Dear Helen, One of the mysteries of 16th century Italian music is why there are so few lute songs surviving - other responses to your question have mentioned most of the known sources, and they are far fewer in number than we might reasonable expect. We certainly know that singing to the lute was hugely popular - Castiglione's famous quote says it all:
"But singing to the lute with the dittie (me thinke) is more pleasant than the rest, for it addeth to the wordes such a grace and strength, that it is a great wonder." Baldassare Castiglione, "Il Libro del Cortegiano," Venice, 1528. Translated by Sir Thomas Hoby, 1561. So it seems that perhaps the idea of a fixed accompaniment to a song was slightly alien to the time and accomplished musicians simply improvised on the spot or memorised their accompaniments and had no need to write them down. But the few settings that do survive - like the Bossinensis prints - demonstrate how lute song accompaniments were made, and it's not an unduly difficult task to take the vocal originals of part songs and create your own lute song versions. I spent several years doing that as I knew a singer who shared my enjoyment of 16c Italian music, and we essentially created our repertoire that way. I have attached some examples of settings to the copy of this message sent directly to you (we can't send attachments to the lutenet). Ron Andrico and Donna Stewart have done some wonderful work in this field, and you can find their books at: http://www.mignarda.com/editions/ I am writing here mainly about the early & mid 16c - by the end of the century the development of continuo was changing performance practice radically. For more on that see 'Per cantare e sonare - accompanying Italian lute song of the late sixteenth century' - by Kevin Mason, in 'Performance on Lute, Guitar & Vihuela' edited by Victor Coelho, Camridge University Press, 1997. Best wishes, Denys -----Original Message----- From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf Of helen.atkin...@wordstone.co.uk Sent: 20 January 2011 06:37 To: List LUTELIST Subject: [LUTE] Italian songs Hi I'm wondering if there is much Italian Renaissance song repertoire available with written out tablature accompaniment. I'm particularly inspired by the material on Julianne Baird and Ronn McFarlane's CD (The Italian Lute Song). Any advice on this would be gratefully received. Helen To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
