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Sarge Gerbode's Lute Page
Here you will find more than 3000 lute pieces in French tablature in the following formats: Fronimo (ft2 and 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
This material is now mirrored at lute.omerkatzir.com,
thanks
to
the
good
offices
of
and
on www.lute.ru/gerbode,
thanks to
, who has also translated the site
into Russian at www.lute.ru/gerbode/ru. I will try to keep these sites 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.
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 current state of the data. It also contains
hyperlinks to Fronimo, midi, TAB, and pdf files for each entry.
If you can read the Excel file, that is probably the easiest way of
finding things.
NEW:
I have completed work on Bésard's Thesaurus
Harmonicus (1603). A
lot of good stuff, there, though there are a large number of errors
(average about 3-4 per piece),
some spotted by the composer in his errata sheet, most not.
In most cases I think I have been able to suss out what the
composer meant. For now,
I am leaving these pieces under "Bésard" in the
directory tree, though eventually I will split them out by their actual
composers (a minority are by Bésard himself). Included also is a cleaned-up version of the source for Book 1.
The quality of the material in
Thesaurus Harmonicus is of the same high standard as Varietie of Lute
Lessons,
but there is much, much more of it. Varietie has 7 each of
fantasies,
pavans, galliards, almains, corantos, and voltas. In contrast,
Thesaurus has 37 preludes, 41 fantasies, 20 madrigals and villanellas,
26 Airs de cour, 17 passamezzi,one bergamasca, one pavan, 35 allemands,
8 Polish dances, 26 branles, 17 "ballets", 32 courantes, 35
voltes, and more.
Bésard, or his publisher, was not exactly modest. The first part of Book 1 consists of a sizeable collection (in Latin -- sorry; it's not my native language) of poems praising Bésard and his teacher Laurencini. A particularly silly item is a "Dialogue between a Muse and Apollo", in which the writer has Apollo giving up his cithara in shame -- plectrum, strings and all -- because he has to acknowledge that Bésard is superior to him.
Book 1
consists
of
preludes,
many
by
Laurenzino
Tracetti and Diomedes Cato, Book 2
of
Fantasias,
Book 3
of
villanellae
and
madrigals,
Book 4
of
Airs
de
Cour,
most
of which are not in the Verchaly volume, Book 5
of passamezzi,
one
pavan, and one bergamasco. These
amazing "passamezzi on steroids" are somewhat difficult, but they truly
set a new standard for the art form. Book 6
consists of 52 galliards, Book 7
of
allemandes and Polish dances. The latter seem to be fairly short
and simple, except for one elaborate set of variations on "Une jeune
fillette". Book 8
consists of branles and
ballets, Book
9 of
"courantes" (AKA correntes or corantos) and voltas. These are short,
very light,
mostly easy pieces. Some in Book 8 and in Book 10 are written in
a scordatura
tuning. I have arranged these also for normal tuning. Book 10
contains miscellaneous pieces. It seems like a bit of an
afterthought.
In the
shorter pieces, throughout Thesaurus Harmonicus, I have inserted
repeats where the repeats were not
already written into the body of the piece (for instance, as
diminutions). I have also renumbered the pieces from
1 to 404 and have modified all the files to reflect this
numbering. I have made a Table
of
Contents as well.
Other recent postings:
An intriguing
piece by
,
a 12-tone fugue on Morley's
"Mistress Mine" for solo 8-course lute and 12-tone
variations
on
Lachrimae. Quite ingenious.
Francis Pilkington's First Booke of Songs or Ayres (1613). This is a collection of 21 excellent songs, written in both four-part madrigal format and lute song format. I have included both, as well as versions for lute, viol (playing the bass vocal part) and voice. Pilkington, in my experience, is less often played than, say, Morley, Dowland, or Campion, yet his songs are of almost as high quality. They range from the frivolous to the deeply mournful. The quality of the poetry is exquisite as well. I have also included the source facsimile, in case anyone wants to check my work. For more information, see my editorial notes.
An entabulation of "Miserere, my Maker", which Alfred Deller popularized in the 60's (it's on You Tube)
The complete Dalza's "Intabulatura de Lauto", Book 4 (1508), including the source facsimile, cleaned up for greater readability. I got a serious boost on this project from , who had already entabulated about half of these pieces some time ago. The pieces are mostly pretty simple, lively and interesting, if a bit crude at times, and the publication is rife with line errors, wrong notes, dissonances, etc., which I have tried to correct to the best of my ability, always noting what the original was, in case anyone who likes such things wants to play them as printed.
I have also posted an arrangement of two clavichord suites by Antoine Lebègue for baroque lute. They are quite beautiful.
I have completed a translation of Mattaeus Waissel's lute tutorial from his 1592 lute book. I got significant help from Douglas Alton Smith's translation in LSA Journal, v. VIII (1975), though I did my own translation of Waissel, which I hope is accurate. I also rendered all Waissel's examples into French tab for the German-tab challenged (that would be almost all of us), with fingering notations in the tab, following Waissel's instructions.
On 21Sep09 I updated all of my
files and made a new Excel
worksheet
of the files in my site, enroute to a proper database and search
engine. I also updated the footnotes in my files. In the
course of doing that, I seem to have mangled at least some of them.
Please let me know if you discover any errors in the footnotes,
such as errors in citing the source, date, the editor, arranger,
encoder (i.e., the person who rendered the music into electronic
format), etc. Also, the changes have not yet found their way
into the PDF files; only the Fronimo files. Obviously such a
database inevitably slides more and more out of date.
As part of my program for the German-tab challenged (which includes almost all of us), I have completed my editions of Mattaeus Waissel's 1573 lute book and his 1592 lute book, which I understand to be one of the last to be written in German tab. My originals are in very rough shape, but in addition to the normal PDF, Fronimo, Midi, and TAB files, I have put online a cleaned-up version of the 1592 book source and an un-cleaned-up version of the 1573 source. I also finally completed my work on Hans Newsidler 1536 lute books, v.1 and v.2, as well as his later book dated 1540. Luckily, I found the first two of these already entabulated by , who also tracked down the vocal scores for most of the vocal entabulations and lined them up with the lute versions -- surely a massive project. I was able to check his entabulations against the originals and found remarkably few errors. I also cleaned up the facsimile editions for all three volumes and have posted these as well so you can check the entabulations against the source if you so desire.
To Err is
Human; to Correct, Divine
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 for correction acknowledgments.
******************************
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.