| A study of works scored for voice and lute or as instrumental duets involving lute illuminates relationships between compositional structure and performance practices in early sixteenth-century music. Most extant pieces of this type were arranged from mensurally notated part music; through analysis and comparison between the arranged and original version of a given piece, the musical choices of the arrangers become clear, as does the thinking behind those choices.;Additional topics discussed are the historical position of the Spinacino and Dalza duets in relation to fifteenth-century "unwritten" traditions and in light of cantus firmus and contrapuntal practices ca. 1500. The Bologna and Paris manuscripts are reappraised, with the proposal made (especially in the former case) that they are the work of student or amateur lutenists. Two appendices contain full transcriptions and critical performing editions of selected pieces.;Primary sources include the lute duets of Francesco Spinacino (1507) and Joanambrosio Dalza (1508), the lute-song collections of Franciscus Bossinensis (1509 & 1511), Arnolt Schlick (1512), Andrea Antico (1520), and Pierre Attaingnant (1529), the anonymous manuscripts Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Res. Vmd. 27 (ca. 1505) and Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, 596.HH.2/4 (late fifteenth century), plus a miscellany of smaller sources. Pertinent compositional genres include the late Burgundian chanson, the frottola, the early sixteenth-century lied, and the "Parisian" chanson. |
