Welcome!

This site is dedicated to the promotion of Renaissance lute music as played on the classical guitar. I use a right hand technique that addresses the mechanical and aesthetic requirements of the Renaissance style and play from facsimilies of original notations: from either Italian or French tablature, as the case may be.  

The initial series of four cds, the first two of which are now available, presents lute music composed for the 6-course lute. The music content of the publications from which these two programs are drawn is, in fact, all playable on the standard 6-string guitar by just tuning the 3rd string down a half step - from g to f#.

The third and fourth recordings in this series (in preparation), are mixed programs. Lute music in the Renaissance style was published throughout the 16th and early 17th centuries and consisted of pieces written for lutes of between 6 and 10 courses, or pairs of strings. Six course instruments were the norm until about the last quarter of the the 16th c. when lutenists began expanding the lute's range downward by adding bass courses. By the first decades of the 17th c. lutes of 10 courses were fairly common. Fortunately, while lute makers were busy updating the lute's physical structure to accomodate changing compositional styles, lutenists still wrote a fair amount of music using only the original 6 courses. My point is that guitarists using standard 6-string instruments can play a lot of even the very late repertoire. Neat!

The programs that round out this series, therefore, consist of a true representative sample of music of the most celebrated lutenist/composers of the Renaissance Era - without alteration, all perfectly playable on the standard classical guitar.