This website is licensed under a
Creative
Commons License.
Please feel free to modify, use and
distribute freely non-commercially all its contents, with the proviso
that any works obtained or derived from this website be freely
distributed under the same license.
Here you will find more than 7000 lute pieces in French tablature in the following formats: Fronimo (ft3), from , TAB from , midi, and PDF (which you can read using Acrobat Reader). (Why the different formats?). I apologize to those who prefer other formats, such as Spanish or Italian, but I believe French is the most widely used format, though it is easy to change to another format -- even German tab (not that anyone would really want to do this…)!
I have collected these pieces over the years from the internet or have
entabulated and/or arranged or realized them myself. I have edited
all of them and formatted them to fit nicely on US letter size paper
(8.5 x 11 in), though some are formatted for US legal size (8.5 x 14
in). I have not formatted any for A4, as life is too short. Again, if
you have Fronimo, it is pretty easy to reformat these to
taste.
I have tried to create performable copy in all cases. These pieces
are mostly for renaissance lute, but quite a few are for baroque lute
and archlute, and a very few for theorbo, cittern, bandora, guitar
etc. Other pieces include songs and continuo pieces, listed by
composer. Under Lute
ensemble
in the list of composers, you will find pieces for two or more lutes.
Source facsimiles
are now grouped
together in one place.
This material is now mirrored at www.lute.ru/gerbode , thanks to the good offices of , who has also translated the site into Russian at www.lute.ru/gerbode/ru. I will try to keep the mirror site as updated as possible, but gerbode.net is likely to be the latest and greatest. If anyone wants to contribute stuff to my site, I now have an ftp directory dedicated to lute. Details here. I also keep a compressed tar file (very large) of the entire composer list in this location, with the date in the filename, for those who might want to download it (latest was 16Jun09). I feel more secure with these data in several different places.
Here is a list of links you may find useful. I have just started on this list. Please let me know if you want to trade links with me.
I have some idiosyncratic notational conventions. I hope they are helpful rather than confusing.
I am happy to announce that I have finished a complete re-editing and reformatting of all the Fronimo files in my collection (6778 of them). All are now in the latest Fronimo 3 format, so you will need a current version of Fronimo to open them. I have also updated the pdf files. In editing these files, I have tried to use "canonical" titles and composer names and to eliminate spelling variations wherever possible, and have inserted the names of the "original composers", where known, in parentheses under the title. For instance, where Albert de Rippe intabulates "Douce memoire", de Rippe is given as the composer and (Pierre Sandrin) as the original composer. In my footnote credits, I have included credits for Intabulator, Arranger, Editor, Contributor, and Encoder, where known and where appropriate. "Intabulator" is the one that puts the music into tab format, and "Encoder" is the one who actually does the data entry to create the Fronimo, TAB, or Django file that I work from. In all cases, as I said, I have edited and formatted each piece and take responsibility for any errors therein. I hope you will continue to notify me of any errors found. I have updated the Excel spreadsheet to reflect the approximate current state of the data. It also contains hyperlinks to Fronimo, midi, TAB, and pdf files for each entry. It also has other data, such as key, type of piece, instrumentation, and difficulty. If you can read the Excel file, that is probably the easiest way of finding things.
NEW
Note -- I am in process of reorganizing files to group things under their sources and to get rid of the needless "ft2" directory. I will keep copies of everything I have posted so far in the same place for a little while, but any new stuff is going to the new location. Sorry about any broken links. Check the Excel spreadsheet to find stuff. I am also getting rid of the TAB files, because of lack of interest. Existing TAB files are collected my FTP directory as "tabfiles.tar.Z", but I will not be making new ones. More such changes will be forthcoming as I streamline my site.
There will be three main directories under http://gerbode.net:
This is a listing by composer, but some items that were under "composers" (like "Besard") actually belong under "sources", because they are anthologies or compilations. The intention is to gradually eliminate this directory and its contents and post everything under "sources". Once the database is up and running, you will be able to search by composer (or any other parameters). Until then, I will hang onto this directory.
These are facsimiles of source documents.
These are complete Fronimo editions of sources.
08Jun13: Completed edition of Kapsberger's Intavolatura di Liuto, v.1 (1611), consisting of 8 toccatas, 12 galliards, and 12 correntes. All very unusual pieces, especially the toccatas, which are quirky and unlike anything else I have encountered from that time period -- or any time period. None of the music is especially difficult to play, especially the dances, which are generally quite easy and charming. About half are playable on 7 courses; the rest can be played on a 9- or 10-course instrument.
05Jun13: Posted facsimile of Kapsberger's Intavolatura di Liuto, v.1 (1611) thanks to
, who kindly sent it to me froim Brazil.
04Jun13: Completed edition of the Barley lute book. This contains the usual flowery dedication, but if I were Lady Lucie Sussex, I'd be embarrassed by it. The pieces are great -- fine versions of popular galliards, pavanes, and allemandes by Francis Cutting and John Dowland. But there were so many errors that it was obviously a quick and dirty job. The right hand fingering is very erratic and often wrong, and there are many line errors -- notes, and even whole chords one line too high or low. Plus many wrong notes. Obviously, printing standards were much lower in the 16th century, and Barley never bothered to proofread it. Nevertheless, the music is great.
02Jun13: Posted cleaned-up facsimile of the lute section of William Barley's "New booke of Tabliture".
30May13: Posted revised version of Mus.ms.1512. This source contains 77, mostly very easy, pieces, originally encoded by , and now proof-checked against the original, with some editorial additions. I discovered that what looks like a firmata sign is actually a sign for a breve or dotted semibreve, depending on the meter of the piece. That explains the oddity of seeing what looks like a lot of firmatas all over the place in these pieces. Also, there is a peculiar + sign over certain notes which I have interpreted as a tenuto mark. This MS is pretty amazing, in that there are no cross-outs or corrections on it, yet there are only a handful of errors in the entire 142-page document. This must have been some copyist, considering that most manuscripts, and even printed works, contain at least an error per page, on average.
24May13: Posted cleaned-up facsimile of Bayerischer Staatsbibliothek Mus.ms.1512.
16May13: Completed edition of Melchior Newsidler's Intavolatura, v. 2, containing 12 vocal intabulations, 2 passamezzi, and 4 ricercars. All fairly hard. The last ricercar is particularly interesting.
10May13: Completed edition of Melchior Newsidler's Intavolatura, v. 1, containing 16 vocal intabulations, 2 passamezzi, and 4 ricercars. All high quality stuff. Many errors were corrected on the original by an unknown helpful person, blotting out what was in the original. However, the corrections seem valid. Next: v.2
01May13: Posted cleaned-up facsimile of Melchior Newsidler's Intavolatura, v.1 and v. 2 (1566).
22Apr13: Posted French tab edition of Melchoir Newsidler's Teutsch Lautenbüch., containing a number of religious and secular vocal intabulations, three fantasies by Newsidler, and three very inventive passamezzi/saltarelli. Although the source is very clear, the letters Newsidler uses in his German tab bear little resemblance to ordinary letters. t looks like l, h like g, d like nothing in particular, e quite like o, g like p. r, s, and v look quite alike. He also has a way of intabulating for 7-course lute, which took me a little time to figure out. Fortunately, the original contains relatively few errors.
30Mar13: Posted cleaned-up facsimile of Melchoir Newsidler's Teutsch Lautenbuch (1574) in German tab. A French tab edition is upcoming.
12Mar13: CUL Dd.5.78.3 completed. A lot of wonderful favorites, here. I would like to give special thanks to Neil Morrison, who gave me a great deal of help with pieces by Daniel Bacheler, many of whose pieces are uniquely represented here.
20Feb13: Half way through CUL Dd.5.78. 77 of 155 pieces. The source is posted online. Many fewer mistakes in this source.
08Feb13: Completed my edition of CUL Nn.6.36b. It contains excellent stuff, including many Daniel Bacheler pieces of exceptional quality not found anywhere else. I am working on providing an even better version of the facsimile of this MS. Next major project will be CUL Dd.5.78., of which I expect to post the facsimile soon, once I have neatened it up.
16Jan13: Completed my edition of CUL Dd.9.33c.
05Jan13: Posted facsimile of Thomas Robinson Schoole of Musicke.
20Dec12: Posted facsimile of CUL Nn.6.36b. The original version of this had the top line of each page mostly or entirely blotted out. Thanks to the good offices of , I got hold of a better copy of this, and in this copy the MS is almost all there, so I have posted a cleaned-up copy of it. I am working on a Fronimo edition of Nn.6.36. Neil has been very helpful in clarifying some sticky points.
04Dec12: I just finished a little more than half of CUL Dd.9.33c (ff. 1-50v of 95), including 74 pieces, so far. MS is in terrible shape (worse than Dd.2.11), with edges and bottom sometimes torn off or illegible, so I had to work with concordances and sometimes guesswork to fill in the missing bits. But the quality of the material is extremely high.
21Nov12: To complete my facsimile collection of Albert de Rippe, I have just posted a cleaned-up copy of his Second Livre de Tablature. I am now working on CUL MS Dd.9.33. About ¼ of the way through, now. Does anyone have any requests for what I should work on next?
03Nov12: After a long hiatus due to a move, I completed Cambridge University Library MS Dd.3.18, which mostly consists of English consort and duet parts, though there are a few solo pieces as well.
25Jun12: From the San Francisco Early Music Renaissance Workshop, I posted a couple of cool d'India songs, a 2-part Machaut ballad, and a three-part ballata by Johannes Ciconia arranged for lute and voice.
13Jun12: Completed the remainder of Cambridge University Library MS Dd.2.11, folios 91-101.
Although I have tried to be as accurate as possible, I'm sure many errors remain. I have cited the original source (MS or otherwise) whenever I knew it, and the original contributor/entabulator, though over the years much of this data has been lost. If you feel you are the one that originally contributed a particular piece and have not been acknowledged in a footnote for having done so, or if you know the source of a particular piece for which a source is not cited or wrongly cited, please email so I can update the footnote. Also, if you find errors in any of the pieces, can you please email me and, if possible, attach the modified version? Click here to see the Corrections Honor Roll.
******************************
I hope you get and give a great deal of pleasure from playing these pieces!
Sarge Gerbode
You can email me at: with any comments, corrections, or special requests.
If you are curious about my other identity as a psychiatrist and philosopher, you can find out more about me by clicking here.