\On Feb 24, 2010, at 4:13 PM, John Griffiths wrote: > the evidence about Palestrina and the lute suggests not that he > composed on the lute, but that he intabulated his new compositions and > tested them on the lute before releasing them.
I'm not sure what "tested" or "released" would mean in this context, but at least in English translation, the letter from Annibale Capello to Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga of Mantua of 18 October 1578 seems to say Palestrina was using the lute to compose: "Having passed recently through a serious illness and being thus unable to command either his wits or his eyesight in the furtherance of his great desire to serve Your Highness in whatever way he can, M. Giovanni da Palestrina has begun to set the Kyrie and Gloria of the first mass on the lute, and when he let me hear them, I found them in truth full of great sweetness and elegance. [ ] And as soon as his infirmity permits he will work out what he has done on the lute with all possible care. This seems to say that Palestrina had composed on the lute, and would expand it into the vocal parts as soon as he got well. The Duke apparently thought that Capello meant to say that Palestrina was writing lute music, as two drafts of a letter from a ducal official to Capello that Jeppeson found in Gonzaga show, or at least thats how Jessie Ann Owens reads them. The first one says: "His Highness [the Duke] commands that Your Lordship [Capello] tell Messer Giovanni di Palestrina that he should take care to get well and not hurry to set to the lute the Kyrie and the Gloria with other compositions, because having at hand many other talented men [i.e. in Mantua, I think] there is no need for compositions for lute, but instead for compositions made with great care." The second draft says Capello should tell Palestrina that he "not hurry to set the Masses to the lute, since [the Duke] desires that they employ imitation throughout and be written on the chant" This is all at pages 292-293 of "Composers at work" which I pulled up on Google books by searching "jessie ann owens" palestrina lute. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
