Dear Herbert, You ask a very interesting question. There are a great many lute sources which have survived over the years, but they must represent only a fraction of what once existed. How they survived is often a matter of luck.
No lute music has survived from 1400. The earliest sources are a few lute manuscripts which survive from the end of the 15th century. Most of the English lute manuscripts are from about 1600, give or take a decade or two. Lute books have survived in many different ways. Off the back of my head, and without checking details, I can think of the following: The Capirola Lute Book survived, because there are lots of pretty pictures in it - lots of exotic birds and animals - so no-one would want to throw the book away, even if the music became dated. The Board Lute Book just happened to turn up in Maggs, the London antiquarian book dealers. Robert Spencer bought the manuscript for his collection, which, on his death, passed to the Royal Academy in London. Sometimes books turn up out of the blue at auction sales, like Kapsberger's _Libro Terzo_ a few years ago. The Welde Lute Book, now in the possession of Lord Forrester, has stayed in the family until the present day. So has the Willoughby Lute Book, owned by Lord Middleton. Before it ended up in the Folger Library, the Folger Lute Book was owned by an old lady whose name was Dowland. It would be wrong, however, to assume that the manuscript must have been owned by John Dowland, and that it had stayed in the family ever since. The Robarts Lute Book was found in a drawer of a piece of furniture in Lanhydrock House, a National Trust property in Cornwall. The Thynne Lute Book was discovered at Longleat, another stately home in England. Some lute music has survived in book bindings. Fragments of the lute part for Rosseter's consort lessons were found in book bindings at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Solo lute music for Cambridge Add. 2764(2) was also discovered in book bindings. Lute music does not always survive on paper or parchment. There is some lute tablature carved into the huge Eglantine Table at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. There is a painting of Mary Magdalene, which has some lute tablature included in the picture. There are articles about these in _Early Music_. Sometimes lute music is included as part of a book which has nothing to do with music. Yale/Beinecke Osborn shelves MS fb7 springs to mind, because I am preparing a facsimile edition of it. The nine pages of lute music are at the back of a book on the history of King Edward II. The four pages of lute music in Lbl Add MS 6402 are found amongst statutes of Balliol College, and the music of Add MS 4900 is in a document concerned primarily with information on the bishops of England. The Straloch Lute Book survived until the 19th century. Some of the music was copied by a chap called Graham. The original manuscript was lost, but we still have Graham's copy. In recent years we have been able to make photographs, photocopies and microfilms, which occasionally become primary sources in their own right. For example, the Hirsch Lute Book, now at the British Library, suffered damage from damp. When Boethius Press made a facsimile edition of it, they used Ian Harwood's microfilm for some of the pages, because the original had deteriorated so much. When the Lute Society prepared the Welde Lute Book for publication, some pages of the original had been "repaired" with gauze, causing some notes to become invisible. We used Robert Spencer's photographs taken before the gauze was applied, to supply the missing notes for the edition. No doubt there are many other sources which have survived in interesting ways. If you want to know more about the ones I've mentioned, I could check details and supply chapter and verse, but it's gone midnight, and it's time for bed. All the best, Stewart McCoy. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Herbert Ward" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 3:26 PM Subject: [LUTE] How has lute music survived? > > How, in general, has lute music from 1400-1750 survived? > University libraries? People's attics? Publishers? > Music teachers? To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
