John Dowland was an English Renaissance composer, lutenist, and singer. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep", "Come again", "Flow my tears", "I saw my Lady weepe", "Now o now I needs must part" and "In darkness let me dwell". His instrumental music has undergone a major revival, and with the 20th century's early music revival, has been a continuing source of repertoire for lutenists and classical guitarists.
A lute is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted.
Francesco Canova da Milano was an Italian lutenist and composer. He was born in Monza, near Milan, and worked for the papal court for almost all of his career. Francesco was heralded throughout Europe as the foremost lute composer of his time. More of his music is preserved than of any other lutenist of the period, and his work continued to influence composers for more than a century after his death.
Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer, violinist, teacher, and musicologist and one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century. His compositions range over operas, ballets, orchestral suites, choral songs, chamber music, and transcriptions of Italian compositions of the 16th–18th centuries, but his best known and most performed works are his three orchestral tone poems which brought him international fame: Fountains of Rome (1916), Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928).
Francesco Corbetta was an Italian guitar virtuoso, teacher and composer. Along with his compatriots Giovanni Paolo Foscarini and Angelo Michele Bartolotti, he was a pioneer and exponent of the combination of strummed and plucked textures referred to today as "mixed" style.
Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger was an Austrian-Italian virtuoso performer and composer of the early Baroque period. A prolific and highly original composer, Kapsberger is chiefly remembered today for his lute and theorbo (chitarrone) music, which was seminal in the development of these as solo instruments.
The mandora or gallichon is a type of 18th- and early 19th-century lute, with six to nine courses of strings. The terms were interchangeable, with mandora more commonly used from the mid-18th century onwards.
Viola bastarda refers to a highly virtuosic style of composition or extemporaneous performance, as well as to the altered viols created to maximize players' ability to play in this style. In the viola bastarda style, a polyphonic composition is reduced to a single line, while maintaining the same range as the original, and adding divisions, improvisations, and new counterpoint. The style flourished in Italy in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Francesco Rognoni, a prominent composer of divisions, stated that although works using the bastarda techniques could be played by a number of instruments, including organ, lute, and harp, the "queen" of bastarda technique was the viol because of its agility and large range.
Roman Turovsky-Savchuk is an American artist-painter, photographer and videoinstallation artist, as well as a lutenist-composer, born in Ukraine. His musical works were published under various pseudonyms, including Johann Joachim Sautscheck.
Giovanni Cariani, also known as Giovanni Busi or Il Cariani, was an Italian painter of the high-Renaissance, active in Venice and the Venetian mainland, including Bergamo, thought to be his native city.
Luca Pianca is a Swiss musician-lutenist whose specialty is archlute. In 1985 he co - founded Il Giardino Armonico., a pioneering Italian early-music ensemble based in Milan. He has premiered works by the contemporary lutenist-composer Roman Turovsky-Savchuk at international festivals, and received numerous international awards for his recordings.
Fabrizio Dentice was an Italian composer and virtuoso lute and viol player.
Ugo Nastrucci is a lutenist, theorbist, and composer.
Simone Molinaro was a composer of the late Renaissance in Italy. He was especially renowned for his lute music.
Bartolomeo Veneto was an Italian painter who worked in Venice, the Veneto, and Lombardy. During his time in Venice, he studied under Gentile Bellini. The little information available about Bartolomeo's life has been derived from his signatures, dates, and inscriptions. His best-known works are portraits or pictures with portrait-like character. Bartolomeo's later works, and especially those done on commission in Milan, indicate an influence from the artist Leonardo da Vinci.
Giovanni Paolo Paladino or Jean-Paul Paladin was an Italian composer and lutenist from Milan. He was born Giovanni Paolo Paladino and was also a merchant who maintained a large house and vineyard in Lyons. From 1516-22 he was lutenist to Francois I, from 1544 with Charles III of Lorraine, and from 1548-53 with Queen Mary of Scotland. Paladino published three books of lute music in Lyons in 1549, 1553 and 1560.
Marco Dall'Aquila was a Venetian lutenist and composer known for musical forms called polyphonic ricercars. He was born in L'Aquila but lived and worked in Venice. He often performed at concerts in the houses of nobles in the city, and in 1505 he published Tabullatura et rasone de metter ogni canto in liuto.
Ruggero Chiesa was a prominent Italian classical guitarist, teacher and editor.
Pietro Paolo Borrono, or Petro Paulo da Milano or Petter Paul Borrono was an Italian composer and lutenist of the renaissance.
Dinko Fabris is an Italian musicologist. He specializes in lute music, the music of Naples, and Italian music in general, having written books on Italian composers such as Andrea Falconieri, Andrea Gabrieli, Francesco Provenzale and Francesco Cavalli. He holds teaching posts at the Conservatory of Bari and the University of Basilicata, and was president of the International Musicological Society from 2012 to 2017.
