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)
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 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.
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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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:
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 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 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. 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 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 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.
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).
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, 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 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 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 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.
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.
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.
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 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 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
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.

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 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 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, 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.
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). 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.
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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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).
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
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
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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
W. Rubsamen: ‘Scottish and English Music of the Renaissance in a Newly-Discovered
Manuscript’, Festschrift Heinrich Besseler, ed. E. Klemm (Leipzig, 1961), 259–84
Z. Stęszewska: Tance polskie z tabulatur lutniowych [Polish dances in lute tablature], i–ii
(Kraków, 1962–6)
H. Radke: ‘Beiträge zur Erforschung der Lautentabulaturen des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts’,
Mf, xvi (1963), 34–51
J. Tichota: ‘Tabulatory pro loutnu a přibuzné nástroje na území ČSSR’ [Tablatures for lutes
and related instruments in Czechoslovakia], Studie a materiály k dějinám starší české
hudby (Praha, 1965), 139–49
E. Vogl: ‘Lautenisten der böhmischen Spätrenaissance’, Mf, xviii (1965), 28–901
J. Ward: ‘Parody Technique in 16th-Century Instrumental Music’, The Commonwealth of
Music, ed. G. Reese and R. Brandel (New York, 1965), 208–28
C.M. Simpson: The British Broadside Ballad and its Music (New Brunswick, NJ, 1966)
K. Dorfmüller: Studien zur Lautenmusik in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Tutzing,
1967)
H.B. Lobaugh: Three German Lute Books: Denss's ‘Floregium’, 1594; Reymann's ‘Noctes
musicae’, 1598; Rude's ‘Flores musicae’ 1600 (diss., U. of Rochester, 1968)
E. Pohlmann: Laute, Theorbe, Chitarrone: die Instrumente, ihre Musik und Literatur von
1500 bis zur Gegenwart (Bremen, 1968, enlarged 5/1982) [incl. bibliography]
W.H. Rubsamen: ‘The Earliest French Lute Tablature’, JAMS, xxi (1968), 286–99
K. Dorfmüller: ‘Die Edition der Lautentabulaturen’, Musikalische Edition im Wandel
 historischen Bewusstseins, ed. T.G. Georgiades (Kassel, 1971), 189–202
H. Radke: ‘Zum Problem der Lautentabulatur-Übertragung’, AcM, xliii (1971), 94–103
P. Danner: ‘Before Petrucci: the Lute in the 15th Century’, JLSA, v (1972), 4–17
D. Heartz: ‘Mary Magdalen, Lutenist’, JLSA, v (1972), 52–67
W. Rave: Some Manuscripts of French Lute Music, 1630–1700 (diss., U. of Illinois, 1972)
A. Rooley and J. Tyler: ‘The Lute Consort’, LSJ, xiv (1972), 13–24
R. Henning: ‘German Lute Tablature and Conrad Paumann: Commemorating the 500th
Anniversary of his Death’, LSJ, xv (1973), 7–10
U. Henning: ‘The Lute made Easy: a Chapter from Virdung's Musica getutscht (1511)’, LSJ,
xv (1973), 20–36
J. Tichota: ‘Francouzská loutnová hudba v Čechách’ [French lute music in Bohemia], MMC,
nos.25–6 (1973), 7–77 [with Ger. summary]
T. Heck: ‘Lute Music: Tablatures, Textures and Transcriptions’, JLSA, vii (1974), 19–30
H. Tischler: ‘The Earliest Lute Tablature?’, JAMS, xxvii (1974), 100–03
C.N. Amos: Lute Practice and Lutenists in Germany between 1500 and 1750 (diss., U. of
Iowa, 1975)
L. Nordstrom: ‘The English Lute Duet and Consort Lesson’, LSJ, xviii (1976), 5–22
D. Fallows: ‘15th-Century Tablatures for Plucked Instruments: a Summary, a Revision and a
Suggestion’, LSJ, xix (1977), 7–33
W. Boetticher: Handschriftlich überlieferte Lauten- und Gitarrentabulaturen des 15. bis 18.
Jahrhunderts: beschreibender Katalog (Munich, 1978)
J. Jacquot: ‘Le luth et sa musique: from the Neuilly Colloquium to the Corpus of French
Lutenists’, LSJ, xx (1978), 7–17
D. Lyons: Lute, Vihuela, Guitar to 1800: a Bibliography (Detroit, 1978)
P. Päffgen: Laute und Lautenspiel in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts:
Beobachtungen zur Bauweise und Spieltechnik (Regensburg, 1978)
Le luth et sa musique II: Tours 1980 [incl. A. Bailes: ‘An Introduction to French Lute Music of
the XVIIth Century’, 213–29]
C. Page: ‘French Lute Tablature in the 14th Century?’, EMc, viii (1980), 488–91
W.F. Prizer: ‘Lutenists at the Court of Mantua in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth
Centuries’, JLSA, xiii (1980), 5–34
J.-M. Vaccaro: La musique de luth en France au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1981)
D. Ledbetter: ‘Aspects of 17th-Century Lute Style Reflected in the Works of the
Clavecinistes’, The Lute, xxii (1982), 55–67
E.A. Bowles: La pratique musicale au Moyen Age/Musical Performance in the Late Middle
Ages (Geneva, 1983)
C.P. Comberiati: ‘On the Threshold of Homophony: Texture in Sixteenth-Century Lute
Music’, JMR, iv (1983), 331–52
J. Glixon: ‘Lutenists in Renaissance Venice: some Notes from the Archives’, JLSA, xvi
(1983), 15–26
F. Marincola: ‘The Instructions from Vincenzo Capirola’s Lute Book: a New Translation’, The
Lute, xxiii (1983), 23–8
V. Coelho and others: ‘Studies in the Lute and its Music: Prospects for the Future’, JLSA,
xvii–xviii (1984–5), 118–32
V. Ivanoff: ‘Das Lautenduo im 15. Jahrhundert’, Basler Jb für historische Musikpraxis, viii
(1984), 147–62
J.M. Meadors: Italian Lute Fantasias and Ricercars Printed in the Second Half of the
Sixteenth Century (diss., Harvard U., 1984)
J. Tichota: ‘Bohemika a český repertoár v tabulaturách pro renesanční loutnu’ [Bohemiana
and the Czech repertory in tablature for the Reniassance lute], MMC, no.31 (1984),
143–222
D.J. Buch: ‘Style brisé, style luthée, and the choses luthées’, MQ, lxxi (1985), 52–67, 220–
21
P. Päffgen: ‘Ein artliches Lob der Lauten: Blüte und Niedergang von Laute und Lautenspiel
 im 16.–18. Jahrhundert’, Concerto, ii (1985), 48–55
R. Toft: ‘An Approach to Performing the Mid 16th-Century Italian Lute Fantasia’, The Lute,
xxv (1985), 3–16
L. Hoffmann-Erbrecht: ‘Lautenspiel und Lautenkomposition in Schlesien’, Musikgeschichte
Schlesiens (Dülmen, 1986), 77–89
Lute Symposium: Utrecht 1986 [incl. A.J. Ness: ‘The Siena Lute Book and its Arrangements
of Vocal and Instrumental Part-Music’, 30–49; L. Nordstrom: ‘The Lute in Settings for
Consort’, 50–63]
S. McCoy: ‘Lost Lute Solos Revealed in a Paston Manuscript’, The Lute, xxvi (1986), 21–39
T.J. McGee: ‘Instruments and the Faenza Codex’, EMc, xiv (1986), 480–90
C. Meyer: Contributions à l'étude des sources de la musique de luth dans les Pays
germaniques au XVIIème siècle (diss., U. of Strasbourg II, 1986)
H. Minamino: ‘Conrad Paumann and the Evolution of Solo Lute Practice in the Fifteenth
Century’, JMR, vi (1986), 291–310
W.F. Prizer: ‘The Frottola and the Unwritten Tradition’, Studi musicali, xv (1986), 3–37
D. Ledbetter: Harpsichord and Lute Music in 17th-Century France (London, 1987)
S. McCoy: ‘Edward Paston and the Textless Lute-Song’, EMc, xv (1987), 221–7
P. Päffgen: ‘Lautenmusik vor 1500’, Gitarre & Laute, ix/6 (1987), 58–61
M. Spring: The Lute in England and Scotland after the Golden Age, 1629–1750 (diss., U. of
Oxford, 1987)
D.J. Buch: ‘Texture in French Baroque Lute Music and Related Ensemble Repertories’,
JLSA, xx–xxi (1987–8), 120–54
R. d'A. Jensen: The Lute Ricercar in Italy, 1507–1517 (diss., U. of California, 1988)
J.J. Kmetz, ed.: Die Handsschriften der Universitätsbibliothek Basel. Katalog der
Musikhandschriften des 16. Jahrhunderts: Quellenkritische und historische
Untersuchung (Basle, 1988)
A. Schlegel: ‘Bemerkungen zur “Rhétorique des dieux”’, Gitarre & Laute, xi/2 (1989), 17–23
J. Griffiths: ‘Une fantaisie de la Renaissance: an Introduction’, JLSA, xxiii (1990), 1–16
D. Ledbetter: ‘French Lute Music 1600–1650: Towards a Definition of Genres’, The Lute,
xxx (1990), 25–47
D. Fabris: ‘Influenze stilistiche e circolazione manoscritta della musica per liuto in Italia e in
Francia nella prima metà del Seicento’, RdM, lxxvii (1991), 311–33
D. Fabris: ‘Voix et intruments pour la musique de danse: à propos des airs pour chanter et
danser dans les tablatures italiennes de luth’, Le Concert des voix et des instruments à
la Renaissance: Tours 1991, 389–422
C. Meyer and others: Sources manuscrites en tablature: luth et théorbe (ca. 1500–ca. 1800),
catalogue descriptif, i–iii (Baden-Baden, 1991–9)
R. Eberlein: ‘The Faenza Codex: Music for Organ or for Lute Duet?’, EMc, xx (1992), 460–
66
M. Gómez: ‘Some Precursors of the Spanish Lute School’, EMc, xx (1992), 583–93
C. Meyer: ‘Quelques aspects de la diffusion de la musique de luth dans les Pays rhénans à
l'époque de la Renaissance et du Baroque’, Mitteilungen der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für
mittelrheinische Musikgeschichte, lix (1992), 363–72
K. Polk: German Instrumental Music of the Late Middle Ages: Players, Patrons and
Performance Practice (Cambridge, 1992)
J.M. Ward: Music for Elizabethan Lutes (Oxford, 1992)
J. Craig-McFeely: English Lute Manuscripts and Scribes 1530–1630 (diss., U. of Oxford,
1993)
D. Kirsch and L. Meierott: Berliner Lautentabulaturen in Krakau (Mainz, 1993)
V.A. Coelho: The Manuscript Sources of Seventeenth-Century Italian Lute Music (New
York, 1995)
P. Lay: ‘French Music for Solo Theorbo: an Introduction’, Lute News, no.40 (1996), 3–7
V.A. Coelho, ed.: Lute, Guitar and Vihuela: Historical Practice and Modern Interpretation
(Cambridge, 1997) [incl. D. Fabris: ‘Lute Tablature Instructions in Italy: a Survey of the
 Regole from 1507–1759’, 16–46]
A. Brinzing: ‘Formen und Traditionen in den deutschen Lautentänzen des 16. Jahrhunderts’,
Die Laute, i (1998), 5–17
P. Király: ‘Einige Beobachtungen und Anmerkungen ber Lautenmusikquellen, Lautenisten
und Amateure im 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhundert’, Die Laute, i (1998), 24–44