Luogo e data di registrazione		Alter Herkules-Saal, Residenz, München (Germania) - 28/29 giugno 1975
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Executive Producer		Dr. Andreas Holschneider
	Recording Producer		Heinz Wildhagen
	Balance Engineer		Heinz Wildhagen
	Prima Edizione LP		ARCHIV - 2533 304 - (1 LP - durata 38' 05") - (p) 1976 - Analogico
	Prima Edizione CD		ARCHIV - 447 727-2 - (4 CD's - durata 71' 05"; 73' 47"; 68' 14" & 62' 37" - [CD4 12-33]) - (c) 1995 - ADD
	Cover		Alabraham Bosse (1602-1676) "Musikalische Gesellschaft", Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris - Photo Westermann, Braunschweig
	Note		-

 

Pierre Attaingnant, printer, publisher and music-seller in Paris, published a tutor for the lute in 1529 (Tres breve er familiere introduction pour entendre et apprendre ... lutz) and followed this in the same year with a new volume of dances for the lute (18 basses dances garnies de recoupes ... lutz). Both publications reflect the musical taste and the performance practices of his period. The arrangers (or composers) remain anonymous. Both collections consist mainly of dances in two or three parts, three-part transcriptions of chansons, and chansons for voice and lute accompaniment. The chanson versions are transcribed in three parts, with the melody always in the highest part. In the desire for a clear melodic line, contrapuntal textures are avoided, and only cadential points are decorated with passage-work as well as the breaks between two sections. The transcriptions of dances in Attaingnant’s publications emphasize the top voice. Often the accompaniment consists of open bass strings. In addition to round-dances in a single section, like Haulberroys, Branle and Pavane, there are interesting three-part Basse danses (court dances). The melodic material of the quiet Basse danse in square time reappears in a Recoupe or Retour in triple or compound metre and quicker tempo. This is followed by a Tourdion (turning dance) in very quick tempo also in triple or compound metre and using new melodic material. During the second half of the 16th century and a large part of the 17th, the publishing house of Adrien Le Roy and Robert Ballard assumed the same importance as that of Attaingnant in the earlier period. Le Roy was an outstanding lutenist. His didactic works were a lasting influence on subsequent developments. The Passamezzo is a very stylized dance, usually consisting of several sections based on a given and unchanged basso ostinato (ground). The “Passemeze” on this recording is based on the “Passamezzo antico”. Such a “ground” forms also the scaffolding for “Entrée III” by Robert Ballard. “Entrées de Luth” are interludes in the French Ballets de cour and vary in character and texture in accordance with the scene they precede. Robert Ballard was lutenist to Queen Maria de’ Medici. His style of lute composition consists of an interplay of full chords and mock-polyphonic arpeggios and anticipates the lute technique of the 17th and 18th centuries. In the four “Branles de village”, a sequence of two-part dances, the drone-accompaniment of tonic and fifth is meant to symbolize “rusticity” (ef Chorea rustica by Besard). Jean-Baptiste Besard was one of the most versatile French lutenists. He was a doctor of law, a physician and a lute pupil of Lorenzini in Rome. In 1604 he published a literary work in Cologne and, after many cultural tours, settled in 1617 in Augsburg where he published two further collections of lute music, source works on the lute techniques of his time Besard favours a full, chordal texture and in his notes to the players he includes specific stretching exercises for the left hand. He cultivates the entire compass of the lute and he employs extreme registers. He includes pieces by lutenists with similar aims, like P. Bononiensis in his Gagliarda vulgo dolorata. Besard spread the “airs de cour” to a wider area by being the first to include them in a book of tablatures in Germany. He interestingly incorporated the separate vocal line in some of his examples in the lute part, as in the air de cour “J’ai trouvé sur l’herbe assise”.