A Tour of Lands, Lutes, and Lutenists

Great Eras of Lute Music Explored

In a previous article I shared a general history of the lute, and my particular history with that instrument. Here, I’d like to introduce major genres of lute music, and some of the composers associated with them — from Merrie England to Lutheran Germany.

The Renaissance Lute of Elizabethan England

While Shakespeare was composing plays full of veiled political thrusts against Queen Elizabeth I, a melancholy musician named John Dowland was begging to become her court lutenist. While Shakespeare’s adherence to Catholicism can only be speculated on, Dowland’s is known for certain, and this is what he held responsible for his failed career at the English court, since his application in 1594 for the then-vacant position of court lute player was denied. Whether or not his religion played a part is hard to say, since Elizabeth was a volatile woman and the favors she bestowed had more to do with whims and fancies than with theological positions: after all, the Catholic composer William Byrd was in her service for many years.

It is uncertain whether Dowland was of English or Irish extraction, but his conversion to Catholicism as a young man while in the service of a diplomat in France is attested. He married in England, and not having got the English court job he wished for, entered the service of the King of Denmark as lutenist, where he was one of the highest paid in the court. His heart was in England, however, where he continued to publish music and vacation for long periods at a time, and after nine years he returned to his (probably) native land. In 1612, he secured a position as one of James I’s lutenists. 

Dowland was a virtuosic player, and his music for solo lute covers everything from simple arrangements of contemporary tavern songs to intricate dance variations and contrapuntal fantasies. The Scandinavian lutenist Jonas Nordberg shares an intense and emotional performance of one of these latter here:

Not all lute music was this somber, however. The “Frog Galliard” shows a more sprightly and bright Dowland. With rhythmic changes, triplets, and running passages, it has both cheerful and sweetly wistful parts.

Dowland stretched the classic “Renaissance lute” to its limits; while most of his work is playable on a 6-course lute, some of it requires an 8- or 10-course lute. The size of the fingerboard, the spacing of the strings — all of this tells in his music, most of which is hard to play on any larger sizes of lutes since the hand positions would be too stretched out.

Though I will focus on his solo lute music in this article, it should be noted that Dowland was prolific in the genre of writing for the pairing of voice and lute as a duo, a genre that became known as “lute songs.” His immortally famous Lachrimae, distributed as lute solos and variations, as a lute song, and as a suite for viol consort, is certainly the poster child of melancholy English lute music.

While my favorite sung version is may be listened to here, I can’t resist sharing below a stirring rendition of the consort version, which oozes from the dark wood of the viol consort, punctuated with the starry tinkle of the lute. For this performance, the musicians make use of the traditional Renaissance printing of the music, in which the different parts are printed in the same book, but facing different directions so that the players can sit in a circle around it and easily play from one copy. Five clef parts for the five viols, and one tablature part for the lute player.

Here is the full album, a true delight.

In the realm of English lute music, two Americans stand head and shoulders above other lutenists: Hopkinson Smith and Paul O’Dette. Here are my favorite Dowland albums of theirs:

To me, this last album sounds like a relaxed afternoon straight from the realms of childhood; it was another of my very first and dear encounters with the lute. Regularly selected by my mother as relaxing background music in the house while I was growing up, I remember curling up next to the stereo and reading the liner notes, and trying to identify the sound difference between the two lutes O’Dette alternated between. Oh, and I remember that my mom had pasted a postcard of a medieval illumination over the cover of the CD, since the original album art was Queen Elizabeth — “Why would I want to look at that stinker pot?,” she said.

The golden age of English lute music is filled with light, champagne-like dances, and brooding songs like the Lachrimae. The bright and thin sound of the Renaissance lute lends itself superlatively well to this oeuvre.

Carrying the Lute to Extreme Lengths: The Italian and French Baroque

The larger lutes of the next era bring a new, warmer, and deeper sound onto the lute scene.

Over in Italy, lutenists were experimenting with new forms of their instrument. I introduced you to the archlute in my last article on music. Here, we can look a little more closely at it, and at its close relative the theorbo. 

Why were they experimenting with the lute in Italy? Well, Italy was a center for musical innovation already, and so one finds it hardly surprising that the land that birthed opera, the stile rappresentativo, and new theories of harmony, chromaticism, and counterpoint would also be pushing the limits of its instruments. 

One of these early innovative figures was Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger, a man of German descent but living in Italy. Counted in the early years of the 17th century as one of the “wonders of Rome,” his compositions were marked by departures from then-current rules of counterpoint, by unusual rhythms, and by strange modulations. While many praised him, others saw him as a ingenious performer with inferior compositional skills. Norwegian lutenist Rolf Lislevand has written of him: “Kapsberger was as bad a composer as he was a fine instrumentalist…. The ideas are often badly developed, and are freely associated with one another; no real musical discourse is built up…. The rhythm — even after serious efforts at fathoming it — wavers between inspired cleverness and total confusion.”

Kapsberger’s “Toccata Arpeggiata” is a brilliant tour of chromatic variations that leans on the beauty of plucked arpeggiated chords to achieve a shimmering, flowing effect like rushing water:

Rolf Lislevand’s interpretations of Kapsberger are certainly the fruit of decades spend playing the master. In this track he begins solo, before several other instrumentalists enter to back him up.

Kapsberger popularized the archlute and theorbo as solo instruments, rather than just for accompaniment. The repertoire, while overall not huge, contains quite a few gems, such as this set of sonatas by Giovanni Zamboni from 1717. I’ve played a number of these suites, marked by an easy, joyful light — no doubt from the Italian sunshine and Mediterranean cuisine. They could almost be called “Baroque easy listening.”

The French were not about to let the Italians best them with these new lutes, however, and soon a distinctive French repertoire sprung up. Singer and multi-instrumentalist Robert de Visée (c. 1655–1732/1733), court composer and lutenist for Louis XIV and Louis XV, left to posterity several books of lute, Baroque guitar, and theorbo music. One of his duties at the French court was to walk behind the king playing while His Majesty strolled around the garden — “the first ‘Walkman’ in history,” Lislevand quips. In 1719, de Visée was named “Guitar Master of the King” (Maître de Guitare du Roi) to Louis XV, then only ten years old. 

Here Jonas Nordberg gives a truly inspired rendition of two theorbo pieces from a suite by Robert di Visée. Note the checker inlay on the neck of the theorbo.

A Spanish lutenist, Xavier Díaz-Latorre (known to some of his professional friends I’ve met as “Xavie”) renders another chaconne beautifully here.

I don’t have the space to treat separately the Baroque guitar, but I’d be remiss not to make a brief mention of it. Strung similarly to a lute, its body is much smaller than the modern guitar but already formed into that familiar figure-eight shape. With only five strings and hardly any bass register, it is possible to strum it heavily without the chords getting muddy. The light timbre of the baroque guitar pairs well with the deep bass of the theorbo. A Polish couple — “The Lute Duo,” they call themselves — has turned the duetting potential of these instruments to new heights:

Albums like the one below set the baroque guitar and theorbo alongside each other for refreshing contrast.

Germany and the Late Baroque Lute

Despite the creation of the archlute and theorbo, the musical genius of European lutenists was yet not finished developing their twangers — I mean lutes. The archlute retained the tuning of the Renaissance lute, but with extra bass strings. The theorbo had its own tuning, with not much treble register. Both were regularly single strung since their longer string lengths could be louder than the short strings of the early Renaissance model, and because single strings are easier to “dig into” or pluck hard for more sound in an ensemble setting. New developments in string-making technology, as well as experiments with different tuning systems, gave rise to the final generation of lutes: the Baroque lute family.

With a larger body like that of an archlute, the baroque lute’s extended neck was shorter than the theorbo’s and archlute’s, and some didn’t even have an extended neck, only an “outrigger” on the head of the lute for a few bass strings. These baroque lutes were consistently double-strung like the earlier renaissance ones, and had a tuning different from both the earlier lute and the theorbo families. 

It was in the Germanies that they were developed and extensively composed for, and today the names of Bach and Weiss are the ones most associated with this Baroque instrument. We are all familiar (I hope) with the name of J.S. Bach, and among his thousand compositions, it is hardly  surprising that we find works for lute. Not only that, many of his violin and cello suites are playable on one form of lute or another.

The husband-wife duo strikes (or should I say plucks?) again in this performance, wielding a pair of swan-neck baroque lutes in service of Bach’s genius:

The German composer Sylvius Leopold Weiss (12 October 1687–16 October 1750) was himself the son of a lutenist. One of the most accomplished players and composers of his day (over 800 compositions survive), his clients included courts in Breslau, Dresden, and Rome, and he taught the lute to Prince Philip Hyacinth of Lobkowicz and the prince’s second wife.

Weiss befriended J.S. Bach's eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, and through him met his father. A near contemporary, Johann Friedrich Reichardt, reports that “Anyone who knows how difficult it is to play harmonic modulations and good counterpoint on the lute will be surprised and full of disbelief to hear from eyewitnesses that Weiss, the great lutenist, challenged J.S. Bach, the great harpsichordist and organist, at playing fantasies and fugues.” It seems that they must have had get-togethers at which they dueled musically on their respective instruments.

Harmonically, Weiss's music sounds similar to Bach's: the dark Germanic chromaticism of slow movements, the pounding and energetic counterpoint of fast ones. Bosnian musician Edin Karamazov has his own distinctive style of wringing sound from the lute, and in this performance gives a characteristically intense rendition of Weiss:

Weiss recordings are plentiful, and beautifully relaxing. Bach is, of course, endlessly arranged, and also features on numerous lute albums. My lute teacher, Timothy Burris, recorded a lovely CD entitled “Bach meets Weiss” which can serve as an introduction to their styles.

Modern Lute Composition

These eras of English, Italian and French, and German are some of the richest sources of lute repertoire. Needless to say, it was impossible in this short article to be comprehensive; the Spanish, Scottish, early Italian, and early German are as have been left for you to explore. Before I close, however, I want to say something about modern compositions for the lute.

As the early music revival has progressed further and further, composers and musicians have stepped forward to create new music for these old instruments, some in a historical style, others in a modern style.

Ori Harmelin begins his latest solo album with his own new composition in perfect Renaissance style, and closes it with a modern, jazzy-sounding composition for lute by Simon MacHale. See what you think of both!

I’ve already mentioned my German acquaintance Christoph Dalitz and his Zamboni-style sonatas, but here’s my artist page on Spotify so you can find them again.

YouTube personality and lute popularizer Brandon Acker has tried “metal shredding” with his lute, and other similar adaptions (shall we call them). In a similar spirit, the masterful Ron McFarlane has successfully incorporated the lute into the New Age and Bluegrass styles:

I had the pleasure of attending some master classes with Ron last summer, and he is a master. When he touches the lute, it shines. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around what he’s doing with his hands here, but this is a Bluegrassish composition of his own from his Grammy nominated album of the same title:

I’ll close this foray into various styles of lute music by sharing my Rockin’ Lute Playlist. Enjoy!