Jacob Heringman • Josquin des Prez: Sixteenth Century Lute Settings (CD)

Jacob Heringman writes: This is a disc of arrangements: sixteenth-century arrangements for lute (and its Spanish counterpart, the vihuela) of vocal music by the greatest of renaissance composers, Josquin Desprez. The arrangements, from Italy, Spain, Germany and France, are by the leading lutenists of the early and mid sixteenth century; the earliest is by Spinacino (1507) from the first surviving published book of lute music; the latest is by the Transylvanian virtuoso Valentine Bakfark, from the Cracow Lute Book of 1565 (which also includes Bakfark's setting of the splendid four-part motet "Qui habitat in adjutorio" -- see my previous DGM CD, Black Cow).

Intabulation is the "official" name for an instrumental arrangement of a vocal piece. The sixteenth-century solo lute and vihuela repertoire can be divided into three categories:

1) fantasias and other freely composed pieces 
2) dances
3) intabulations of vocal originals

A cursory survey of sixteenth-century lute music, both in manuscripts and in printed books, shows that intabulations form the largest category. And yet this category is largely unrepresented in performance and in recordings today. Over a period of several years, with the help of leading scholars of lute music, I have assembled and played through as complete a list as possible of the hundreds of surviving sixteenth-century lute settings of Josquin Desprez's vocal music.

After a long process of studying the intabulations and the vocal originals, I compiled this programme of some of the finest settings, and, during 1999, I toured with the programme, giving concerts in London, Turin, Vancouver and Norwich. This is not only the first CD/concert programme ever to be devoted entirely to intabulations, it is also the first lute project ever devoted entirely to the great Josquin Desprez and to the legacy of Josquin instrumental arrangements, and much of the music has not been recorded or performed in modern times. 

Jacob Heringman lute

DGM0006 • Released 2000