Dates for Lute composers

Composer Pie Chart

Composer Laurencini (Fantasy)

Little is known about Laurencini of Rome or Lorenzino called by Robert Dowland son of John "the most famous and divine".

On the album Akkerman plays one solo track by him, a fantasia. It was the first track on the second side of the vinyl album, the ninth track on the CD.

Fanatasy/Fantasia

Wikipedia says that fantasia (from Italian: fantasia; also English: fantasy, fancy, phantasy, German: Fantasie, Phantasie, French: fantaisie) is a musical composition with its roots in the art of improvisation. Because of this, it seldom approximates the textbook rules of any strict musical form (as with the impromptu).

The term was first applied to music during the 16th century, at first to refer to the imaginative musical "idea" rather than to a particular compositional genre. Its earliest use as a title was in German keyboard manuscripts from before 1520, and by 1536 is found in printed tablatures from Spain, Italy, Germany, and France. From the outset, the fantasia had the sense of "the play of imaginative invention", particularly in lute or vihuela composers such as Francesco Canova da Milano and Luis de Milánn. Its form and style consequently ranges from the freely improvisatory to the strictly contrapuntal, and also encompasses more or less standard sectional forms.

In the Baroque and Classical music eras, a fantasia was typically a piece for keyboard instruments with alternating sections of rapid passagework and slower, more melodic passages. From the Baroque period, Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903, for harpsichord; Great Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542, for organ; and Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 537, for organ are examples. For an example from the Classical period, see Mozart, Fantasia in D minor, K 397 for fortepiano, along with his Fantasia in C minor, K 475. In contemporary music, Busoni's Fantasia contrappuntistica or Corigliano's Fantasia on an ostinato.

The term also referred in the Baroque era (more specifically British Tudor music) to pieces for viols, characteristically - though not always - alternating, in this case rapid fugal sections with slower sections in slow notes and sometimes clashing harmonies. According to the OCDM's entry the instrumental fantasia was closely related in its history and form to the motet. Henry Purcell's fantasias are the last Baroque representatives of the breed, although Walter Willson Cobbett, in the opening decades of the 20th century, attempted to resurrect something of this style via a competition, to which works like John Ireland's and Frank Bridge's Phantasie Trios, Benjamin Britten's Phantasie Quartet (for oboe and strings) and other music owe their existence.

In the Romantic period, two contradictory trends greatly affected the fantasia: one was the decline of formal improvisation as a test of the compositional technique; the other was the move by composers toward freer forms. Chopin's Fantaisie in F minor, Op 49, combines various keyboard textures of the stile brillante with the classical sonata paradigm, resulting in a work of unorthodox but sophisticated form. Schumann's Fantasie in C, Op 17, is a cornerstone of the Romantic piano repertoire. His numerous 'fantasy pieces' are character works on a smaller scale, often bearing descriptive titles.

Composer Thomas Morley (Pavan)

Thomas Morley (1557/58–1602) Wikipedia says was an English composer, theorist, editor and organist of the Renaissance, and the foremost member of the English Madrigal School. He was the most famous composer of secular music in Elizabethan England and an organist at St Paul's Cathedral. He and Robert Johnson are the composers of the only surviving contemporary settings of verse by Shakespeare.

Morley was born in Norwich, East Anglia, the son of a brewer. Most likely he was a singer in the local cathedral from his boyhood, and he became master of choristers there in 1583. However, Morley evidently spent some time away from East Anglia, for he later referred to the great Elizabethan composer of sacred music, William Byrd, as his teacher; while the dates he studied with Byrd are not known, they were most likely in the early 1570s. In 1588 he received his bachelor's degree from Oxford, and shortly thereafter was employed as organist at St Paul's, London. His young son died the following year in 1589.

In 1588 Nicholas Yonge published his Musica transalpina, the collection of Italian madrigals fitted with English texts, which touched off the explosive and colourful vogue for madrigal composition in England. Morley evidently found his compositional direction at this time, and shortly afterwards began publishing his own collections of madrigals (11 in all).

Morley lived for a time in the same parish as Shakespeare, and a connection between the two has been long speculated, though never proven. His famous setting of "It was a lover and his lass" from As You Like It has never been established as having been used in a performance of Shakespeare's play, though the possibility that it was is obvious. Morley was highly placed by the mid-1590s and would have had easy access to the theatrical community; certainly there was then, as there is now, a close connection between prominent actors and musicians.

While Morley attempted to imitate the spirit of Byrd in some of his early sacred works, it was in the form of the madrigal that he made his principal contribution to music history. His work in the genre has remained in the repertory to the present day, and shows a wider variety of emotional colour, form and technique than anything by other composers of the period. Usually his madrigals are light, quick-moving and easily singable, like his well-known "Now is the Month of Maying"; he took the aspects of Italian style that suited his personality and anglicised them. Other composers of the English Madrigal School, for instance Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye, were to write madrigals in a more serious or sombre vein.

In addition to his madrigals, Morley wrote instrumental music, including keyboard music (some of which has been preserved in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book), and music for the broken consort, a uniquely English ensemble of two viols, flute, lute, cittern and bandora, notably as published by William Barley in 1599 in The First Booke of Consort Lessons, made by diuers exquisite Authors, for six Instruments to play together, the Treble Lute, the Pandora, the Cittern, the Base-Violl, the Flute & Treble-Violl.

Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (published 1597) remained popular for almost 200 years after its author's death, and remains an important reference for information about 16th century composition and performance.

The article also lists Morley's works here.

On the album Akkerman plays just one short Morley track, a solo Pavane (Track 8).

Pavan
Wikipedia says that the pavane, pavan, paven, pavin, pavian, pavine, or pavyn (It pavana, padovana; Ger Paduana) is a slow processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century. A pavane is a slow piece of music which is danced to in pairs. (More here)

Composer Anthony Holborne

Anthony Holborne (c 1545–1602) is described in Wikipedia as a composer of English consort music during the reign of Elizabeth I. He entered Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1562 and was admitted to the Inner Temple Court in 1565. He married Elisabeth Marten on 14 June, 1584. On the title page of both his books he claims to be in the service of Queen Elizabeth. He died of a ‘cold’ in November 1602.

He was held in the highest regard as a composer by his contemporaries. Dowland dedicated the very first song I saw my lady weepe in his Second Booke to Holborne. His patron was the Countess of Pembroke, Mary Sidney. In the 1590s he entered the service of Sir Robert Cecil, the 1st Earl of Salisbury then Secretary for State.

His brother was William Holborne. Six of William's madrigals were included in the Cittarn Schoole. Anthony's first known book was the Cittarn Schoole of 1597, consisting of compositions for the cittern (a Renaissance mandolin). The preface indicates the pieces were composed over a number of years. He writes that the musical compositions are "untimely fruits of my youth, begotten in the cradle and infancy of my slender skill."

The Pavans, Galliards, Almains and other short Aeirs, both grave and light, in five parts, for Viols, Violins, recorders or other Musicall Winde Instruments was published in 1599 and consisted of 65 of his own compositions. It is the largest surviving collection of its kind. Most are of the pavan-galliard combination. Other pieces are of the allemande style. The rest are unclassified.

"The Fairie Round" from this collection was included on the Voyager Golden Record, copies of which were sent into space aboard the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes in 1977, as a representation of human culture and achievement to any who might find it.
On the album, Akkerman performs two Holborne tracks, one with orchestra as part of the Lammy suite (Last will and Testament) and a Galliard on solo lute (Track 5).

Composer Francis Pilkington (Coranto)

Francis Pilkington 1565-1638 is described in Wikipedia as an English composer, lutenist and singer. He received a B Mus degree from Oxford in 1595. In 1602 he became a singing man at Chester Cathedral and spent the rest of his life serving the cathedral. He became a minor canon in 1612, took holy orders in 1614 and was named precentor of the cathedral in 1623. Although he was a churchman, Pilkington composed largely secular music - ayres, madrigals and lute songs. He died in Chester.

Pilkington compose one track, track 2, Coranto for Mrs [Elizabeth] Murcott, which Akkerman performs solo.

Coranto

A coranto, according to Wikipedia, (or courante or corrente or corant) is used for a family of triple metre dances from the late Renaissance and the Baroque era.

It adds:

Modern usage will sometimes use the different spellings to distinguish types but in the original sources spellings were inconsistent. (In the Partitas of the Clavierübung, Bach use the different spellings courante and corrente to differentiate between the French and Italian styles, respectively.) However, in Dance and the Music of J S Bach by Meredith Little and Natalie Jenne, the courante and corrente are given separate chapters and treated as distinct dances. The courante had the slowest tempo of all French court dances, and was described by Mattheson, Quantz and Rousseau as grave and majestic. In Bach's unaccompanied Partita for Violin No. 2 the first movement (titled Allemanda) begins as if in 3/4 time in a manner one might initially perform and hear as a courante. The second movement is titled corrente and is rather lively. On the other hand, many "courante" movements by Bach are actually correntes as well: in the original engraving of the keyboard Partitas, movements are clearly labelled either "corrente" or "courante", but editors have frequently ignored the distinction. Although an indication of faster tempo appears to exist in Baroque composer Georg Muffat's instructions on Lullian bowing, his reference to the "rapid tempo of courantes" is a confusion in translation. A more literal translation of the text indicates only "the speed of the movement of the notes."

Courante literally means running, and in the later Renaissance the courante was danced with fast running and jumping steps, as described by Thoinot Arbeau.

In Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg, 1739), Johann Mattheson wrote that, "The motion of a courante is chiefly characterized by the passion or mood of sweet expectation. For there is something heartfelt, something longing and also gratifying, in this melody: clearly music on which hopes are built."

The courante was most commonly used in the baroque period. During this period, there were two types of courante: French and Italian. In a Baroque dance suite, an Italian or French courante typically comes between the allemande and the sarabande, making it the second or third movement. The French type is usually notated in 3/2 or 6/4, occasionally alternating between the two meters; the Italian type, on the other hand, is a significantly faster dance. In the Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732), Johann Gottfried Walther wrote that the rhythm of the courante is "absolutely the most serious one can find."

Composer John Dowland (Galliard)

An article on Dowland (1563-1626) can be found here at Wikipedia.  Dowland was an English Renaissance composer, singer and lutenist. On the album, Akkerman performs three Dowland tracks, one with orchestra and rhythm section and two on solo lute:

1 Britannia (with orchestra) [better known as Fantasia No 7]
3 The Earl of Derby his Galliard [ie the fifth earl, Ferdinando Stanley c 1559-1594]
6 A Galliard [ie the Earl of Essex's, [ie the second earl, Robert Devereux 1565-1601]

Galliard
(Wikipedia) The galliard (gaillarde, in French; gagliarda in Italian) was a form of Renaissance dance and music popular all over Europe in the 16th century. It is mentioned in dance manuals from England, France, Spain, Germany and Italy, among others.
Musical compositions in the galliard form appear to have been written and performed long after the dance fell out of popular use. In musical compositions, the galliard often filled the role of an after dance written in 6, which followed and mimicked another piece (sometimes a pavane) written in 4. The distinctive 6 beats to the phrase can still be heard today in songs such as "God Save the Queen".

Composers

The tracks on the album were composed by Jan Akkerman and George Flynn along with five composers from the Elizabethan age (she reigned 1558-1603) the age of William Shakespeare, who lived 1564-1616.

These are

John Dowland 1563-1626

Francis Pilkington 1565-1638

Anthony Holborne c 1545-1602

Thomas Morley 1556/7-1602

Laurencini of Rome c 1550-1608