The lute song, particularly the English lute song is the passion of those involved with this website. Composers from Dowland to Rossiter and Campion wrote songs for solo voice accompanied by the lute which have become immortal.

Join our quest to make this art form more accessible and to encourage discussion and debate on matters pertaining to the lute song.

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THE LUTE SONG

A genre of solo song with lute accompaniment that flourished in England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The outstanding composers in the genre were the lutenist John Dowland, whose “Flow, my teares” (“Lachrimae”) became so popular that a large number of continental and English instrumental pieces were based on its melody, and the poet and composer Thomas Campion. Other leading composers included John Danyel, Robert Jones, and Michael Cavendish.

Generally, ayres are graceful, elegant, polished, often strophic songs (i.e., songs having the same music for each stanza), typically dealing with amorous subjects. But many are lively and animated, full of rhythmic subtleties, and others are deeply emotional songs that gain much of their effect from bold, expressive harmonies and striking melodic lines.

The ayre developed during a European trend toward accompanied solo song (in place of songs for several voices). Chansons, madrigals, and other polyphonic songs were frequently published in versions for voice and lute, and books of ayres often provided for optional performance by several singers, by having, opposite the solo and lute version, the three additional voice parts printed so that they could be read from three sides of a table.^1.

THE LUTE

The lute came with other plucked instruments from the East. There, are several thirteenth-century uses of the name lute. A lutier is included in the minstrels in the Westminster Pentecostal Feast of 1306. One of the earliest examples in art, possibly by Giotto around 1350, is in the campanile of Florence Cathedral. In this is seen the characteristic large pear-shaped body and rounded back. There are three double strings known as courses and one single top string, a fretted neck and sharply thrown back peg box.

By the end of the fourteenth century there were four or five courses. At this time the lute was played in ensembles, using a plectrum. By 1500, there were six courses, and the idiomatic style of playing with the fingers had developed. Through the sixteenth century there was a huge solo repertoire (a larger number of pieces than for the keyboard in the same period) as well as song accompaniments.

^1. ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA