Author Description

Product Description This book is a scholarly edition of a mid-sixteenth-century manuscript in the Osborn collection at the Beinecke Library at Yale. The manuscript comprises an important and previously unpublished collection of music for lute, gittern, and guitar, written in tablature. John M. Ward has carefully transcribed this music into modern notation and provided a substantial introduction and commentary. Of obvious interest to lutenists, to whom a valuable body of music is now available, the book also provides fascinating insights into the development of popular verse and music, particularly in connection with the use of ballad tunes. Review "For institutions having graduate courses in Renaissance music and performance practice, the volumes will be a rich lode, to be mined time and time again. Highly recommended."-- Choice "This book...is beautifully produced....Ward's scholarly thoroughness and precision...pervade the book, and this long-missing chapter in English music history will at last find a place on the library shelves."-- Renaissance Quarterly "Ward's knowledge of the sources of English Lute music is without rival; he also brings to this work a broad knowledge of the culture of the Renaissance, not only in musical matters and not only in England, so that apparently trivial details find a context and gain significance....This is an important contribution to English musical studies."-- NOTES About the Author John Ward is a Professor Emeritus of Music at Harvard University.