Also included on this recording is music from the Vincenzo Capirola Lute Book,an Italian manuscript compiled around 1517. Capirola was an Italian lute virtuoso of great renown, whose music is set stylistically between the first polyphonic lute compositions published by Petrucci and the music of Francesco da Milano and his circle composing in the 1520's and 30’s. The Capirola collection is one of the earliest manuscript sources of music for the solo Renaissance lute and the manuscript is itself a visual work of art.

Almost nothing is known of the life of the 16th century lutenist and composer Giovanni Maria da Crema. His solo lute music is of a very high quality and his stature as a lutenist must surely have been significant in his own day. Of the lutenist/composers represented on this recording, Francesco da Milano is surely the most eminent, though all of these diversi autori enjoyed great renown during their lifetimes.

P.R. January 2003

*music performed on a 6-course alto lute by Paul Thomson, 1980
**music performed on a 6-course tenor lute by Klaus Jacobsen, 1990

Spain's most gifted vihuelistas, including Luys Milan, Alonso Mudarra, Miguel de Fuenllana, and Luys Narvaéz, were all virtuosos on the instrument and each composed at least one book of music for the vihuela, some of which is recorded on this disc.

Throughout most of the 16th century, Spain stood at the center of political and economic power in Europe. Spain was in many ways the cultural center of Renaissance Europe as well, a fact often neglected in modern history books. This is especially the case if one recalls that the Netherlands, the Low Countries, and the Kingdom of Naples all stood within the great sweep of Spain's dominions during the Siglio de oro. This was the great “Golden Age” of Renaissance Spain and music for the vihuela da mano shares the artistic stage of with the likes of “El Greco” and the greaSpanish poet Miguel de Cervantes.

While generally favoring the lute throughout the 16th century, composers in Italy occasionally called for the use of an instrumentwhich was very similar, if not identical, to the Spanish vihuela, called the viola da mano.

From the very first, publications of Renaissance lute music in Italy regularly included pieces ala spagnola, or in the "Spanish style." One example, the Calata ala spagnola heard on this recording, is only one of several dance pieces ala spagnola in Joanambrosio Dalza's Intabolatura de leuto…Libro quarto (1508). In addition, there are dozens of compositions built upon a popular Spanish melody known as la spagna, which appear in countless collections of Italian lute music.
PJR. January, 2007

P.R. January 2005

Performed on a 6-course vihuela da mano by Daniel Larson, 1995