Lute Tutor

Day 10

*Update* I was contacted by Marie who shared some really valuable information about this piece. Marie’s understanding of the context of the pieces composition is invaluable, so I’ve copied it verbatim here: I don’t know whether anyone has already told you that Saphica is not an unmeasured prelude. Instead of being forward-looking, it’s looking back…

Day 9

Hans Judenkönig (also Judenkunig or Judenkünig) (c. 1450 – 4 March 1526) was a German lutenist of the Renaissance. He was born in Schwäbisch Gmünd and died in Vienna. He worked as a lutenist in the vicinity of the University of Vienna and was best known for his two lute books written for the self-teaching…

Day 8

This piece is from the Craus Lute Book housed and looked after by the Austrian National Music Collection (ms 18688). Although we don’t know who composed it, we expect the book to have been collated from about 1540. If you’ve enjoyed the January Lute Challenge, why not share this piece?

Day 7

Cesare Negri (c. 1535 – c. 1605) was an Italian dancer and choreographer. He was nicknamed il Trombone, an ugly or jocular name for someone “who likes to blow his own horn”. Born in Milan, he founded a dance academy there in 1554. He was an active court choreographer for the nobility in Milan. He…

Day 6

Fabritio Caroso da Sermoneta (1526/1535 – 1605/1620) was an Italian Renaissance dancing master and a composer or transcriber of dance music. His dance manual Il Ballarino was published in 1581, with a subsequent edition, significantly different, Nobiltà di Dame, printed in 1600 and again after his death in 1630. Both manuals have been printed in…

Day 5

Pierre Attaingnant (or Attaignant) (c. 1494 – late 1551 or 1552) was a French music publisher, active in Paris. Attaingnant is considered to be first large-scale publisher of single-impression movable type for music-printing, thus making it possible to print faster and cheaper than predecessors such as Ottaviano Petrucci. Attaingnant is often credited with being the…

Day 4

Very little is known of John Dowland’s early life, but it is generally thought he was born in London; some sources even put his birth year as 1563. Irish historian W. H. Grattan Flood claimed that he was born in Dalkey, near Dublin, but no corroborating evidence has ever been found either for that or…

Day 3

This tune appears in William Ballet’s Lute Book of 1594, and a Scottish version in the Rowallan Manuscript (c. 1629) under the title “Maggie Ramsay.” John Glen (Early Scottish Melodies, 1900) believes Scottish sources predate English ones, and says that the William Ballet tune is merely an English version of the Rowallan one (believing the…

Day 2

Cesare Negri (c. 1535 – c. 1605) was an Italian dancer and choreographer. He was nicknamed il Trombone, an ugly or jocular name for someone “who likes to blow his own horn”. Born in Milan, he founded a dance academy there in 1554. He was an active court choreographer for the nobility in Milan. He…

Day 1

Welcome! Welcome to the January Lute Challenge 2023 Neusidler was born in Pressburg (today Bratislava, Slovakia) and first enters the historical record in 1530, when he settled in Nuremberg, Germany. He was issued a residence permit by the city council in February and married there in September. In April 1531, he became a citizen and…