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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 Francesco Tribioli , TAB from Wayne Cripps, 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 themost widely-used format, and anyway, it’s easiest for me! For those who have Fronimo, 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 Omer Katzir and
on www.lute.ru/gerbode, thanks to Igor Varfolomeev , 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 plan to keep a compressed tar
file (very large) of the entire site in this location, for those who might want
to download it. I feel more secure
with the data in several different places.
NEW:
Newest item: A complete edition of Luys Milan's El Maestro, including the vocal pieces -- 81 pieces in all. I had significant help in this from Jason Kortis, who entabulated most of the lute solos, and Karl Eggert, who translated Luys Milan's performance notes for the pieces and carefully included all Milan's errata. I have English translations for most of the song texts, for which I claim the credit or blame.
Also very recent: several songs by Barbara Strozzi, from Cantate,
Ariette, e Duetti (1651). Also, two
books of Hans Judenkünig: Musica
getutscht (1511), thanks to the
work of Eduard Plagge, and Ain
schone kunstliche underweisung (1623),
thanks to that of Andre Nieuwlaat. The complete lute works of Robert White,
also thanks to Andre Nieuwlaat. The
complete solo works of John Dowland are also now
in place, thanks to the enormous help I have received from Gian Luca Lastraioli, professor of
lute at the Conservatorio di Musica di Trapani, who had already done most of
the entabulations in 2005 and who kindly sent them to me. I honestly did not expect to get such a
rapid response to my request to have the missing ones filled in. What is it they say: “Ask, and it shall be given unto
thee!”? Of course, there are
many variants of each piece. I have
provided only a representative sample, I hope most of the better versions.
I am still working on Fuenllana’s Orphenica Lyra., but
it’s such a long and arduous project, it’s kind of on the back
burner for now. I have completed Book 1 (consisting of 2-
and 3-part pieces) and Book 2 (consisting of 4-part pieces). Half of the pieces from Book 2 and
some from Book 1 are vocal entabulations with a melody part in a different
color in the tab and the text underneath.
I have put the words under the tab where the composer underlay
them. I managed to obtain a color
facsimile of the original in the form of a CD from Los Angeles Classical Guitars’
website (which also contains several different vihuela books), so I can now
identify the colored notes representing the melody line. Fronimo does not allow for individual
colored notes, so I have made a separate mensural vocal part for each piece,
through Book 2 so far – a real challenge figuring out the note durations and
the text underlay. I actually
painstakingly colored all the notes in the PDF
version of piece #11, using Adobe Acrobat editor, but this would take too
long to do other than as an example.
You can compare it with my
mensural display of the same piece.
In any case, with or without the separate vocal part, the vocal
entabulations are very clever, thoughtful, and beautiful, as are the fantasies
that accompany them. More
on Fuenllana’s notations.
I recently completed the complete lute songs
of John Coprario, including “Funeral Teares”, “The Masque of Squires”
and, earlier, “Songs
of mourning”, to add to my collection of English lute songs. Along the same line, I have entabulated
and edited Thomas Ford’s “Music of Sundrie Kindes”
(1607), which contains 11
lute songs which are also arranged for 4 vocal parts. That was a major task, but an even more
major one was entabulating and editing the second half of the book, consisting
of 18
scordatura viol duets. These
are very lovely but contain many errors and inconsistencies in the tab, and
sussing them out sometimes seemed like putting together a crossword puzzle
where the pieces keep changing shape.
But when each puzzle was put together, the rewards were great. I also did an arrangement
of each one for two equal lutes, taking advantage of the fact that a lute can
play non-adjacent strings. In my
opinion, these turn out to be among the best lute duets that I know of.
I also now have online the Capirola lute book
in Italian and French tab and the da Crema Intabolatura di lauto. In the Capirola directory, there is a comments file explaining the
peculiarities of the Capirola MS.
Also new are some Marchetto Cara
songs, realizations of three- and four-part frottole from around 1510. Quite lovely and also fairly easy. Also
the Beatles’ “If I fell in love
with you”, which I arranged for a wedding. I have also added to my site a complete
edition of Alonso Mudarra’s three-volume work, “Tres libros de música en cifra para vihuela”
(1546), including 50 solo pieces and 27 vocal ones. All very high quality stuff!
I have also completed an edition of the five
very charming songs from Campion’s “A description of a
masque” (1607).
I have entabulated
what I believe are Bakfark’s complete works, including Intabulatura, Liber Primus (1552),
with four fantasies and 16 vocal entabulations and the Cracow Lute Book (1565), with
three fantasies and 9 vocal entabulations.
These are pieces that could best be described as a
“handful”, being 4, 5, and 6-part entabulations. But an amazing tour de force if one can accomplish them, as Jacob Heringman has
done awhile back. I have also
entabulated several other pieces by
Bakfark, including three other fantasies.
File-Naming Conventions
My file-naming conventions are not entirely
self-consistent, but mostly the following tags show the content of a given
file:
O = ornamented
version (sometimes might mean "original").
S = score -- i.e., all parts.
T = L = tablature
V = voice or violin -- in any case, the top part.
B = Bass line
P, P1, P2, etc. =
performance versions with additional notations, different fingerings, that I
have used in a particular performance.
3, 4, 5, etc. = 3,
4, 5 etc. part mensural scores.
These can be combined in various ways. OVB, for instance, would mean ornamented
version of the top line and bass.
Sometimes A, Bb, C, D, E, F, G, etc., refer
to versions of the piece in these keys, usually transposed from the original.
HELP!
I have, sitting on my computer, 3 books of
tablature by Giacomo Gorzanis, and Part 2 (“der ander Theil”)
of Hans Hewsidler 1536 book more or
less ready to go, but I am holding off for awhile in the hope that whoever
entabulated this marvelous stuff will tell me who he is so I can give him
credit. Does anyone know?. Judging from the style of the
entabulations, I am guessing the same person did both.
I have recently posted on my site Suite 18 of J.J. Froberger, for baroque
lute. This has been sitting on my
computer for some time, and I know neither the source nor the entabulator of
the piece, but it is beautiful, so I thought I would share it with you. If anyone can fill in the missing
information, please let me know!
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?
Correction
acknowledgments. Thanks to:
· Ron Andrico, for pointing out that
“O Mistress Mine” is not originally by Byrd or Morley, but anonymous and arranged by each of them.
· Éric Bellocq, for noticing that I put Händel Trio Sonata in F under “Bach” as well as Händel.
· Simone Colavecchi
for corrections to Zamboni Sonata IX.
· Miles Dempster for his
correction on Hewet’s Fantasy from
“Varietie of Lute Lessons”.
· Karl L. Eggert, for translating
· Craig Fruetel for a correction to a
Dalza piva.
· Luis Gásser, for help on
Fuenllana notations and for translating some key passages in Orphenica Lyra.
· Vladimir Kaminik, for a correction to Book 1, #1, Pleni, from Missa Hercules of Josquin.
· Jason Kortis, for several different entabulations he has provided, over the years.
· Ed La Pointe, for corrections to Saltarello
48 of da Crema.
· Gian Luca Lastraioli, for filling in
the missing Dowland solo pieces.
· David Lenson, for corrections to
Dowland’s La
mia Barbara.
· Rob MacKillop, for helping with
Fuenllana notations.
· Ed Myers for correction of a mislabeling of Dowland solo #38: “Viscount Lisle’s Galliard” as
#37:
“Lord Chamberlain’s Galliard”. Also for corrections to Dowland’s “Come
heavy sleep” and “La mia Barbara”.
· Patrick Setzer for a correction to Campion’s “The man of life upright”.
· Robert Grossman for a correction to Dowland "If my complaints"
· Benjamin Stehr, for a correction and addition
to Capirola’s Ricercar
1.
· Michael Wilhite for
corrections to Dowland “If my
complaints” and “Rest
awhile, you cruel cares”.
· Wolfgang Wiehe for corrections to my
edition of Bakfark’s “Ultimi mei sospiri”, in Bakfark’s
1552 “Intabulatura”.
Many
thanks to all of you!
******************************
I hope you get and give a great deal of pleasure from playing these pieces!
Sarge Gerbode
You can email me at: sarge@gerbode.net with any comments,
corrections, or special requests.