striking upwards and downwards with the tip of the nail.
(This is similar to the vihuela’s ‘dedillo’, which was usually played with short
nails.) He also advocated a change of tone colour by moving the right hand
nearer or farther from the bridge. In France an increasing number of
different right-hand strokes were used. Mersenne gave the traditional
fingerings both for chords and single-note passages, and some new
strokes which had evidently become popular by then. He described several
ways of playing chords, and a system of marking by which each method
could be distinguished. Some chords were played downwards with the
thumb: others with all the notes played by the thumb except the top one
which was played by the first finger; others with the thumb playing the
single bass note while the first finger raked the rest of the notes upwards.
Unfortunately these detailed notations seem not to have been adopted in
other surviving printed and manuscript sources. Nevertheless many of
these devices became part of the French Baroque style. In volumes such
as Denis Gaultier’s Pièces de luth (1666), Denis and Ennemond Gaultier’s
Livre de tablature des pièces de luth (c1672) and Jacques Gallot’s Pièces
de luth (1681), markings are given for arpeggiating or ‘breaking’ chords.
Some writers described the ‘slipping’ of the first finger across two notes on
adjacent strings to realize a short mordent, usually at a cadence; this
characteristic device, which was used well into the 18th century, was
shown by three different markings (ex.2).

Many of these techniques were carefully described in English lute books

such as the Mary Burwell Lute Tutor (c1660–72, GB-Lam) and in Mace’s
Musick’s Monument. The techniques were passed on to the German
school; a similar variety of strokes is described by Baron who also
mentioned a change of right-hand position for tone colour. As in other
countries, German sources vary greatly in the extent to which technique
marks and left-hand fingerings were added to the tablature, often reflecting
the level of attainment of the person for whom they were written.

The development of playing technique was thus closely related to the

continual process of extending the resources of the instrument. Moreover,
each technique produces particular qualities suited to its own time, and the
modern lutenist must know this in order to do justice to the music. Most
‘technical’ indications, such as vibrato or staccato (see §7 below), or the
spreading of chords (indicated by oblique lines separating the notes of a
chord; see §8(iii)), come under the general heading of ‘graces’ (Fr.
agréments; Ger. Manieren), which term adumbrates most aspects of
performance as well as ornamentation in treatises, including playing loudly
and softly or with rhetorical intent.

24
 Lute (ii)

7. Ornamentation.

The use of what in modern terms would be called trills, mordents,

appoggiaturas and vibrato has evidently always been an integral part of the
performance of lute music. The fact that in the Renaissance period
ornament signs are frequently not included in printed books or manuscripts
and are written about comparatively rarely in early tutors may be due to
several causes; probably the most important was that there was a living
tradition that was considered unnecessary to mention or notate. Another
reason may have been that cited by Mersenne, namely that printers lacked
the requisite signs in their equipment. These ornaments never acquired a
standardized nomenclature or system of signs, although some degree of
conformity developed towards the end of the Baroque period.

In the Capirola Lutebook (c1517, US-Cn), the earliest known source of

information, two signs are used: one shows figures notated with red dots;
the other consists of two red dots placed over the figure. Of the first sign it
is said only that the finger on the lower fret is held firm and another finger is
used to ‘tremolize’ on or from the fret above. The second sign is said to
indicate that the note is ‘tremolized’ with a single finger; it probably
represents a mordent.

More precise information was given by Pietro Paolo Borrono in the

second printing (Milan, 1548) of the Intavolatura di lauto which gives
appoggiaturas with both notes carefully indicated by sign. Only the
appoggiatura from above is mentioned in the directions, which also say that
it is to be played on the beat.

Rudolf Wyssenbach printed a transcription in German tablature (Zürich,

1550) of part of the contents of the Francesco-Borrono book of 1546; half
circles are said to indicate mordanten, but no further explanation is given.
The word mordanten appears to have been used in German as a general
term for ornaments including the appoggiatura rather than as a specific
term for any one type of ornament. It occurs in Martin Agricola’s Musica
instrumentalis deudsch (1529) and was still used by Matthäus Waissel in
his Lautenbuch darinn von der Tabulatur und Application der Lauten
(1592). Waissel’s remark that the fingers are put ‘a little later on the letters
and moved up and down two or three times’ indicates (in agreement with
Borrono) that the ornament came on or after the beat and not before.

No information appears to have survived concerning ornamentation of

French lute music before Besard, who made the following remark:

You should have some rules for the sweet relishes and shakes if
they could be expressed here, as they are on the LUTE: but seeing
they cannot by speech or writing be expressed, thou wert best to
imitate some cunning player.

25
 Vallet used two signs: a comma, signifying a fall from above the main
note (upper appoggiatura), and a single cross, signifying the same thing
repeated several times, i.e. a trill. In his Regia pietas (1620) Vallet
described what is in effect a vibrato, indicated by a double cross.

Mersenne gave the most complete exposition of the art of ornamentation

of the period. Excluding minor variants (such as whether a tone or semitone
is involved), seven ornaments may be tallied: the tremblement (trill); the
accent plaintif (appoggiatura from below, equal in duration to half the value
of the main note); the martelement or soupir (mordent); the verre cassé
(vibrato, which Mersenne said was not much used in his time, although it
was very popular in the past; in his opinion, however, it would be as bad a
fault to omit it altogether as to use it to excess); the battement (long trill,
more suitable to the violin, he said, than to the lute); a combination (for
which no name is given) of appoggiatura from below with trill from above;
and a mordent ending with verre cassé. He gave a sign to indicate each of
the seven types, but remarked that in French music the small comma was
generally used to ‘express all sorts’.

In Italy, Kapsperger (Libro primo d’intavolatura di chitarrone, 1604)

placed two dots above many notes to indicate the trillo, and also added a
sign (an oblique stroke with a dot on either side) below certain chords to
show that they were to be arpeggiated. Melli marked the notes on which a
‘tremolo’ should be performed, but gave no explanation of the meaning of
the word, though he described a method of performing an appoggiatura
from below by sliding the auxiliary to the main note with a single finger. This
is indicated by a ligature above the two notes and appears to be unique in
this period. Piccinini, however, gave detailed descriptions of the trill, the
mordent and the vibrato, which he called the first, second and third tremolo,
but he did not include signs for them in the tablature.

Early English manuscript sources show no ornament signs, but all the
books copied by Matthew Holmes (c1580–1610, GB-Cu) contain them,
although their placing is often curious. At least 17 other manuscripts also
have signs, and William Barley’s A Newe Booke of Tabliture (1596)
includes the double cross, but with no explanation of its meaning. The only
English book of this period containing information on the subject is
Robinson’s The Schoole of Musicke (1603). He gave no signs nor any
indication of where the graces should be placed, but he described three
that could be used: the relish (perhaps an appoggiatura from above, or a
trill); the fall (an appoggiatura from below); and a fall with a relish (possibly
the same as Mersenne's combination of lower appoggiatura and upper trill).
Robinson said of the relish:

The longer the time of a single stroke … the more need it hath of
a relish, for a relish will help, both to grace it, and also it helps to
continue the sound of the note his full time: but in a quicke time a
little touch or jerke will serve, and that only with the most strongest
finger.

26
 The variety of graces in use around 1625 is indicated in Table 2, taken
from the Margaret Board Lutebook (GB-Lam, f.32). Generally, however, the
lack of standardization in signs and the absence of any indication of their
meaning as used by different scribes poses a formidable problem in
interpretation, and it is possible here only to offer some suggestions based
on a study of their context in all the available material. Table 3 shows the
signs most generally found in English manuscript sources. Sign (a) is often
the only sign in a manuscript, and, like the French comma, can be taken ‘to
express all sorts’. If it appears in company with other signs it seems to
signify an ornament from above the main note, perhaps an appoggiatura or
trill. Sign (b) indicates an appoggiatura from below, a mordent, or a slide
(the ornament that comes up to the main note from a minor or major 3rd
below). Sign (c) appears in the Sampson Lutebook (GB-Lam); its possible
interpretation as a slide on a major 3rd is discussed below. Sign (d)
indicates an appoggiatura from below, in the Sampson Lutebook; this is
suggested by the fact that the sign appears before a note which is followed
by (a), presumably indicating Robinson’s ‘fall with a relish’. Sign (e) is used
similarly (US-Ws 1610.1). Signs (f) and (g) (the latter from GB-Lbl
Add.38539) indicate a mordent, appoggiatura from below or a slide. Sign
(h) occurs in a limited number of pieces in GB-Lbl Add.38539, always on a
note immediately preceded by the note above, and often in fairly fast runs.
This may be the ‘little touch or jerke’ mentioned by Robinson, or possibly an
inverted mordent. Although the latter was clearly described in Spain from
the time of Tomás de Santa María (in Arte de tañer fantasía assi para tecla
como para vihuela, 1565) to Pablo Nassare (Escuela musica, 1724), in Italy
by Girolamo Diruta (Il transilvano, 1593) and in Germany by Praetorius
(Syntagma musicum, iii, 2/1619), there is no mention of it in any English
source. It would, however, fit into the passages in which the sign is used.
Signs (i), (j) and (k) indicate a fall with a relish. In compositions in John
Dowland’s hand, (c), which appears on both open and stopped notes,
presumably indicates an upper appoggiatura or trill; (f), which appears on
stopped notes only, may indicate an appoggiatura from below; and (b),
which appears on open notes only, may indicate a trill. However, these
interpretations are open to question owing to a marked lack of consistency
in the application of gracing, and in its notation. Many sources have few, if
any, grace marks, and in the final analysis musical intuition has to be the
arbiter. (The interpretation of ornament signs in English lute music is further
addressed, with somewhat differing results, in studies by Buetens and
Shepherd.)

Fashion in ornamentation may have varied from country to country;

English players of the first two decades of the 17th century perhaps graced
their music to a greater extent than those in any other part of Europe. A
Fantasie by Dowland (GB-Lbl Add. 38539, f.14v; ex.3), with nine ornaments
in the space of five bars, shows an extreme of English practice.

No exact line of demarcation can be drawn between Renaissance and

Baroque ornamentation. Most graces used in the earlier period continued in
favour, but a few more elaborate combinations appeared. From Mersenne’s
time onwards, some French manuscripts have a large variety of signs: the

27
comma, ‘’ and ‘’ for martelements, something like an ordinary mordent sign
placed under a note, and, to indicate the appoggiatura from below, a bow-
like sign placed beneath the tablature letter, very like Mace’s sign for a slur.
Double shakes or appoggiaturas began to appear. The étouffement
(Mace’s ‘tut’) is also mentioned in some sources, and the sign ‘’ is used.
Mace’s Musick’s Monument, in many ways the most thorough study of the
French lute, includes (pp.101ff) a list of ornaments, which are summarized
in Table 4. He also wrote of loud and soft play and the use of the pause
(indicated by a small fermata sign) as additional graces to be observed.

In Denis Gaultier’s Pièces de luth (1666) less elaboration is found. The

two ornaments given are indicated by the comma and the slur and are
equivalent to Mace’s back-fall and fore-fall. In Livre de tablature des pièces
de luth by Denis and Ennemond Gaultier (c1672) the explanation of the
comma shows that the number of falls should be increased according to the
length of the note. According to Mary Burwell’s teacher, however, Denis
Gaultier ‘would have no shake at all’. Undoubtedly personal taste played a
part in ornamentation as in all other aspects of performance. Three
ornament signs are listed by Gallot: tremblement, or trill, indicated by a
small comma after the tablature letter; martelement, or mordent, indicated
by ‘’; choutte, or tombé, an appoggiatura from below, indicated by an
inverted ‘’ before the letter. The rhythmical breaking of chords, a universal
feature of the French lute style (see §8(iii) below, esp. ex.6), was explicitly
indicated by oblique lines between chord members. The existence of
another explicit notation, a vertical line connecting non-adjacent tablature
letters, to indicate that the notes are to be struck together, suggests that a
certain degree of spreading was in fact normal.

German Baroque lutenists at first consciously maintained the tradition of

the Parisian luthistes, using many of the French ornament signs, which they
classed under the general heading of Manieren (equivalent to agréments or
‘graces’) along with other technical or performance indications. The Breslau
lutenist, Esaias Reusner (ii), who was coached by an unknown French
lutenist in Paris in the 1650s, used a cross, a comma and a ‘fermata’ sign
(Delitiae testudinis, 1667 and Neue Lauten-Früchte, 1676) but did not
explain their meaning. The context suggests that the comma indicates a trill
and the cross a mordent, while the fermata probably represents a pause,
as it does for his English contemporary, Mace. Reusner indicated the
appoggiatura from below by a bow under the letter. Le Sage de Richée
(Cabinet der Lauten) gave, together with other information about
performing practice, three ornaments: the trill indicated by a comma; the
appoggiatura from above, which he called Abzug; and the appoggiatura
from below (Fall). Both appoggiaturas are written out with a bow under the
pairs of letters (the explanations are somewhat ambiguous). Radolt
(Vienna, 1701) provided an exhaustive list of Manieren citing François
Dufaut’s example. Hinterleithner (Vienna, 1699) explained that the Abzug
(which he called Abriss) divides the ornamented note’s duration equally.
Trills are only played on dotted notes; on shorter notes they are
abbreviated to an Abriss. Radolt stressed that the trill always begins on the
upper note. Baron (Nuremberg, 1727) used the same signs as Radolt for

28
the appoggiatura from above (Abziehen) and for the trill (performed from
the upper note, and gradually increasing in speed), but in addition
described two forms of vibrato (Bebung): one (on the higher strings)
performed with the thumb released from the back of the neck, the other
with the thumb held firm. He indicated them with a double and slanted
cross respectively. Baron added that the ornaments he mentioned were not
the only ones that could be used, as many more could be added with the
use of skill and taste: ‘Every player must judge for himself what sort of
affect he wishes to express with this or that ornament’. He also stressed the
difference between solo performance, where a player could use more
ornamentation and rubato, and ensemble playing, where each player’s
performing method had to be known in advance and accommodated for the
sake of good ensemble. For faster music, Baron remarked that ‘the best
Manier is nothing more than neatness and clarity, and if someone wanted
to make many other additions it would be as ridiculous as chasing rabbits
with snails and crabs’.

Silvius Leopold Weiss’s notational practice was remarkably consistent in

his numerous autograph manuscripts. As was common in the period, he
tended to use more ornamentation in slow movements, and the ornamental
notes are seamlessly integrated into the music, occasionally (especially the
Einfall) being written out explicitly in the tablature, often using separate
strings for the ornamental and main notes, rather than being indicated by
signs. This ‘two-string appoggiatura’ (ex.4) had been in use since the days
of the Parisian luthistes, but unlike them Weiss frequently used it in an
unambiguously melodic context. He used the normal comma sign for an
Abzug or Triller, sometimes extended by repetition, and the bow under a
letter for an appoggiatura from below; sometimes, especially at a cadence,
this sign extends backwards towards the previous note, even across a
barline, looking somewhat like a legato slur (ex.5). The mordent is marked
by a single cross and Bebung (vibrato, rarely used by Weiss) by a short
wavy line above and to the right of the letter.

There is no surviving treatise or table of ornaments by Weiss although

he was much in demand as a teacher. Whereas he was following earlier
practice in not using signs to distinguish the Abzug and Triller, nor the short
and long forms of mordent and trill, later players, whose extensive repertory
of signs was possibly influenced by the practice of their keyboard-playing
contemporaries, became more explicit in their notation. A manuscript from
Bayreuth (c1750, D-Ngm M274) contains two tables of ‘Zeichen der Lauten
Manieren’ (‘signs for lute graces’) attributable to Weiss’s one-time pupil,
Adam Falckenhagen. The signs therein correspond with Falckenhagen’s
printed works and with the tablature version of J.S. Bach’s Lute Suite in G
minor bwv995, which was probably intabulated by Falckenhagen. Signs
which seem to be introduced in these tables for the first time include one for
‘gebrochener Bass’ (‘broken bass’; the fundamental and octave strings of a
bass course being rhythmically separated), a sign for staccato or damped
(‘gestossen’) chords, and a sign for the full turn (with a written-out
realization equivalent to C.P.E. Bach’s geschnellte Doppelschlag). A
closely related table was printed by J.C. Beyer with his lute arrangements

29
of Herrn Prof. Gellerts Oden und Lieder (1760). The principal ornament
signs used or explained by Le Sage de Richée, Hinterleithner, Radolt,
Baron, Weiss, Falckenhagen and Beyer are summarized in Table 5.
No se
pude
mostr
ar la
image
n

From the early years of the 16th century to the end of the 18th, the use
of graces was an integral part of performing practice on the lute as it was
on the harpsichord. Because of its lack of sustaining power (compared with
bowed instruments) these devices were essential, especially in slower
music. Finally the necessity promoted the fashion and composers expected
graces to be added, whether or not they were actually indicated, since they
were an essential feature of lute style.

During the 17th and 18th centuries the art of ornamentation received
careful attention in numerous treatises on singing and on playing various
instruments, and also in composers’ prefaces to their works: this valuable
information is often applicable to the lute as well as to the particular subject
under consideration (see Ornaments).

Lute (ii)

8. Repertory.

From the 1270s, when Jehan de Meung in Le roman de la rose

mentioned ‘quitarres e leüz’, the presence of the lute in western Europe is
evident in literary sources, court records and inventories. The Duke of
Orléans is said to have had in his service in 1396 ‘un joueur de vièle et de
luc’ called Henri de Ganière. The names of a few players from other parts
of Europe have also survived, such as a certain Obrecht in Basle in 1363,
and the brothers Drayer, minstrels at Mechelen from 1371 to 1374. During
the 14th century, representations of the lute in drawings, paintings and
sculpture became common, often in combination with other instruments,
sometimes accompanying one or more voices.

Extant 15th-century records mention sums of money paid to lute players

in service at the French court. In 1491 for example, Antoine Her, a lute
player of the chamber royal, received a monthly stipend of 10 livres and 10
sols. The great esteem in which virtuosos were held is evident in the case
of Pietrobono, who served the Este family at the court of Ferrara from about
1440 until his death in 1497. Other courts competed for his services; he
was widely travelled, became a rich man and was celebrated by poets and
writers of the time (including Tinctoris). Surviving documents imply that he
accompanied himself in singing and that he was associated with another
player who was listed as a ‘tenorista’ – possibly another lute player or a viol
player who, in either case, would have supplied a ‘tenor’ against which
Pietrobono would have improvised. He seems to exemplify an age in which
Italian lute players were passing from a style that had been mainly

30
improvisatory to one in which, as Tinctoris suggested, a full training in the
technique of contrapuntal writing or playing was essential.

This development was associated with the change from playing the lute
with a plectrum to using the right-hand fingers. Whereas previously the lute
had been a melodic instrument, it could now be used for polyphony. This in
turn soon led to the invention of special forms of notation to overcome the
particular problems involved in transmitting the music to the written or
printed page. Examples of German, French and Italian tablatures from the
end of the 15th century have come to light, but these fragments reveal little
about the early repertory. In addition, there are in the Segovia Cathedral
manuscript some instrumental duos with elaborate divisions by Tinctoris,
Agricola and others that well suit the lute and clearly reflect the
improvisational demands on players of the time; one of these in particular,
a setting of Hayne van Ghizeghem’s De tous biens plaine, ascribed to
Roellrin, also appears in a German manuscript (PL-Wu Mf.20161) and is
unlikely to have been playable on any other contemporary instrument.
Some of the compositions in the earliest printed sources show a similar
style.

A common thread that runs throughout the history of lute playing is the
improvisatory skill of the great performers. For this reason, most of the
repertory was probably never written down. Lute playing was passed on by
individual tuition, and many lute manuscripts were compiled by teachers for
their pupils, and supplemented (sometimes somewhat inexpertly) from
memory by the pupils. These circumstances, combined with the
irrecoverable loss of a great many sources, account for the fact that much
lute music in manuscript carries no composer’s name, and, as much in the
Baroque period as in the Renaissance, there is frequently divergence
between versions of the same piece in different sources, especially in
matters concerning performance. For a fuller discussion of lute sources,
with illustrations, see Sources of lute music.

(i) Italy.
(ii) Germany, Bohemia and Austria.
(iii) France.
(iv) The Netherlands, Spain and eastern Europe.
(v) England.
Lute, §8: Repertory.

(i) Italy.

The earliest surviving significant Italian lute source is a heart-shaped

manuscript (I-PESo 1144) partially copied in the last decades of the 15th
century and possibly of Venetian origin. Unusually, it is notated in a
rudimentary form of French lute tablature (the rhythm-signs and sporadic
barring being apparently based on the position of the tactus rather than on
note durations) using letter-ciphers rather than numbers. This early layer of
the manuscript, which includes one piece for seven-course lute, contains a
few song arrangements (including the ubiquitous De tous biens plaine), a

31
number of ricercares in improvisational style, and a single bassadanza, a
setting of the well-known basse danse tenor La Spagna. From the first
decade of the 16th century the Venetian printing press of Petrucci
distributed music by the early lutenist-composers of the Italian school,
whose influence was felt throughout Europe for the entire 16th century.
Although Marco Dall’Aquila obtained a Venetian privilege to print lute music
in 1505, no such publications by him have survived. Petrucci published six
volumes of lute tablature between 1507 and 1511. The first two books,
entitled Intabulatura de lauto (1507), contain works by Spinacino, mainly for
solo lute but there are also a few duets. There are 25 pieces called
‘recercare’ but most of the pieces are intabulations of Flemish chansons
(from the 1490s) originally for voices. The Intabulatura de lauto, libro tertio
(1508), devoted to music by Gian Maria Hebreo, is now lost; the Libro
quarto by Dalza (1508) contains dances and a few intabulations of frottolas
by contemporary Italians such as Tromboncino. These books include
rudimentary instructions for tablature reading and right-hand technique.
Songs for solo voice and lute appeared in the Tenori e contrabassi
intabulati col sopran in canto figurato per cantar e sonar col lauto (Libro
primo, 1509; Libro secundo, 1511), in which the lutenist Franciscus
Bossinensis intabulated the lower parts of frottolas whose vocal originals
had already been printed by Petrucci. The first book contains 70 such
compositions, the second 56; each contains 20 or more ricercares as well.
The six Petrucci volumes form a substantial collection of first-rate music in
what must have been a well-established tradition of lute writing. The types
of composition they contain evidently reflect the unwritten procedures of
late 15th-century lute playing. The ‘first phase’ of Italian printed books for
lute included one more collection of frottolas with voice part and tablature,
by Tromboncino and Marchetto Cara. The sole extant copy is undated, but
it certainly appeared in the 1520s.

Among the earliest examples of Italian lute music are two pieces in a
Bologna manuscript (after 1484, I-Bu 596). The first page gives an
explanation of the tablature headed ‘La mano ala viola’. There has been
some discussion about the meaning of ‘viola’ in this instance but, since the
discovery of Francesco Canova da Milano’s Intavolatura de viola o vero
lauto (Naples, 1536/R), it is clear that it refers to the flat-backed, waisted
instrument which closely resembles the Spanish vihuela and which was
considered suitable for playing lute music. The form of tablature used in this
case is the rare ‘Intavolatura alla Napolitana’ in which the second volume of
Francesco’s book is printed and which is explained in Michele Carrara’s
Regola ferma e vera (Rome, 1585). In appearance it resembles Italian
tablature but it is the reverse way up, with the figures for the lowest course
lying on the bottom line of the staff. The figure 1 is used throughout for the
open course.

Few contemporary manuscripts survive, but two are of special

importance, both of Venetian provenance. The earlier (F-Pn Rés.Vmd 27)
dates from the first decade of the 16th century, and, like the earlier Pesaro
manuscript, the tablature for the most part omits bar-lines and rhythm-
signs. It comprises two sections, the first of which contains 25 ricercares,

32
dances and frottolas for solo lute; a ricercare and the bassadanza on La
Spagna are also found in the Pesaro manuscript. The second section
contains lute accompaniments to 89 frottolas without the vocal melody. The
other manuscript, the Capirola Lutebook (c1517, US-Cn), beautifully written
and adorned with drawings by a pupil expressly to ensure its preservation,
includes instructions for playing and the use of ornamentation (see §7
above). The composer, Vincenzo Capirola (b 1474; d after 1548), was
clearly the outstanding figure of the earliest period of written lute music.

The acknowledged leader of the following generation, and one of the

most famous lutenists of any age, was Francesco Canova da Milano. He
was already famous for his remarkable skill at improvisation (his
contemporaries often referred to him as ‘Il divino’) when his first works were
published: Intabolatura di liuto (Venice, 1536), and the above-mentioned
Intavolatura de viola o vero lauto. Some 120 to 150 of his compositions are
known today; many continued to appear in print until late in the century and
also appeared in manuscript collections in several countries besides Italy.
Francesco’s lute music consists chiefly of pieces entitled ricercare or
fantasia. He expanded the scope of the quasi-improvisatory ricercare of the
older generation of composers, often making greater use of sequence,
imitation and repetition, and sometimes writing in the strictly contrapuntal
style that became characteristic of the ricercare during and after the latter
part of the 16th century. There are also many intabulations of chansons
and other vocal works, most of which were published after Francesco’s
death. (For a modern edition of Francesco’s lute works see The Lute Music
of Francesco Canova da Milano (1497–1543), ed. A.J. Ness, HPM, iii–iv,
1970.)

From 1536 onwards, publishers, clearly exploiting a growing level of

demand from dilettante players, frequently issued lute music in books
devoted to more than one composer’s music. Five distinguished lutenist-
composers are represented in the Intabolatura de leuto di diversi autori
published by Castiglione (Milan, 1536); as well as fantasias by Francesco
himself, there are several of comparable quality by Marco Dall’Aquila,
Giovanni Giacopo Albuzio and Alberto da Ripa, as well as dances by Pietro
Paulo Borrono.

Marco Dall’Aquila is the most important figure immediately preceding

Francesco. A number of his works were printed, but most, including several
which may originate from a lost print, are collected in a Munich manuscript
(D-Mbs 266). The challenge of marrying a strictly imitative compositional
style to the technical resources of the lute was also taken up by Alberto da
Ripa (works ed. J.-M. Vaccaro, CM, Corpus des luthistes français, 1972–5),
whose fantasias, often of considerable length, further add a telling use of
expressive dissonance. Borrono seems to have specialized in dance music,
although he also composed fantasias. His excellent dances are usually
arranged into suite-like groupings of three or more pieces, sometimes with
a concluding toccata.

33
 Borrono published several collections of his own works and those of
Francesco from 1546 onwards. In that year a large number of publications
appeared containing works by minor composers such as Giulio Abondante,
Melchiore de Barberiis, Giovanni Maria da Crema, Marc’Antonio Pifaro,
Antonio Rotta and Francesco Vindella. Alongside idiomatic dances,
fantasias and ricercares appears an almost equal number of arrangements
or ‘intabulations’ of ensemble music, usually originally written for voices but
occasionally of instrumental music by Julio Segni and others. Often these
are hard to distinguish from original lute compositions, and recent research
has begun to reveal that extracts of previously composed works were
sometimes incorporated without acknowledgement into lute ricercares by
many lutenists of the period, including Francesco himself.

Among the great number of Italian composers for the lute working in the
second half of the 16th century, none reached the stature of Francesco
Canova da Milano, although Giacomo Gorzanis (from 1561 to 1579), Giulio
Cesare Barbetta and Simone Molinaro (1599) published some excellent
works. All the current types of composition are represented in their works:
ricercares and fantasias in the contrapuntal style developed by Francesco;
intabulations of vocal originals; settings of dances, including the various
popular grounds such as the passamezzo antico, the passamezzo
moderno and the romanesca, as well as other famous tunes of the time.
Much of this music was for solo lute, but a collection of dances for three
lutes by Giovanni Pacoloni, long thought to have been lost, survives in an
edition printed by Pierre Phalèse (i) in Leuven in 1564. In 1559 some of
Francesco Canova da Milano’s ricercares were published by the Flemish
composer Ioanne Matelart as Recercate concertate, that is, with a second
lute-part or contrapunto, ingeniously converting the original solos into
duets. Until the middle of the 16th century, lute music was generally within
the prevailing modal ideas of the time, although some composers
occasionally departed from strict modal structure. In 1567, however,
Gorzanis produced a remarkable manuscript of 24 passamezzos, each with
its accompanying saltarello, in major and minor modes on all the degrees of
the chromatic scale, rising in succession.

True chromatic writing for the lute was rare, although by the end of the
century it was beginning to be exploited, notably in works by the Genoese
maestro di cappella, Simone Molinaro. The few surviving fantasias by the
important Neapolitan composer and lutenist Fabrizio Dentice show a great
command of the instrument and its contrapuntal possibilities; they are
technically demanding, being consistently written in four real parts.

Vicenzo Galilei was another important figure of the period, though he is

less known today as a composer than as a writer; his theoretical and
practical studies are contained in books printed between 1568 and 1589,
while further prints and manuscripts preserve a large body of his excellent
lute music (extracts ed. in IMi, iv, 1934). At this time Italian lutenists were in
demand throughout Europe; Galilei’s gifted younger son Michelangelo
(1575–1631) worked as lutenist for the Polish and Bavarian courts (it was
said that his brother, the scientist Galileo, was an even finer player).

34
Diomedes Cato and Lorenzini were outstanding composers, each with a
very personal style. Diomedes served the Polish court for many years,
while Lorenzini, said to have received a papal knighthood for his lute
playing, was unsuccessfully approached by Lassus as a recruit for the
Kapelle of the Duke of Bavaria. His technically demanding and expressive
music was later collected and published by a pupil, the French lutenist
Besard, in his Thesaurus harmonicus (Cologne, 1603). Another
distinguished lutenist who does not seem to have left Italy, Giovanni
Antonio Terzi, published two books of his own fine music (1593 and 1599)
– fantasias, vocal intabulations and dances – mainly for solo lute but
including music for two and four lutes as well as lute parts to be played with
other instruments. In Terzi’s second collection the ‘courante francese’
appears for the first time in Italy, presaging the changes in musical style
and lute technique that were to result in French dominance of the lute
scene for most of the following century.

French influence in dance music becomes increasingly important in the

few Italian lute collections of the 17th century, although the expressive
Italianate toccata style holds sway in freely composed genres.
Michelangelo Galilei (1620) composed suites each comprising an
introductory toccata effectively exploiting expressive dissonance followed
by a sequence of dances in French style. This quasi-improvisatory style
was taken somewhat further in the collections for lute and chitarrone or
theorbo (1604, 1611 and 1640) by the lutenist and theorbist of German
extraction, Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger, whose idiosyncratic works have
been compared with those for keyboard by his Roman colleague,
Frescobaldi. A more reserved figure is Kapsperger’s Bolognese rival,
Alessandro Piccinini, who was capable of fine works in a severely
contrapuntal idiom as well as tuneful dances, virtuoso variations and
expressive toccatas, frequently using chromaticism to good effect. A
number of pieces by various members of the Garsi family of lutenists from
Parma are found in a variety of manuscript sources, suggesting that their
music was especially popular among dilettante players such as the owner
of one such book (PL-Kj Mus Ms 41053), the Polish or White Russian
nobleman K.S.R. Dusiacki (see Garsi, Santino).

By the 1620s the lute in Italy was normally fitted with several extra bass
courses. A full octave of open basses on an extended neck was standard
on the liuto attiorbato (the ‘theorboed lute’) as used in the French-
influenced works of Pietro Paolo Melli who, unusually, experimented with
scordatura tunings. This type of instrument, whose larger cousin, the
arciliuto (archlute), was principally (although not exclusively) used for
accompaniment from around 1680, was also called for in the highly virtuoso
music of Bernardo Gianoncelli (1650), and again in the Corellian sonatas of
Giovanni Zamboni (1718). Lute tablature was by this time virtually obsolete
in Italy, although the instrument was used throughout the 18th century. The
last significant sources, Filippo Dalla Casa’s manuscripts of 1759 (I-Bc
EE155; ed. O. Cristoforetti, 1984), are written entirely in staff notation, a
fact which raises the question as to whether more Italian lute music may
survive in this form as yet unrecognized.

35
 Lute, §8: Repertory.

(ii) Germany, Bohemia and Austria.

Although based in Italy, many of the important figures in the early history
of the lute were in fact German, notably the 15th-century blind organist,
harpist and lutenist Conrad Paumann, who is said to have invented the
German lute tablature system. Outside Italy the first printed lute music
appeared in the Germanic states of the Holy Roman Empire. Virdung
included instructions for the lute and one piece as a pedagogical
illustration. Schlick’s Tabulaturen etlicher Lobgesang und Liedlein (1512)
contains 14 songs for voice and lute and three solo pieces. Judenkünig’s
Utilis et compendiaria introductio (c1515–19) and Ain schone kunstliche
Underweisung (1523) both include instructions for playing as well as music.
The first contains solo lute intabulations of settings of Horace’s odes by
Petrus Tritonius published for voices in 1507, together with other similar
pieces and dance music; the second is a mixture of dances, lute versions of
vocal originals, and five pieces called ‘Priamel’, corresponding to the Italian
ricercare. Gerle (1532) gave instructions and music for viol and rebec as
well as for lute; his book was reprinted in 1537, and in 1546 a revised and
enlarged edition was published. His Tabulatur auff die Laudten (1533)
comprises music for solo lute, including intabulations and pieces entitled
‘Preambel’.

The publications of Hans Neusidler began with his book of 1536. He was
the first writer of instruction books to show real pedagogic talent; not only
did he give clear instructions for both right and left hands, but his pieces are
carefully graduated, leading the beginner by gentle degrees through the
initial difficulties. Two modified tunings are found in his work: one, known as
‘Abzug’, consisted in lowering the sixth course by a tone, and the other was
used in his Judentanz. (The scordatura notation of this piece has been
misread by some scholars, who thereby mistook it for an early example of
polytonality.)

Collections of music in German tablature continued to be printed until

1592, some under the name of the publisher, such as those of Rudolf
Wyssenbach (1550) and Bernhard Jobin (1572), others by composer,
collector or arranger, such as Sebastian Ochsenkun (1558), Matthäus
Waissel (1573, 1591, 1592) and Wolff Heckel (including music for two lutes,
1556, 1562). A total of about 20 or 30 volumes appear to have been
printed. Most of these show considerable influence from Italian, French and
even Spanish music of the time.

The German system of lute tablature was in use not only in Germanic
countries, but was also widespread throughout central and Eastern Europe.
Its earliest appearance (the Königstein Liederbuch; see Sources of lute
music, §3), however, records a few single-line melodies which may be
more suitable for a bowed instrument (identical tablature notation systems
were often used for plucked and bowed instruments until well into the 18th
century). Although there have been a number of studies of German lute

36
tablature sources, the general lack of modern editions reflects the
reluctance of modern lutenists to play from German tablature, which is
commonly perceived as more difficult to read than the French or Italian
systems. The relative importance of German lute sources has thus been
consistently undervalued in the modern revival.

Many of the surviving manuscripts have evident associations with a

university milieu, and these ‘student’ lutebooks often incorporate an
anthology of Latin verses (frequently amorous), classical quotations and
wise proverbs. Their musical content is sometimes less edifying, but they
are valuable as repositories of a very wide range of styles and types of
music, from solo pieces (fantasies, preludes etc.), complex intabulated
vocal polyphony from the French, Italian and Flemish repertory as well as
German chorale settings and Gesellschaftslieder, through to otherwise
unrecorded dance and ‘folk’ music, often explicitly labelled with a regional
origin. Some of the dance music can be shown to have its origins in
polyphonic music and in the repertory of the Stadtpfeifer. An interesting
characteristic is the late survival in lute sources of otherwise obsolete
genres such as the Tenorlied and the Hoftanz. From the late 16th century
onwards, formerly popular Hoftänze are often classed as ‘Polish dances’ in
German lute sources. In manuscript and printed sources, the non-German
music included tends to be predominantly Italian in the early 16th century,
but by the end of the century a scattering of French, Polish and other
Slavic, Hungarian and other Eastern European, and, increasingly, English
dances are identified, many of which prove to be unique survivals.

After 1592, German publications for the lute used either Italian or French
tablature, although German tablature continued in manuscript sources until
about 1620. Important printed collections were those of Adrian Denss
(Florilegium, 1594), Matthias Reymann (Noctes musicae, 1598) and
Johann Rude (Flores musicae, 1600); these are extensive collections of
pieces from the international repertory, and similar compilations continued
to appear in the 17th century. The most important of these anthologies was
Besard’s Thesaurus harmonicus (Cologne, 1603), mentioned above in
connection with Lorenzini, Besard’s lute teacher in Rome, whose works
occupy a central position in the volume. Others were those of Georg
Leopold Fuhrmann (Testudo gallo-germanica, Nuremberg, 1615), Elias
Mertel (Hortus musicalis, Strasbourg, 1615), and Johann Daniel Mylius
(Thesaurus gratiarum, Frankfurt, 1622).

Probably as a consequence of the Thirty Years War (1618–48), little

music for the lute was published in German-speaking lands until much later
in the century. A few manuscripts, and the evidence of paintings and
literary sources, suggest, however, that the instrument continued in regular
use, in solos and for accompanying the voice. Among the most important
manuscripts is that compiled by Virginia Renata von Gehema in Danzig
(now Gdańsk) around the middle of the century (D-Bsb Mus.ms.40624). In
common with most such collections, it consists mostly of music by French
lutenists such as Mesangeau, the Gaultiers, Dufaut and Pinel, or by their
German imitators, leavened with German song settings (and, in this

37
particular case, by an unusual number of Polish dances). The French
influence extended to the use of the accords nouveaux on lutes with ten to
twelve courses. Esaias Reusner (ii), who studied with a French lutenist, in
his two published collections (1667 and 1676) mostly used the D minor
tuning that was rapidly becoming the standard, but also employed other
tunings in a highly idiomatic fashion. While Reusner’s debt to French
models, especially Dufaut, is clear, his music is characterized by an
increasing tendency towards a cantabile melodic style and an expressive
use of dissonance. Philipp Franz Le Sage de Richée seems to have
worked for Baron von Niedhardt in Breslau, capital of the German-speaking
province of Silesia, a region of much importance in the subsequent history
of lute music. In his Cabinet der Lauten (n.p., n.d.; the copy formerly in
Riemann’s possession bore the date 1695), he praised Gaultier, Dufaut,
Mouton (his former teacher) and the influential Bohemian aristocratic
lutenist Count Jan Antonín Losy. His valuable lute-playing instructions were
frequently copied into manuscripts and his book was – most unusually –
reprinted as late as 1735. A more mysterious figure is Jacob Bittner who a
decade earlier published a highly accomplished collection of Pieces de lut
(Nuremberg, 1682).

In the Hapsburg lands of Austria and Bohemia, French influence on lute

music was, if anything, even stronger, and it seems likely that several
French players visited the region. Among the large number of items of lute
and guitar music assembled in the great library of the Lobkowitz family at
Roudnice are several that suggest close personal contact with Mouton,
Gallot and others, including the guitarists Derosiers and Corbetta. Local
composers for the lute, like their German counterparts, tended to imitate
the French, while adding touches of Italianate melody, explicitly in the case
of movements labelled ‘Aria’, which may reveal the increasing influence of
opera. By 1700 the lute was unmistakably an ‘aristocratic’ instrument in
Vienna, although T.B. Janovka (Clavis ad thesauram magnae artis
musicae, Prague, 1701/R, 2/1715/R as Clavis ad musicam) stated that
lutes were so plentiful in Prague that the houses could be roofed with them.
The Viennese lutenists Ferdinand Ignaz Hinterleithner (1699) and Baron
Wenzel Ludwig von Radolt (1701) dedicated their published works to
successive music-loving emperors, although neither contains much music
of any inspiration; they are both collections of chamber music for lute with
other instruments. Their younger contemporary J.G. Weichenberger left no
published collection, and much of his music is lost, but what remains shows
some fine qualities, especially in his extended improvisatory preludes.

Count Jan Antonín Losy von Losinthal, the ‘Prince among lutenists’
according to Le Sage de Richée, left a significant number of works in
manuscript in an idiomatic and appealingly mixed French/Italian style. He is
best known, however, as the posthumous dedicatee of a tombeau
composed on his death (1721) by the greatest lutenist of the following
generation, Silvius Leopold Weiss (1686–1750), whose influence was felt
throughout the German-speaking world. Weiss’s long career embraced
early employment in his native city of Breslau, an extended stay in Italy
(1708–14) and a lengthy period of employment as one of the stars of the

38
Dresden musical establishment (1717–50). A larger body of music by him
survives than by any other lutenist of any age (over 650 pieces) dating from
all periods of his life, although establishing a reliable chronology for Weiss’s
works is extremely difficult. In his multi-movement pieces, which he always
called ‘sonatas’, he took the standard constituent dance forms of the
French suite, working them out into impressive structures, often, especially
in the later music, of great length. Some require a great deal of virtuosity in
performance, but all remain highly idiomatic for the lute. In slower
movements, such as sarabandes and allemandes, Weiss used a three-part
texture, the inner voice contributing greatly to the expressive effect, while in
faster music such as courantes, gigues and other virtuoso finale
movements, the texture becomes predominantly two-part. Many of his
sonatas are on an unprecedentedly large scale; they can take up to 30
minutes in performance. Most, however, do not survive with integral
preludes; these are sometimes found added later to the manuscripts, in a
few cases by Weiss himself. This suggests that he supplied them as
substitutes or models for a movement that he expected an expert player to
improvise. These highly expressive quasi-improvised preludes and
fantasies, often employing chromatic harmony, represent some of Weiss’s
most characteristic music. He also composed a good deal of music of a
more contrapuntal nature in fugal sections of overtures and fantasies as
well as in a number of self-standing fugues.

Among the pieces of J.S. Bach believed to have been intended for the
lute (or lute-harpsichord, and thus in direct imitation of lute style) are some
fugues (bwv997, 998) which extend the demands on the player beyond the
normal bounds of idiomatic technique. Bach, although usually restrained in
the simultaneous activity of the voices in these works, builds towards
contrapuntal climaxes in four real parts, whereas Weiss ingeniously gives
the impression of more complexity than in fact is present. Several of Bach’s
lute works are adaptations of music originally for solo cello or violin which
he made himself or are the work of contemporary lutenists (e.g. bwv997
and 1000, tablature versions by J.C. Weyrauch; bwv995, arranged by
Bach, tablature version probably by Adam Falckenhagen), a precedent
which has been successfully followed by many of today’s players. Bach
clearly admired the instrument, writing expressive obbligato solo parts for
the original versions of the St Matthew and St John Passions and using a
pair of lutes in the Trauerode. The suite for harpsichord and violin bwv1025,
for some time suspected as a spurious work, has been shown to be an
arrangement of a lute sonata by Weiss, and contemporary references
testify to the two composers’ acquaintance and mutual respect.

Weiss was the pre-eminent leader among a flourishing community of

both amateur and professional lutenists in his time. Among the best-known
were Wolff Jacob Lauffensteiner (1676–1754), Adam Falckenhagen (1697–
1754), and the Breslau-born players Ernst Gottlieb Baron (1696–1760),
already mentioned as an early historian of the lute, and Weiss’s pupil
Johann Kropfgans (1708–c1771). Lauffensteiner’s music, and that from the
early careers of Baron and Falckenhagen, is similar in style to that of Weiss
(which leads to some confusion in manuscript sources). By the 1740s,

39
however, lute composers began to prefer a simpler two-part texture, with
increased treble–bass polarization. Later lutenists, such as the expert
keyboard player and student of J.S. Bach, Rudolf Straube (1717–c1780)
and the Bayreuth violinist Joachim Bernhard Hagen (1720–87), were
affected by the somewhat different idioms of their principal instruments, and
no trace of influence from the earlier French lute tradition remains. All these
players, including Weiss himself, composed chamber works for the lute with
other instruments, including concertos, although in the case of Straube and,
most regrettably, of Weiss himself, none survive in complete form. There
was a continuing demand for lute music among German amateurs, as is
shown by the large quantity offered for sale in Leipzig; over 200 solo works,
23 lute duets, over 150 trios for lute, violin and bass, and 50 concertos for
lute with string ensemble feature in various Breitkopf catalogues between
1761 and 1771. A significant repertory of vocal music arranged for the lute,
sometimes fully texted, together with occasional written references to the
practice, suggests that the lute at least in some circles maintained its
traditional role in domestic situations as an accompaniment to the voice.
The use of the larger and louder theorbo as a continuo instrument in church
and opera house continued as long as there were expert players; Weiss
performed in all the Hasse operas in Dresden until late in 1749, and
Kropfgans took part in Hiller’s operettas in Leipzig for another two decades
after that. Carl Maria von Weber heard Weiss’s son, Johann Adolf
Faustinus Weiss, play the theorbo in the Dresden Hofkirche as late as
1811.

Questions of authenticity surround the handful of early works by Haydn

in contemporary versions for lute with other instruments, in which the first
violin part of a quartet, transposed down an octave and furnished with a
simplified bass line, is given to the lute. Some highly idiomatic music in a
similar style was composed by the Viennese lutenist Karl Kohaut (1726–82;
like Haydn, a member of Baron van Swieten’s circle), including ensemble
divertimenti, some challenging concertos and a single surviving solo
sonata. Towards the end of the century Friedrich Wilhelm Rust composed a
set of three sonatas for lute and violin (dated 1791 on one manuscript, but
probably composed some years earlier). The last work for solo lute was a
set of 12 variations by Christian Gottlieb Scheidler (d 1815) on a theme by
Mozart, inspired by the first performance of Don Giovanni in Prague in
1787.

Lute, §8: Repertory.

(iii) France.

Although the Pesaro manuscript (see §8(i) above) was written in ‘French’
tablature, its repertory and origin are exclusively Italian. The first printed
French tablature, using a five-line staff, appeared in Guillaume
Vorstermann’s Livre plaisant et tres utile (Antwerp, 1529), a translation of
Virdung’s book of 1511. Virdung’s musical example was replaced with the
Flemish chanson Een vrolic wesen (in organ tablature and staff notation as
well as for lute). Also in 1529 Pierre Attaingnant at Paris printed his Tres

40
breve et familière introduction; his Dixhuit basses dances of 1530 contained
some 66 lute pieces (for a modern edition of some of Attaingnant’s music,
see Preludes, Chansons and Dances for the Lute, ed. D. Heartz, 1964).

Between 1551 and 1596 Adrian Le Roy printed books of music for guitar
and cittern as well as for lute. His surviving lutebooks extend from Premier
livre de tablature de luth (1551) to Livre d’airs de cour (1571) for voice and
lute. His instructions for playing the lute survive in English translation, and
give a clear description of the technique used in France at the time.

Guillaume Morlaye was associated with the printer Michel Fezandat, also
of Paris, who brought out not only Morlaye’s own works (1552–8) but also
those of the Italian, Alberto da Ripa (1552–62). Julien Belin’s Premier livre
(1556) was printed by Nicolas Du Chemin, and Giovanni Paolo Paladin’s
(1560) at Lyons by Simon Gorlier.

In the latter part of the 16th century French music publishing declined
somewhat, and few lutebooks were issued except for some reprints of
earlier works. With the increase of diapason strings, the use of a five-line
tablature staff gave way to six lines, and around the end of the century
further changes began to appear. Somewhat earlier, the term ‘à cordes
avallées’ had been used in one of Gorlier’s guitar books to denote the
lowering of certain strings. The application of this term to the lute in
Anthoine Francisque’s Le trésor d’Orphée (1600) signified a departure from
the basic Renaissance tuning and foreshadowed a period of transition in
which many tuning systems were adopted, though the old set of intervals
continued in use for some time (see §5 above). The most notable collection
of this period was Besard’s Thesaurus harmonicus (1603); the same
editor’s Novus partus (1617) includes several pieces for an ensemble of
lutes and instruments or voices as well as for solo lute. The ten-course lute
figured largely in the books of Robert Ballard (ii) (1611, 1614) and of Vallet
(1615, 1619, 1620), who also included a set of pieces for a quartet of lutes.
Other distinguished composers for the lute in vieil ton include Julien
Perrichon, Victor de Montbuisson, Mercure d’Orléans and Charles Bocquet.
Their excellent works include a number of preludes or other improvisational
genres, although dance music predominates.

Together with the increase in the number of diapason strings and the
new tunings a marked change of style became apparent. Preludes,
courantes, voltas and sarabandes became the favourite forms in the first
decades of the 17th century, while intabulations of polyphonic music and
the contrapuntal fantasie all but disappeared. The characteristic form of
French lute song, the air de cour, sprang from the elaborate court ballets,
and flourished between 1571 and 1632.

The eight volumes of Airs de différents autheurs (1608–18), the first six
of which were arranged by Gabriel Bataille, include works by all the finest
French songwriters of the time and show the influence of musique mesurée
à l’antique. Although the exact setting of long and short syllables was not
always strict, the verbal rhythms and poetic structure became of prime

41
importance, and the restriction of the bar-line almost entirely disappeared.
Many songs of great beauty were written in this style, notably by Pierre
Guédron. (See also Chansons au luth et airs de cour français du XVIe
siècle, ed. L. de La Laurencie, A. Mairy and G. Thibault, 1934; and Airs de
cour pour voix et luth (1603–1642), ed. A. Verchaly, 1961.)

Early works by René Mesangeau and Ennemond Gaultier use the vieil
ton, but both composers left a larger body of music in the later tunings.
Gaultier in particular favoured the D minor tuning which was to become the
norm by the mid-17th century. Three important anthologies under the title
Tablature de luth des différents autheurs sur les accords nouveaux were
issued at Paris by Pierre Ballard (1623, 1631, 1638); unfortunately the
earliest does not survive. These present informal ‘suites’ of dances grouped
by composer and tuning (strongly associated with key); although the
numbers of each dance vary, the order of the ‘core’ component movements
– allemande, courante, sarabande – remains fixed. Among the dances,
which include sets of branles, there are a few song settings. Some of the
composers, including Belleville and Chancy, were fashionable dancing
masters who were closely associated with the ballet de cour; others,
especially Mesangeau, Pierre Dubut le père and François Dufaut, together
with the eminent royal musician Germain Pinel, were prominent and
influential lutenists whose works make up a large proportion of the
manuscript repertory preserved in France, Britain and German-speaking
countries during the rest of the century.

Coinciding with the emergence of the D minor tuning as the favourite

accord nouveau, the 11-course lute (see §3 above) became established as
the norm, and seems to have ousted the 12-course instrument in France by
the middle of the century, although the latter retained its popularity in
Britain, Germany and the Netherlands for much longer. Players such as
Dufaut and Dubut le père adapted to the new tuning with great success,
while a new generation of lutenists, among them Denis Gaultier, Jacques
Gallot and Charles Mouton produced a major body of expressive work in
the classic style précieux of the Paris salon. In the pursuit of rhetorical
expression (a goal made explicit in the famous and sumptuously decorated
manuscript of Denis Gaultier’s music, La rhétorique des dieux, Paris,
c1652; ed. A. Tessier, PSFM, vi–vii, 1932/R) a variety of strokes and fairly
extensive ornamentation were expected, even more than those specifically
indicated in the notation, and the use of notes inégales was also left to the
taste and discretion of the player. (For the solo lute music see Corpus des
luthistes français, a series produced by the CNRS, 1957–.)

An integral characteristic of the music of the French Baroque school was

a convention of performance, reflected in the notation, that came to be
known as style brisé; in many passages the notes of the treble and bass (or
other voices) were sounded one after another (the bass first) instead of
simultaneously as was the more general practice in polyphonic music. A
related feature was the rhythmic breaking or arpeggiation of chords that
were often written plain. This could be indicated by oblique lines placed
between the component notes; often, however, such signs, like the explicit

42
notation of notes inégales, were omitted altogether. Perrine, in a passage
addressed to harpsichordists as well as lutenists, referred to the convention
as ‘the special manner of playing all sorts of lute pieces’; ex.6 shows the
interpretation given in his Pieces de luth en musique (1680). It was this
style in particular that exerted a considerable influence on the writing of
contemporary keyboard players and visitors such as the young Froberger.
These conventions in the performance of French lute music were clearly
considered characteristic of the genre by Germans adopting the French lute
style. They are almost always more explicitly notated in the many important
German sources of 17th-century French lute music which formed the basis
of the German repertory well into the 18th century. Since, furthermore,
these manuscripts often preserve large numbers of works (e.g. by Dufaut,
Gallot and Mouton) not found in French sources their importance is
considerable.

Lute, §8: Repertory.

(iv) The Netherlands, Spain and eastern Europe.

In Antwerp Guillaume Vorstermann, who had published the French

translation of Virdung’s Musica getutscht, brought out a Flemish translation,
Dit is een zeer schoon boecxken … opt clavecordium luyte ende fluyte
(1554, 2/1568). Of greater scope were the activities of Pierre Phalèse (i),
whose first lutebook, Des chansons reduictz en tabulature de lut (Leuven,
1545), contained works by many composers. Phalèse, something of a
pirate among publishers, specialized in large anthologies of music from all
over Europe, collecting vocal as well as instrumental music of many kinds.
The only surviving edition of Giovanni Pacoloni’s book, with music for three
lutes, was published by Phalèse at Leuven in 1564. He later moved his
press to Antwerp, where he joined Jean Bellère. Emanuel Adriaenssen’s
books Pratum musicum, 1584, and Novum pratum musicum, 1592, with
other editions up to 1600, were printed by Pierre Phalèse (ii) at Antwerp,
and contain work by other composers besides Adriaenssen himself, in
arrangements for one to four lutes with and without voices.

Joachim van den Hove produced two large collections of works by

internationally famous composers: Florida (1601) and Delitiae musicae
(1612). His own compositions and arrangements, which demand a sure
technique, also appear in them and in a number of manuscripts, two of
which are autograph (the Schele manuscript, D-Hs; and Hove, D-Bs). In
1626 Adriaen Valerius published an unusual collection of music for voice,
lute and cittern with or without other instruments called Neder-landtsche
gedenck-clanck. This was a thinly disguised book of patriotic songs
directed against the occupying Spanish forces, using many popular tunes,
some of them English. The enormous Thysius manuscript (see Thysius,
Johan) contains lute music in all the genres of the early 17th century,
including much English music, a large repertory of intabulated sacred and
secular vocal music and a number of pieces for an ensemble of lutes. As
far as the rest of the 17th century is concerned, although copious

43
iconographical evidence suggests continuing popularity of the instrument in
the Netherlands, there are almost no surviving musical sources for the lute.

After the expulsion of the Moors in 1492 the history of the lute in Spain
becomes obscure. It was referred to by Bermudo as ‘vihuela de Flandes’,
implying a degree of unfamiliarity. The only extant books of tablature
printed in Spain are for the vihuela, which, though tuned to the same
intervals as the lute, is a quite distinct instrument (for an account of its
history and repertory see Vihuela). Nevertheless there is much evidence to
suggest that the lute was more commonly used than has been generally
recognized.

The most famous 16th-century east European lutenist was Valentin

Bakfark, born in Transylvania. He wrote some fine fantasias in the Italian
manner, and his great renown as a player took him to various courts and
the houses of nobles and magnates all over the Continent. His books testify
to his cosmopolitan reputation: Intabulatura liber primus (1553) was printed
in Italian tablature in Lyons and was partially reprinted as Premier livre de
tabelature de luth (1564) in French tablature, by Le Roy & Ballard in Paris.
His Harmoniarum musicarum in usum testudinis factarum tomus primus
(1565) was printed in Kraków and reprinted in Antwerp (1569), both
editions using Italian tablature. Wojciech Długoraj, born in Poland about
1557, published no books of his own, but his works are found in several
collections. Jakub Reys (‘Polonois’) was also born in Poland, but went to
France when quite young and was appointed lutenist to Henri III; his works
are mostly found in French anthologies.

Lute, §8: Repertory.

(v) England.

Little is known about the use of the lute in England before the 14th
century. Social development was hardly ripe for the general spread of art
music outside the church, the court and a few great houses. Under the
Tudors, however (following the Wars of the Roses which ended with the
seizure of the English throne by Henry VII), a wealthy middle class began
to appear, and the few urban centres of population grew at an
unprecedented rate. From the time of Henry VIII onwards, manuscripts
containing lute tablature began to appear, though none extant dates from
before 1540. Most of the professional lutenists at Henry’s court were
Flemish or Italian. The three royal children were taught to play, and
evidence suggests that in general some amateur performers were
beginning to become quite proficient.

The growth of the ‘leisured classes’ by about the middle of the 16th
century led to a demand for instructions for playing the lute, which was best
satisfied by printed books. The register of the Stationers’ Company records
licences to John Alde for The Sceyence of Lutynge (1565) and to Robert
Ballard (i) for An Exortation to All Kynde of Men How they shulde Learn to
Play of the Lute (1567), but neither of these is now extant. The first three

44
surviving instruction books in English are all derived from a single French
source, Le Roy’s Tres breve et tres familière instruction, now lost. A Briefe
and easye Instru[c]tion (1568) ‘englished by J. Alford Londenor’ contains
instructions in the form of rules with music examples, followed by a
collection of fantasias and dances. The rules, with certain minor variants,
are reprinted as the second part of A Briefe and Plaine Instruction (1574),
which also teaches ‘to set all music of eight divers tunes in Tableture for the
Lute’ (almost all the examples being chansons by Lassus). The third part
comprises a collection of music, quite different from that of 1568,
‘conteinynge diverse Psalmes, and manie fine excellente Tunes’; the latter
are versions of French chansons that Le Roy had set for voice and lute in
his Livre d’airs de cour (1571). English Protestant taste (the book is
dedicated to Edward Seymore, Earl of Hertford) is catered for by the
inclusion of metrical psalm tunes.

Le Roy’s instructions were again translated, but without

acknowledgment, by William Barley in A New Booke of Tabliture (1596),
which also contains sections for the orpharion and bandora. This work is
the first printed collection for lute by English composers, and includes, in
the bandora section of the book, the earliest English solo songs with
tablature accompaniment. Robinson’s The Schoole of Musicke is a
thorough lute method, written in the form of a dialogue ‘between a Knight,
having children to be taught, and Timotheus, who should teach them’. The
music that follows is all by Robinson himself, and includes some pieces for
two lutes as well as fantasias, dances and settings of popular tunes for solo
lute.

The last English instruction book for the Renaissance lute was Robert
Dowland’s Varietie of Lute-Lessons (1610), comprising a translation of the
instructions from Besard’s Thesaurus harmonicus (1603) and other
observations on lute playing, by John Dowland. These are the only words
on the subject that John Dowland left, despite references to ‘my father’s
greater work’ in Robert Dowland's other publication of the same year, the
songbook A Musicall Banquet. The Varietie contains a selection of
fantasias, pavans, galliards, almains, currants and voltes (by English and
continental composers) which must surely have been collected originally by
John Dowland on his European travels.

These books, together with a considerably larger body of manuscript

collections dating from about 1580 to about 1625, reveal music of the
highest quality by composers such as John Johnson (i), Francis Cutting,
Richard Allison, Daniel Bacheler, Philip Rosseter, Robert Johnson (ii),
Alfonso Ferrabosco (i) (who spent most of his time in England between
about 1562 and 1578), and above all John Dowland whose international
fame at this time was unique among lutenists.

Solo lute music circulated mainly in manuscript, but starting with

Dowland’s First Booke of Songes (1597) a series of songbooks for voice
and lute was published in England – some 30 volumes averaging about 20
songs apiece. The duration of this vogue was only 25 years (the last

45
collection was John Attey’s First Booke of Ayres of 1622) but it was
responsible for some of the finest English songs of any period. A few of the
composers also wrote in the madrigal style, and a few also composed solo
lute music; but in general the writers of lute-songs in England kept almost
entirely to that genre. Its appeal lay in a direction other than that of
madrigals or solo lute music, for it entailed a much more concise setting of
the text than the former, and had a less abstract emotional effect than the
latter.

Many books of ayres were arranged so that they could be performed

either as solo songs with lute and usually bass viol accompaniment, or as
partsongs for four voices with lute. The favouring of a sustained bass line to
balance the melody in the voice reflects the tendency to think in terms of a
polarization of harmonic interest between those two parts. Many collections
include lute parts as contrapuntal as the texture of a madrigal, but
eventually accompaniments showed a tendency towards simplification, with
less imitative part-writing and more straightforward chordal structure.
Ultimately this led to the ‘continuo song’, where only the melody and bass
were written down and the lutenist or theorbo player was expected to fill out
the harmonies according to certain conventions known as the ‘rule of the
octave’. The partsong alternative, started by Dowland in his First Booke
and originally intended to appeal to a public eagerly immersed in madrigal
singing, lent a characteristic stamp to the English ayre that makes it quite
distinct from anything produced on the Continent. (For a modern edition of
some of Dowland’s music, see Collected Lute Music, ed. D. Poulton and B.
Lam, London, 1974, 3/1984.)

Another English use of the lute was in the mixed consort of three melody
instruments (treble viol, flute, bass viol) and three plucked (lute, cittern,
bandora), a grouping almost certainly conceived originally as an
accompaniment to a solo voice somewhat in the manner of the older songs
with viols (see Consort, §2). The treble viol, flute and bass viol played in
three-part harmony which, often incomplete on its own, was filled in by the
three plucked instruments. The cittern and bandora (both wire-strung)
formed the alto, tenor and deep bass, while the lute had a dual role. Much
of the music was in dance forms, with repeated sections, in the first of
which the lute played chords; but in the repeats the lute played elaborate
and rapid ‘divisions’, giving a silvery, shimmering quality to the music. This
technique was known as ‘breaking the ground in division’; hence the
expression ‘broken music’. The light texture of the three melody
instruments allowed the lute prominence, while the cittern and the deep
bandora provided fullness and body.

Printed collections of music for such a combination include the First

Booke of Consort Lessons edited by Morley in 1599 and reissued with
additional pieces in 1611 (ed. S. Beck, 1959) and Philip Rosseter’s 1609
edition of Lessons for Consort. No complete set of partbooks has survived
for any of the editions. There are, however, two manuscript collections (the
Matthew Holmes manuscripts in GB-Cu and the Walsingham consort books
in GB-BEV and US-OAm), both also incomplete but whose contents

46
overlap to some extent with those of the printed books. Part of William
Leighton’s The Teares or Lamentacions of a Sorrowfull Soule (1614) is
devoted to ‘consort songs’ set for four voices with the same six instruments.

With the development of the Jacobean and Caroline masque, larger

groups of instruments began to appear. In Ben Jonson’s Oberon (1611) ‘20
lutes for the Prince’s dance’ were required, and the description of Love
freed from Ignorance (1611) tells of the entrance of ‘12 Musitions that were
preestes that songe and played’ and ‘12 other lutes’. The theorbo, said to
have been introduced into England by Inigo Jones in 1605, soon found its
way into favour in these entertainments. In James Shirley’s masque, The
Triumph of Peace (1634), as many as seven lutes and ten theorbos were
used.

Soon after the death of John Dowland in 1626, however, the English
school of lutenist-composers declined. For some time the popularity of the
lute had been overshadowed by that of the lyra viol, which was now
cultivated by those amateurs who were also avid players of ensemble
music for viols. With the coming of Charles I’s wife, Queen Henrietta Maria,
and her entourage from France, a fashion grew up at court for all things
French. The famous lutenist Jacques Gautier arrived from Paris with the
Duke of Buckingham in 1617, was appointed to the court in 1619 and soon
became popular in London, where he entered the literary circles of writers
such as John Donne.

An interesting English manuscript spanning the change from the ‘old’ lute
music of the Elizabethan and Jacobean composers to that of the new
French style was compiled by Lord Herbert of Cherbury. It includes music
by Dowland, Rosseter, Holborne and other such composers, along with that
of Gautier and some compositions of Cherbury himself, the latest dated
1640. Also represented in this manuscript is Cuthbert Hely, who is
otherwise virtually unknown. His music is of astonishing intensity: firmly
grounded in the earlier English tradition, it nonetheless explores previously
untried harmonic territory. Cherbury retained the ‘old’ tuning of the main six
courses despite his interest in the new music and the French lute, but the
new tunings are in evidence in other manuscripts, such as the latter part of
Jane Pickering’s Lutebook where compositions by John Lawrence (d
c1635) and Gautier demonstrate the ‘Harpe way’, ‘flat way’ and ‘tuning
Gautier’.

With a few exceptions, such as the solos and duos by William Lawes, of
which only three pieces survive, and the large quantity of (lost) lute music
said to have been composed by John Jenkins, little music of any great
value was written for the lute by English composers up to the time of the
Civil War; but Lawes, using the theorbo as thoroughbass in his ‘Royal’ and
‘Harpe’ consorts, produced some of the most distinguished instrumental
music of his time. During the Commonwealth and at the Restoration, trio
sonatas continued to appear for viols or violins with the theorbo specified
as a suitable continuo. A set of 30 unnamed pieces for solo lute or theorbo
by John Wilson (1595–1674) is of outstanding interest. The pieces are in a

47
distinctive improvisatory preludial style and systematically cover all 24
major and minor keys, with tuning indications to match. Such a scheme
was only possible on the lute, whose tablature was unaffected by aspects
such as enharmonic spellings and ‘double’ accidentals, which would have
caused great problems in the staff notation of the time.

Meanwhile, the French lute and music by French composers began to

enjoy considerable popularity, although the contents of Richard Mathew’s
The Lute’s Apology for Her Excellency (which he claimed was the first
printed book for the French lute to appear in England) fall well below the
standard of excellence maintained in such manuscript collections as the
Hender Robarts Lutebook, the Mary Burwell Lute Tutor (GB-Lam) and the
Panmure Lutebook (GB-En). These collections, all compiled by, or under
the supervision of, lutenists from Paris, show that the works of the
Gaultiers, Vincent, Pinel and other distinguished French composers were
familiar to English and Scottish players of the second half of the 17th
century. An early 18th-century repertory for the French lute in Scotland is
found in the Balcarres Lutebook, whose approximately 200 pieces consist
of dance-tunes (often arranged from fiddle versions) and intabulations of
Scottish melodies and well-known English songs such as ‘Lillibulero’ and
‘The King Enjoys his Own Again’, as well as a few French lute pieces.

The last great figure in the history of the lute in England was Mace,
whose Musick’s Monument contains the most thorough extant set of
instructions for the French lute, as well as some appealing music. He
discussed technique, ornamentation, playing style, stringing, tuning, care of
the instrument and many aspects of its history. The section on the theorbo
is also valuable.

As a continuo instrument, particularly in accompanying the voice, the

theorbo was important throughout the 17th century and well into the first
half of the 18th. The theorbo or theorbo-lute is mentioned on the title-pages
of many volumes ranging from Angelo Notari’s Prime musiche nuove
(London, c1613) through most of Playford’s songbooks to Purcell’s
Orpheus Britannicus (1698–1702), John Blow’s Amphion Anglicus (1700)
and John Eccles’s Songs for One, Two and Three Voices (1704). Walter
Porter included both lutes and theorbos among the accompanying
instruments of the consort in his Madrigales and Ayres (1632).

The lute and theorbo were used by Handel in a number of his operas
and other works, both as continuo and as obbligato in certain arias, such as
‘The soft complaining flute’ in his Ode for St Cecilia’s Day (1739). Players
of the instrument were becoming rare, however, and Handel’s occasional
use of it was usually due to the presence of a visiting virtuoso player, such
as Carlo Arrigoni (in London between 1731 and 1736), who played in the
Concerto op.4 no.6, originally scored for ‘Lute, Harp and Lyrichord’.
According to Burney, the final appearance of the lute in an opera orchestra
in England was in the aria ‘Due bell’aline’ in Handel’s Deidamia (1741).

48
 Little more is heard of the lute in England in the 18th century, although
the names of distinguished foreign players are occasionally encountered in
newspaper advertisements for concerts; S.L. Weiss visited London and
gave a short series of concerts in 1718. One player who settled in London
was J.S. Bach’s former pupil, Rudolf Straube, from whom Thomas
Gainsborough bought a lute and requested lessons in 1759. A manuscript
partially compiled by Straube (GB-Lbl Add.31698) contains annotations in a
later hand suggesting that pieces from it were copied by a player of the
‘Theorboe Lute’ up to the late date of 1813. However, the instrument
mentioned on a few title pages dating from about 1800 as the ‘lute’ was in
fact the harp-lute, whose music shows no discernible relationship with the
real lute. (For other modern editions of English lute music see the series
English Lute Songs, London, 1967–71, and Music for the Lute, ed. D.
Lumsden, 1966–.)

Lute (ii)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Ancient and non-European lutes. B Western lute, general. C

Theoretical and pedagogical. D Construction. E Notation and tunings. F
Repertory.

a: ancient and non-european lutes

b: western lute, general

c: theoretical and pedagogical

d: construction

e: notation and tunings

f: repertory

Lute (ii): Bibliography

a: ancient and non-european lutes

C. Sachs and E.M. von Hornbostel: ‘Systematik der Musikinstrumente’,

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xlvi (1914), 553–90 [Eng. trans. in GSJ, xiv
(1961), 3–29; repr. in Ethnomusicology: an Introduction, ed. H. Myers
(London, 1992), 444–61]
F. Behn: ‘Die Laute im Altertum und frühen Mittelalter’, ZMw, i (1918–
19), 89–107
K. Geiringer: ‘Vorgeschichte und Geschichte der europäischen Laute
bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit’, ZMw, x (1927–8), 560–603

49
 L. Picken: ‘The Origin of the Short Lute’, GSJ, viii (1955), 32–42
H. Hickmann: Ägypten, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, ii/1 (Leipzig, 1961)
W. Stauder: ‘Zur Frühgeschichte der Laute’, Festschrift Helmuth Osthoff
zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. L. Hoffmann-Erbrecht and H. Hucke (Tutzing,
1961), 15–25
G. Fleischhauer: Etrurien und Rom, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, ii/5
(Leipzig, 1964, 2/1978)
R.A. Higgins and R.P. Winnington-Ingram: ‘Lute-Players in Greek Art’,
Journal of Hellenic Studies, lxxxv (1965), 62–71
H. Turnbull: ‘The Origin of the Long-Necked Lute’, GSJ, xxv (1972), 58–
66
L. Manniche: Ancient Egyptian Musical Instruments (Munich, 1975)
S. Marcuse: A Survey of Musical Instruments (London, 1975), 406ff
L. Picken: Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey (London, 1975), 261ff,
583
C. Ziegler: Les instruments de musique égyptiens au musée du Louvre
(Paris, 1979)
M. Maas and J. Snyder: Stringed Instruments of Ancient Greece (New
Haven, CT, 1989)
Lute (ii): Bibliography

b: western lute, general

LütgendorffGL
VannesE
M. Brenet: ‘Notes sur l'histoire du luth en France’, RMI, v (1898), 637–
76; vi (1899), 1–44; pubd separately (Turin, 1899/R)
O. Körte: Laute und Lautenmusik bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts
(Leipzig, 1901/R)
R. Donington: ‘VI: Plucked Strings: IB, 1: The Family of Lutes’, The
Instruments of Music (London, 1949, 3/1970)
A. Baines: ‘Fifteenth-Century Instruments in Tinctoris's De inventione et
usu musicae’, GSJ, iii (1950), 19–26
B. Disertori: ‘Remarques sur l'évolution du luth en Italie au XVe siècle et
au XVIe’, Le luth et sa musique: Neuilly-sur-Seine 1957, 19–24
D. Gill: ‘The Elizabethan Lute’, GSJ, xii (1959), 60–62
LSJ (1959–) [renamed The Lute in 1982]
G. Hayes: ‘Musical Instruments: Mandora and Lute’, Ars Nova and the
Renaissance, 1300–1540, NOHM, iii (1960/R), 487–8
A.L. Lloyd: ‘The Rumanian Cobza’, LSJ, ii (1960), 13–16
M. Morrow and M. Graubart: ‘Lutes and Theorboes: their Use as
Continuo Instruments described by Michael Praetorius in his Syntagma
musicum’, LSJ, ii (1960), 26–32
M.W. Prynne: ‘James Talbot's Manuscript, IV: Plucked Strings – the
Lute Family’, GSJ, xiv (1961), 52–68
M.W. Prynne: ‘Some Remarks on Lute Forgeries’, LSJ, iii (1961), 17–21
M.W. Prynne: ‘The Fretted Instruments, I: the Lute’, Musical Instruments
through the Ages, ed. A. Baines (Harmondsworth, 1961/R, 2/1966/R)
M.W. Prynne: ‘The Old Bologna Lute-Makers’, LSJ, v (1963), 18–31

50
 H. Radke: ‘Wodurch unterscheiden sich Laute und Theorbe’, AcM, xxxvii
(1965), 73–4
J. Jacquot and A. Souris, eds.: Thomas Mace: Musick's Monument, ii:
Commentaire et transcriptions (Paris, 1966)
R.G. Campbell: Zur Typologie der Schalenlanghalslaute (Strasbourg,
1968)
L. Cervelli: ‘Brevi noti sui liutai tedeschi attivi in Italia dal secolo XVIo al
XVIIIo’, AnMc, no.5 (1968), 299–337
JLSA (1968–)
E. Pohlmann: Laute, Theorbe, Chitarrone: die Instrumente, ihre Musik
und Literatur von 1500 bis zur Gegenwart (Bremen, 1968, enlarged 5/1982)
F. Hellwig: ‘Makers' Marks on Plucked Instruments of the 16th and 17th
Centuries’, GSJ, xxiv (1971), 22–32
B. Tonazzi: Liuto, vihuela, chitarra e strumenti similari nelle loro
intavolatura: con cenni sulle loro letterature (Milan, 1971, 2/1974)
H. Radke: ‘Theorbierte Laute (liuto attiorbato) und Erzlaute (arciliuto)’,
Mf, xxv (1972), 481–4
F. Hellwig: ‘Zur Terminologie der europäischen Zupfinstrumente: das
Vokabularium in den Quellen zum historischen Lautenbau’, Festschrift für
Ernst Emsheimer, ed. G. Hilleström (Stockholm, 1974), 81–6
FoMRHI Quarterly (1975–)
I. Harwood and M. Prynne: A Brief History of the Lute (Richmond,
1975)
M. Saffle: ‘Lute and Related Instruments in Eight Important European
and American Collections’, JLSA, viii (1975), 22–48; ix (1976), 43–61
D. Gill: Gut-Strung Plucked Instruments Contemporary with the Lute
(Richmond, 1976)
M. Lowe: ‘The Historical Development of the Lute in the 17th Century’,
GSJ, xxix (1976), 11–25
R. Spencer: ‘Chitarrone, Theorbo and Archlute’, EMc, iv (1976), 407–23
D. Abbott and E. Segerman: ‘The Names, String-Lengths and Pitch-
Standards of Extended-Neck Lutes of the 17th Century’, FoMRHI Quarterly,
no.7 (1977), 26–32
H.M. Brown: ‘Trecento Angels and the Instruments they Play’, Modern
Musical Scholarship: Oxford 1977, 112–40
D. Poulton: ‘The Lute in Christian Spain’, LSJ, xix (1977), 34–49
W.B. Samson: ‘The Twelve-Course “English Lute”’, LSJ, xix (1977), 50–
53
L. Wright: ‘The Medieval Gittern and Citole: a Case of Mistaken Identity’,
GSJ, xxx (1977), 8–42
R. Bletschacher: Die Lauten- und Geigenmacher des Füssener Landes
(Hofheim am Taunus, 1978)
J. Downing: ‘The Maler and Frei Lutes: some Observations’, FoMRHI
Quarterly, no.11 (1978), 60–64
A. Layer: Die Allgäuer Lauten- und Geigenmacher (Augsburg, 1978)
D.B. Lyons: Lute, Vihuela, Guitar to 1800: a Bibliography (Detroit, 1978)
P. Päffgen: Laute und Lautenspiel in der ersten Hälfte des 16.
Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, 1978)
D.A. Smith: ‘The Lutes in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich’,
JLSA, xi (1978), 36–44

51
 P. Beier: ‘Right Hand Position in Renaissance Lute Technique’, JLSA, xii
(1979), 5–24
Gitarre & Laute (Kassel, 1979– )
J. Griffiths: ‘Lutes in the Museo Municipal de Música in Barcelona’,
JLSA, xii (1979), 48–66
F. Hellwig: ‘Die Lauteninstrumente im Germanischen Nationalmuseum
in Nürnberg’, Gitarre & Laute, i/6 (1979), 6, 8–15
J. Klima: ‘The D minor Lute in Central Europe after the Second World
War’, JLSA, xii (1979), 73–7
K. Ragossnig: Handbuch der Gitarre und Laute (Mainz, 1979)
K. Rottmann: ‘The Resurrection of the Lute in Twentieth Century
Germany’, JLSA, xii (1979), 67–72
D. and E. Segerman: ‘On Baroque Lute Stringing and Tunings’, FoMRHI
Quarterly, no.16 (1979), 26–33
P. Abondance: ‘L'apport de l'iconographie la connaissance du luth’, Le
luth et sa musique II: Tours 1980, 139–56
G. Hellwig: Joachim Tielke, eine Hamburger Lauten- und Violenmacher
der Barockzeit (Frankfurt, 1980)
H. Heyde and P. Liersch: ‘Studien zum sächsischen
Musikinstrumentenbau des 16./17. Jahrhunderts’, Jb Peters, ii (1980), 231–
59
H. Radke: ‘Zur Spieltechnik der deutschen Lautenisten des 16.
Jahrhunderts’, AcM, lii (1980), 134–47
D.A. Smith: ‘The Musical Instrument Inventory of Raymund Fugger’,
GSJ, xxxiii (1980), 36–44
I. Harwood: ‘A Case of Double Standards? Instrumental Pitch in
England c1600’, EMc, ix (1981), 470–81
F. Hellwig: ‘The Morphology of Lutes with Extended Necks’, EMc, ix
(1981), 447–54
D. Gill: ‘Mandores and Colachons’, GSJ, xxxiv (1981), 130–41
C. Page: ‘The 15th-Century Lute: New and Neglected Sources’, EMc, ix
(1981), 11–21
R. Spencer: ‘Lute and Guitar’, How Music Works, ed. K. Spence and G.
Swayne (New York and London, 1981), 79–92
G. Ferraris: ‘Liuto, arciliuto, chitarrone, strumenti dell'età barocca in
Italia’, Il ‘Fronimo’, xxxix (1982), 11–18
C. Page: ‘German Musicians and their Instruments’, EMc, x (1982), 192–
200
J.M. Ward: ‘Changing the Instrument for the Music’, JLSA, xv (1982),
27–39
J. Dugot: ‘Description des luths de musée instrumental du C.N.S.M.’,
Musique ancienne, xix (1985), 78–84
J. Dugot: ‘Some Lutes in Paris Museums’, JLSA, xvi (1983), 27–56;
xvii–xviii (1984–85), 53–105
F. Rossi: Il liuto a Venezia dal Rinascimento al Barocco (Venice, 1983)
S. Toffolo: ‘The Corporation of Lute-Makers in Venice: Historical
Aspects’, The Lute, xxiii (1983), 29–32
C. Young: ‘Zur Klassification und ikonographischen Interpretation
mittelalterlicher Zupfinstrumente’, Basler Jb für historische Musikpraxis, viii
(1984), 67–104

52
 F. Getreau: ‘The Lute Collection of the Paris Museum of Musical
Instruments: its Character, Formation and Development’, JLSA, xvii–xviii
(1984–5), 50–52
O. Cristoforetti: ‘Les Piccinini et l'évolution organologique du luth à la
fin du XVIe siècle’, Musique ancienne, xix (1985), 4–19
C. Gonzales Marcos: ‘Les luths du Museu de la Música de Barcelona’,
Musique ancienne, xvi–xvii (1983), 22–73; xix (1985), 62–77
S. Howell: ‘Ramos de Pareja's Brief Discussion of Various Instruments’,
JAMIS, xi (1985), 14–37
N. North: Continuo Playing on the Lute, Archlute and Theorbo (London,
1985)
P.L. Polato: ‘Liutai veneziani nei secoli XVI, XVII e XVIII: ricerca
documentaria nell'Archivio di Stato di Venezia’, Flauto dolce, no.12 (1985),
6–15
S. Toffolo and M.P. Pedani: ‘Una famiglia di liutai tedeschi a Venezia: I
Tieffenbrucker’, Il ‘Fronimo’, xiii (1985), 56–62
D. Gill: ‘Alternative Lutes: the Identity of 18th-Century Mandores and
Gallichones’, The Lute, xxvi (1986), 51–62
H. Heyde: Musikinstrumentenbau im 15.–19. Jahrhundert: Kunst,
Handwerk, Entwurf (Wiesbaden, 1986)
Lute Symposium: Utrecht 1986 [incl. M. Lowe: ‘Renaissance and
Baroque Lutes: a False Dichotomy: Observations on the Lute in the
Seventeenth Century’, 124–39]
I. Watschorn: ‘Einige bau- und spieltechnische Aspekte der
“Barocklaute” anhand zeitgenössischer Beschreibungen, Ikonographien
und vorhandener Instrumente’, Zupf- und Schlaginstrumente des 17. und
18. Jahrhunderts: Blankenburg, Harz, 1986, 33–47
S. Toffolo: Antichi strumenti veneziani 1500–1800: quattro secoli di
liuteria e cembalaria (Venice, 1987)
D. Poulton: ‘The Early History of the Lute’, JLSA, xx–xxi (1987–8), 1–21
A. Bollini: ‘L'attività liutistica a Milano dal 1450 al 1550: nuovi
documenti’, Il ‘Fronimo’, xvi (1988), 9–23
C. Massip: ‘Facteurs d'instrument et maîtres à danser parisiens au
XVIIe siècle’, Instrumentistes et luthiers parisiens: XVIIe–XIXe siècles, ed.
F. Getreau and B. de Andia (Paris, 1988), 17–34
H. Minamino: Sixteenth-Century Lute Treatises with Emphasis on
Process and Techniques of Intabulation (diss., U. of Chicago, 1988)
F. Pavan: ‘Liutisti itinerati e rapporti culturali fra le corti italiane del primo
Cinquecento’, Il ‘Fronimo’, xvii (1989), 42–53
A. Corona-Alcalde: ‘The Vihuela and the Guitar in Sixteenth-Century
Spain: a Critical Appraisal of some of the Existing Evidence’, The Lute, xxx
(1990), 3–24
S. Toffolo: ‘Sul rapporto tra liuteria e iconografia in area veneto-
lombarda tra Cinque e Seicento’, Liuteria e musica strumentale a Brescia
tra Cinque e Seicento: Salò 1990, 45–61
K. Martius and K. Schulze: ‘Ernst Busch und Paul Hiltz: zwei
Nürnberger Lauten- und Violenmacher der Barockzeit’, Anzeigen des
Germanischen Nationalmuseums (1991), 145–83
G.M. Ongaro: ‘The Tieffenbruckers and the Business of Lute-Making in
Sixteenth-Century Venice’, GSJ, xliv (1991), 46–54

53
 R. Lundberg: ‘In Tune with the Universe: the Physics and Metaphysics
of Galileo's Lute’, Music and Science in the Age of Galileo, ed. V.A. Coelho
(Dordrecht, 1992), 211–39
J. Sage: ‘A New Look at Humanism in 16th-Century Lute and Vihuela
Books’, EMc, xx (1992), 633–41
E. Neubauer: ‘Der Bau der Laute und ihre Besaitung nach arabischen,
persischen und türkischen Quellen des 9. bis 15. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift
für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften, viii (1993), 279–
378
S. Toffolo: ‘Sui liutai tedeschi a Venezia nel Cinque e Seicento e sui
rapporti tra liuteria tedesca e pittura Veneziana’, Venedig und
Oberdeutschlang in der Renaissance, Studi, ix (Sigmaringen, 1993), 197–
205
P. Forrester: ‘An Elizabethan Allegory and some Hypotheses’, The Lute,
xxxiv (1994), 11–14
C. Meyer: ‘Eine Lauten-Unterweisung aus dem späten 15. Jahrhundert’,
Musik in Bayern, no.49 (1994), 25–33
M. Burzik: Quellenstudien zu europäischen Zupfinstrumentenformen
(Kassel, 1995)
S. Court: ‘Renaissance Instrumental Ensembles: the Role of the Lute in
Sixteenth-Century Consorts – Evidence from Terzi's Intabulations’,
Performance Practice Review, viii (1995), 147–70
P. Király: A lantjáték Magyarországon a XV. századtól a XVII. század
közepéig [Lute playing in Hungary from the 15th century until the mid-17th
century] (Budapest, 1995) [with Ger. summary]
L. Sayce: ‘Continuo Lutes in 17th and 18th-Century England’, EMc, xxiii
(1995), 666–84
D. Van Edwards: ‘Talbot's English Theorbo Reconsidered’, FoMRHI
Quarterly, no.78 (1995), 32–3
K. Martius: Leopold Widhalm und der Nürnberger Lauten- und
Geigenbau im 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1996)
V.A. Coelho, ed.: Performance on Lute, Guitar and Vihuela: Historical
Practice and Modern Interpretation (Cambridge, 1997)
Die Laute (1998–)
S. Pasqual and R. Regazzi: Le radici del successo della liuteria a
Bologna (Bologna, 1998)
Acoustique et instruments anciens: Paris 1998
D.A. Smith: History of the Lute from Antiquity to the Renaissance
(forthcoming)
Lute (ii): Bibliography

c: theoretical and pedagogical

MersenneHU
PraetoriusSM, ii
VirdungMG
H. Arnaut de Zwolle: Treatise (MS, c1440; F-Pn lat.7295); facs., Fr.
trans. and commentary in G. Le Cerf and E.-R. Labande: Instruments de
musique du XVe siècle (Paris, 1932/R)

54
 J. Tinctoris: De inventione et usu musicae (Naples, c1481–3); ed. K.
Weinmann (Regensburg, 1917, rev. 2/1961 by W. Fischer)
H. Gerle: Musica teusch (Nuremberg, 1532/R, rev. 3/1546/R as Musica
und Tabulatur)
J. Bermudo: Declaración de instrumentos musicales (Osuna, 1555/R)
J.-B. Besard: Thesaurus harmonicus (Cologne, 1603/R; Eng. trans. of
appx in R. Dowland: Varietie of Lute-Lessons, 1610)
T. Robinson: The Schoole of Musicke (London, 1603/R); ed. in CM
(1971)
R. Dowland: Varietie of Lute-Lessons (London, 1610/R) [incl. section by
J. Dowland, and Eng. trans. of appx to J.-B. Besard: Thesaurus
harmonicus, 1603]
T. Mace: Musick's Monument (London, 1676/R)
E.G. Baron: Historisch-theoretisch und practische Untersuchung des
Instruments der Lauten (Nuremberg, 1727/R; Eng. trans., 1976, as Study of
the Lute)
M. Southard and S. Cooper: ‘A Translation of Hans Newsidler's Ein
Newgeordent künstlich Lautenbuch’, JLSA, xi (1978), 5–25
Lute (ii): Bibliography

d: construction

I. Harwood: ‘A Fifteenth-Century Lute Design’, LSJ, ii (1960), 3–8

M.W. Prynne: ‘Lute Bellies and Barring’, LSJ, vi (1964), 7–12
F. Hellwig: ‘On the Construction of the Lute Belly’, GSJ, xxi (1968), 129–
45
F. Hellwig: ‘An Example of Lute Restoration’, GSJ, xxiii (1970), 64–8
D. Edwards: ‘A Geometrical Construction for a Lute Profile’, LSJ, xv
(1973), 48–9
D. Abbott and E. Segerman: ‘Strings in the 16th and 17th Centuries’,
GSJ, xxvii (1974), 48–73
F. Hellwig: ‘Lute Construction in the Renaissance and the Baroque’,
GSJ, xxvii (1974), 21–30
F. Hellwig: ‘Lute-Making in the Late 15th and the 16th Century’, LSJ, xvi
(1974), 24–38
R. Lundberg: ‘Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Lute-Making’, JLSA,
vii (1974), 31–50
D. Abbott and E. Segerman: ‘On Lute Bridges and Frets’, EMc, iii
(1975), 295 only
D. Abbott and E. Segerman: ‘Gut Strings’, EMc, iv (1976), 430–37
D. Abbott and E. Segerman: ‘The Geometric Description and Analysis
of Instrument Shapes’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.2 (1976), 7–13
J. Downing: ‘Lute Bridges and Frets’, EMc, iv (1976), 365–7
I. Firth: ‘Acoustical Experiments on the Lute Belly’, GSJ, xxx (1977), 56–
63
C. Bouterse: ‘Reconstructing the Medieval Arabic Lute’, GSJ, xxxii
(1979), 2–9
M. Lowe: ‘An Assessment of the Progress of Twentieth-Century Lute-
Making, with Suggestions for Future Development’, Le luth et sa musique
II: Tours 1980, 157–62

55
 G. Söhne: ‘On the Geometry of the Lute’, JLSA, xiii (1980), 35–54
W. Samson: ‘Lute Outlines: a Pragmatic Approach to Geometrical
Description’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.25 (1981), 35–8
R.H. Wells: ‘Number Symbolism in the Renaissance Lute Rose’, EMc, ix
(1981), 32–42
S. Barber: ‘Making Lute Moulds’, The Lute, xxii (1982), 21–3
K. Coates: Geometry, Proportion and the Art of Lutherie (Oxford, 1985)
J. Dugot: ‘La facture du luth’, La facture instrumentale européenne:
suprématies nationales et enrichèssement mutuel, Musée instrumental du
Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris, 6 Nov 1985 – 1
March 1986 (Paris, 1985), 35–51 [exhibition catalogue]
D. Edwards: ‘Gut Strings and Angled Bridges’, The Lute, xxv (1985),
17–28
Lute Symposium: Utrecht 1986 [incl. R. Nurse: ‘Design and Structural
Development of the Lute in the Renaissance’, 101–12; J. Dugot: ‘Some
Aspects of the Construction of Archlutes and Theorboes in Venice (ca.
1600–1650)’, 113–23]
R. Lundberg: ‘Historical Lute Construction: the Erlangen Lectures’,
American Lutherie, no.19 (1989), 6–19; no.20 (1989), 40–53; no.21 (1990),
16–29; no.22 (1990), 20–27; no.23 (1990), 42–53; no.24 (1990), 40–53;
no.28 (1991), 8–17; no.29 (1992), 10–19; no.30 (1992), 28–39; no.31
(1992), 46–54; no.35 (1993), 34–43; no.36 (1993), 32–8; no.37 (1994), 32–
8; no.38 (1994), 8–17
M. Peruffo: ‘New Hypothesis on the Construction of Bass Strings for
Lutes and other Gut-String Instruments’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.62 (1991),
22–36
E. Segerman: ‘The Size of the English 12-Course Lute’, FoMRHI
Quarterly, no.92 (1998), 31–2
Lute (ii): Bibliography

e: notation and tunings

W. Apel: The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900–1600 (Cambridge, MA,

1942, 5/1961; Ger. trans., rev., 1970)
G. Hayes: ‘Instruments and Instrumental Notation: the Lute’, The Age of
Humanism, 1540–1630, NOHM, iv (1968), 709–83, esp. 721ff
J. Tichota: ‘Intabulationen und tschechischer Gemeinschaftsgesang an
der Wende des 16. Jahrhunderts’, Musica bohemica et europaea: Brno V
1970, 63–9
H.M. Brown: ‘Embellishment in Early Sixteenth-Century Italian
Intabulations’, PRMA, c (1973–4), 49–83
D. Poulton: ‘Graces of Play in Renaissance Lute Music’, EMc, iii (1975),
107–14
M. Lindley: ‘Luis Milan and Meantone Temperament’, JLSA, xi (1978),
45–62
H. Charnassé: ‘Transkription deutsches Lautentabulaturen par
Computer’, Gitarre & Laute, i/4 (1979), 16–23
W. Boetticher: ‘Zum Problem der ältesten handschriftlich überlieferten
Lautentabulaturen’, Ars musica, musica scientia: Festschrift Heinrich
Hüschen, ed. D. Altenburg (Cologne, 1980), 61–5

56
 Le luth et sa musique II: Tours 1980 [incl. J. Tichota: ‘Problèmes
d'édition des tablatures de rédaction défectueuse’, 43–58; H.M. Brown: ‘La
Musica Ficta dans les mises en tablatures d'Albert de Rippe et Adrian Le
Roy’, 163–82]
G. Söhne: ‘Regelmässige Temperaturen auf der Laute’, Gitarre & Laute,
iv (1982), 98–91
M.L. Göllner: ‘On the Process of Lute Intabulation in the Sixteenth
Century’, Ars iocundissima: Festschrift für Kurt Dorfmüller, ed. H.
Leuchtmann and R. Münster (Tutzing, 1984), 83–96
M. Lindley: Lutes, Viols and Temperaments (Cambridge, 1984)
H. Minamino: ‘Transformation in Intabulation’, JLSA, xvii–xviii (1984–5),
114–17
H.M. Brown: ‘The Importance of Sixteenth-Century Intabulations’, Lute
Symposium: Utrecht 1986, 1–29
H.M. Brown: ‘Bossinensis, Willaert, and Verdelot: Pitch and the
Conventions of Transcribing Music for Lute and Voice in Italy in the Early
Sixteenth Century’, RdM, lxxv (1989), 25–46
F. Dry: Accords et frettages du luth et de la vihuela d'après quelques
traités des XVI et XVII siècles (Paris, 1989)
E. Schulze-Kurz: Die Laute und ihre Stimmungen in der ersten Hälfte
des 17 Jahrhunderts (Wilsingen, 1990)
S. Buetens: The Meaning and Performance of Ornament Signs in
English Lute Tablatures (Menlo Park, CA, 1991)
J. Le Cocq: ‘The Pitch and Tuning in French Lute Song: 1603–1643’,
The Lute, xxxii (1992), 46–71
D. Tunley: ‘Tunings and Transpositions in the Early 17th-Century French
Lute Air’, EMc, xxi (1993), 203–11
M. Shepherd: ‘The Interpretation of Signs for Graces in English Lute
Music’, The Lute, xxxvi (1996), 37–84
Lute (ii): Bibliography

f: repertory

A. Koczirz: ‘Österreichische Lautenmusik zwischen 1650 und 1720’,

SMw, v (1918), 49–96; also pubd as introduction to DTÖ, 1, Jg.xxv/2
(1918/R)
H. Sommer: Lautentraktate des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts in Rahmen
der deutschen und französischen Lautentabulatur (diss., U. of Berlin, 1923)
A. Koczirz: ‘Böhmische Lautenkunst um 1720’, Alt-Prager Almanach
(1926), 88–100
P. Warlock: The English Ayre (London, 1926/R)
J. Zuth: Handbuch der Laute und Gitarre (Vienna, 1926–8/R)
L. de La Laurencie: Les luthistes (Paris, 1928/R)
O.J. Gombosi: Bakfark Bálint élete és müvei (1507–1576)/Der Lautenist
Valentin Bakfark (1507–1576) (Budapest, 1935, rev. 2/1967 by Z. Falry in
Ger. only)
H.-P. Kosack: Geschichte der Laute und Lautenmusik in Preussen
(Kassel, 1935)
R. Newton: ‘English Lute Music of the Golden Age’, PMA, lxv (1938–9),
63–90

57
 F.J. Giesbert: Schule für die Barocklaute (Mainz, 1940)
A. Koczirz, ed.: Wiener Lautenmusik des 18. Jahrhundert, EDM, 2nd
ser., i (1942)
W. Boetticher: Studien zur solistischen Lautenpraxis des 16. und 17.
Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1943)
J.M. Ward: The Vihuela da Mano and its Music (1536–1576) (diss., New
York U., 1953)
La musique instrumentale de la Renaissance: Paris 1954
M. Rollin: ‘Le “tombeau” chez les luthistes Denis Gautier, Jacques
Gallot, Charles Mouton’, XVIIe siècle, nos.21–2 (1954), 463–79
D. Lumsden: The Sources of English Lute Music, 1540–1620 (diss., U.
of Cambridge, 1955)
L.H. Moe: Dance Music in Printed Italian Lute Tablatures from 1507 to
1611 (diss., Harvard U., 1956)
Le luth et sa musique: Neuilly-sur-Seine 1957
D. Heartz: Sources and Forms of the French Instrumental Dance in the
Sixteenth Century (diss., Harvard U., 1957)
A. Malecek: ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Wiener Lautenspieler’, Jb des
Vereins für Geschichte der Stat Wien, xiii (1957), 63–92
J. Jacquot: ‘Le luth et sa musique: vers une organisation internationale
des recherches’, AcM, xxx (1958), 89–99
W.S. Casey: Printed English Lute Instruction Books, 1568–1610 (diss.,
U. of Michigan, 1960)
G. Lefkoff, ed.: Five Sixteenth Century Venetian Lute Books
(Washington DC, 1960)
J. Ward: ‘The Lute Music of MS Royal Appendix 58’, JAMS, xiii (1960),
117–25
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