Five hundred years have elapsed since the first print of lute music saw light of day. The date stamped on this publication, 1507. Soon after came the opening chapter of the lute’s Hispanic counterpart, the vihuela; the time of its release, 1536. Around the mid-century, title pages for the guitar appeared. From then on music for these instruments proliferated. Not only did it keep pace with musical trends at large, in some ways it nourished them. Exploring their repertoires, some remarkable findings await exposure.

Renaissance lutenists left a tally of compositions amounting to thousands. Vihuelists too produced substantial volumes of works in keeping with their time. Guitarists active around the mid-16th century also responded to the musical currents in circulation. Initially fashioning their compositions on the lines of those for the vihuela and lute, they soon broke ranks with novel settings of familiar themes enlivened with robust chordal accompaniments. Indeed, the strummed sequences that guitarists then set in place endure to this day.

In step with dances in vogue, lutenists and guitarists took to these in some measure. Throughout the Renaissance and beyond, their repertoires abound with dance settings from their pens or drawn from courtly capers and rustic hops. Then from popular ayres they spun reams of variations. Folksongs especially served as springboards for elaborate spin-offs. Among vocal arrangements, songs from home and abroad came within earshot, self-accompanied or recast as instrumental solos. Extracts from chorals too were channelled through the fingerboard. Then are those free-ranging musical explorations. Fantasy played a hand now in compositions conceived as the spirit moved. In turn, subsequent generations of guitarist composers took in stride sonatas of their day, studies, ensemble participations, and ultimately launched into trends of the 20th century. Masterful works have become emblems and around them countless miniatures have sprung up. Between them they encapsulate the stylistic traits in circulation, their melodic inclinations and prevailing harmonies.

Tracing the developments of these genres, they are observed gaining in breadth and elaboration. From their inceptions we note them burgeoning with ever-widening flights of imagination. Documenting their ascendancies in one quarter, a sideways scan lights on parallel advances within other borders.

Such is the range and variety of this music, that there is a tendency nowadays for enthusiasts to dip into it piecemeal. Indeed, recent anthologies cater for varied interests. While these miscellanies offer enticing cross-selections, they do however give rise to a patchy chronological impression of an instrument’s legacy. Consequently individual undertakings are approached in isolation from their historical surroundings and current musical trends. To determine then the temporal and stylistic slot of a composition in hand, its context can be assessed from a comparable example in the following narratives.

Upholding tradition, present-day players of plucked-string early music read from scores not in pitch notation but original or reconstructed tablatures. Since these indicate finger stops by symbols, they conceal much of the shaping and features of the compositions they convey. Transcribed into the written note, however, as those ahead, their melodic contours, lineworks and harmony are elucidated with pinpoint clarity.

To cater for the expansion and stylistic diversity of music across the European map, lutenists and guitarists duly enlarged their instruments. Modified at different times and locations, subsequent models took on national identities. Responding to novel trends of vocal music in Italy at the outset of the 17th century, long-necked lutes with extended bass registers were constructed. These provided sonorous accompaniments to enhance the lines of solo singers. Accordingly, French masters attuned their lutes to their preoccupations, notably dance suites. English players in turn fashioned them to suit their musical tastes, and lutenists from the Central Lands adopted designs to accommodate the expanded modes of composition in force there. Likewise were the dimensions and stringing of guitars enlarged. From Renaissance lightweights, stouter models were fashioned, and ultimately those full size with incurved profiles. In due course these instruments come into view and the music for them into hearing.

The terrains ahead

Each historical phase in which these instruments prospered is introduced with an overview of that period’s cultural ambience and musical activities. Mainstream composers are noted marking the onsets, advances, cross-currents and ebbs in the tides of Western music. In addition, instrumental and vocal trends at large are scanned within these previews, as well as snapshots of going entertainments. Also featured are snippets from prints of the time and eye-witness accounts of musical events.

Opening the first of five volumes is a survey of the 16th century musical Renaissance. An outburst of creativity, this was the time of magnificent Netherlander religious vocal music, French chansons, Italian madrigals, the Elizabethan Golden Age with its proliferating instrumental music – and the ubiquitous lute. The dimming rays of this era were eclipsed by the dawn of the musical Baroque. Spanning the 17th century and well into the 18th, this was an age of musical experimentation, stylistic diversity and of broadening instrumental forces. At this time the names of Corelli and Vivaldi spring to mind, and bidding the era farewell, Bach and Handel. The Classical period then follows, with the international appeal of its music personified in Mozart and Haydn. Into the 19th century Romantic composers, as they became known, took the stage with their keyboard rhapsodies and billowing orchestrations. This brings us up to the 20th century where its musical eruptions resonate still, in this the modern age.

Following each of these periodic overviews, pluck-stringed instruments and their repertoires of the time come successively into the spotlight. First off within Volume 1 the little-known but remarkable legacy of the vihuela from the mid-years of the 16th century is scanned. The focus then shifts to music for the Renaissance lute and guitar. Seeing the remainder of the century out, Volume 2 covers the lute of the Baroque age. Tracing its national divergences through the 17th century and beyond, these ran concurrently with the Baroque guitar occupying Volume 3. Though the lute waned in the closing years of the 17th century apart from its extended presence in the Central Lands, the guitar held fast into the next era, the Classical period, Volume 4. Into its heyday as the 19th century dawned, the guitar then receded but for its slender hold through the following years of the Romantic era. Approaching the mid-20th century, Volume 5, the guitar resurged with an abundance of popular idioms and innovative contemporary music.
By way of tapping the seams of music for these instruments, soundings of them may be taken from audio clips accompanying each step.