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Sarge Gerbode's Lute Page
Here you will find more
than 3000 lute pieces in French tablature in the following formats: Fronimo (ft2 and ft3), from Francesco Tribioli , TAB from Wayne Cripps, midi, and PDF (which you
can read using Acrobat
Reader). (Why the different formats?). I apologize to those who prefer other
formats, such as Spanish or Italian, but I believe French is the most
widely-used format, and anyway, it’s easiest for me! For those who have Fronimo, though, it
is easy to change to another format – even German tab (not that anyone
would really want to do this…)!
This material is now mirrored at lute.omerkatzir.com, thanks
to the good offices of Omer Katzir and
on www.lute.ru/gerbode, thanks to Igor Varfolomeev , who has also translated the
site into Russian at www.lute.ru/gerbode/ru. I will try to keep these sites as
updated as possible, but gerbode.net
is likely to be the latest and greatest.
I feel more secure with the data in several different places.
I have collected these pieces over the years
from the internet or have entabulated and/or arranged or realized them myself.
I have edited all of them and formatted them to fit nicely on
If anyone wants to contribute stuff to my
site, I now have an ftp directory dedicated to lute. Details here.
NEW:
Newest item: the complete
solo works of John Dowland are now in
place, thanks to the enormous help I have received from Gian Luca Lastraioli, professor of
lute at the Conservatorio di Musica di
I am still working on Fuenllana’s Orphenica Lyra. I have completed Book 1 (consisting of
2- and 3-part pieces) and Book 2 (consisting of 4-part pieces). Half of the pieces from Book 2 and
some from Book 1 are vocal entabulations with a melody part in a different
color in the tab and the text underneath.
I have put the words under the tab where the composer underlay
them. I managed to obtain a color
facsimile of the original in the form of a CD from Los Angeles Classical Guitars’
website (which also contains several different vihuela books), so I can now
identify the colored notes representing the melody line. Fronimo does not allow for individual
colored notes, so I have made a separate mensural vocal part for each piece,
through Book 2 so far – a real challenge figuring out the note durations and
the text underlay. I actually
painstakingly colored all the notes in the PDF
version of piece #11, using Adobe Acrobat editor, but this would take too
long to do other than as an example.
You can compare it with my
mensural display of the same piece.
In any case, with or without the separate vocal part, the vocal
entabulations are very clever, thoughtful, and beautiful, as are the fantasies
that accompany them. More
on Fuenllana’s notations.
I recently completed the complete lute songs
of John Coprario, including “Funeral Teares”, “The Masque of Squires”
and, earlier, “Songs
of mourning”, to add to my collection of English lute songs. Along the same line, I have entabulated
and edited Thomas Ford’s “Music of Sundrie Kindes”
(1607), which contains 11
lute songs which are also arranged for 4 vocal parts. That was a major task, but an even more
major one was entabulating and editing the second half of the book, consisting
of 18
scordatura viol duets. These
are very lovely but contain many errors and inconsistencies in the tab, and
sussing them out sometimes seemed like putting together a crossword puzzle
where the pieces keep changing shape.
But when each puzzle was put together, the rewards were great. I also did an arrangement
of each one for two equal lutes, taking advantage of the fact that a lute can
play non-adjacent strings. In my
opinion, these turn out to be among the best lute duets that I know of.
I also now have online the Capirola lute book
in Italian and French tab and the da Crema Intabolatura di lauto. In the Capirola directory, there is a comments file explaining the
peculiarities of the Capirola MS.
Also new are some Marchetto Cara
songs, realizations of three- and four-part frottole from around 1510. Quite lovely and also fairly easy. Also
the Beatles’ “If I fell in love
with you”, which I arranged for a wedding. I have also added to my site a complete
edition of Alonso Mudarra’s three-volume work, “Tres libros de música en cifra para vihuela”
(1546), including 50 solo pieces and 27 vocal ones. All very high quality stuff!
I have also completed an edition of the five
very charming songs from Campion’s “A description of a
masque” (1607).
I have entabulated
Bakfark’s Intabulatura,
Liber Primus (1552), with four fantasies and 16 vocal entabulations and the
Cracow Lute Book (1565),
with three fantasies and 9 vocal entabulations. These are pieces that could best be
described as a “handful”, being 4, 5, and 6-part
entabulations. But an amazing tour de force if one can accomplish
them, as Jacob Heringman has done awhile back. I have also entabulated several other pieces by Bakfark, including
three other fantasies.
File-Naming Conventions
My file-naming conventions are not entirely
self-consistent, but mostly the following tags show the content of a given
file:
O = ornamented version
(sometimes might mean "original").
S = score -- i.e., all parts.
T = L = tablature
V = voice or violin -- in any case, the top part.
B = Bass line
P, P1, P2, etc. =
performance versions with additional notations, different fingerings, that I
have used in a particular performance.
3, 4, 5, etc. = 3,
4, 5 etc. part mensural scores.
These can be combined in various ways. OVB, for instance, would mean ornamented
version of the top line and bass.
Sometimes A, Bb, C, D, E, F, G, etc., refer
to versions of the piece in these keys, usually transposed from the original.
HELP!
I have, sitting on my computer, 3 books of
tablature by Giacomo Gorzanis, and Part 2 (“der ander Theil”)
of Hans Hewsidler 1536 book more or
less ready to go, but I am holding off for awhile in the hope that whoever
entabulated this marvelous stuff will tell me who he is so I can give him
credit. Does anyone know?. Judging from the style of the
entabulations, I am guessing the same person did both.
I have recently posted on my site Suite 18 of J.J. Froberger, for baroque
lute. This has been sitting on my
computer for some time, and I know neither the source nor the entabulator of the
piece, but it is beautiful, so I thought I would share it with you. If anyone can fill in the missing
information, please let me know!
To Err is Human; to Correct, Divine
Although I have tried to
be as accurate as possible, I'm sure many errors remain. I have cited the
original source (MS or otherwise) whenever I knew it, and the original
contributor/entabulator, though over the years much of this data has been lost.
If you feel you are the one that originally contributed a particular piece and
have not been acknowledged in a footnote for having done so, or if you know the
source of a particular piece for which a source is not cited or wrongly cited,
please email so I can update the footnote. Also, if you find errors in any of
the pieces, can you please email me and, if possible, attach the modified
version?
Correction
acknowledgments. Thanks to:
·
Ron Andrico, for
pointing out that “O Mistress Mine” is not originally by Byrd or Morley, but anonymous and arranged by
each of them.
·
Éric
Bellocq, for noticing that I put Händel Trio Sonata in F under
“Bach” as well as Händel.
·
Simone Colavecchi
for corrections to Zamboni Sonata IX.
·
Miles Dempster
for his correction on Hewet’s Fantasy
from “Varietie of Lute Lessons”.
·
Craig Fruetel for
a correction to a Dalza piva.
·
Luis
Gásser, for help on Fuenllana notations and for translating some key
passages in Orphenica Lyra.
·
Vladimir Kaminik, for a correction to Book
1, #1, Pleni,
from Missa Hercules of Josquin.
·
Ed La Pointe, for corrections to Saltarello
48 of da Crema.
·
Gian Luca Lastraioli, for filling in
the missing Dowland solo pieces.
·
David Lenson, for corrections to
Dowland’s La
mia Barbara.
·
Rob MacKillop,
for helping with Fuenllana notations.
·
Ed Myers for
correction of a mislabeling of Dowland solo #38:
“Viscount Lisle’s Galliard” as #37:
“Lord Chamberlain’s Galliard”. Also for corrections to Dowland’s “Come
heavy sleep”.
·
Patrick Setzer
for a correction to Campion’s “The man of
life upright”.
·
Benjamin Stehr,
for a correction and addition to Capirola’s Ricercar 1.
·
Michael Wilhite
for corrections to Dowland “If my
complaints” and “Rest
awhile, you cruel cares”.
·
Wolfgang Wiehe
for corrections to my edition of Bakfark’s “Ultimi mei
sospiri”, in Bakfark’s 1552 “Intabulatura”.
Many
thanks to all of you!
******************************
I hope you get and give a great deal of pleasure from playing these pieces!
Sarge Gerbode
You can email me at: sarge@gerbode.net with any comments,
corrections, or special requests.