Music for Elizabethan Lutes, 2 vols.

John M. Ward. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. V.I: xiii + 158 pp.; V.2: xi + 173 pp. $185.

Perhaps no musicologist in recent times has devoted so much effort to the study of music for early fretted instruments as John Ward, whose publications on the lute and vihuela span more than four decades. In Music for Elizabethan Lutes, Ward presents two volumes--one offering a historical overview; the other, musical examples transcribed from tablatures into modern mensural notation--that do much to clarify the development of lute music in sixteenth-century England.

This is not, however, a book about the great lutenists from the final years of Elizabeth's reign--musicians like Dowland, Holborne, Cutting, and Batcheler. Those masters of their art, while meriting closer study, have already secured the attention of scholars, editors, and performers. Ward rather concentrates on the history of English music for the lute and related instruments (like the guitar and cittern) from the 1520s to the 1580s, a neglected period in comparison with the two following decades.

A framing device shapes Ward's sometimes intractable material: the opening and closing chapters focus on individual musicians, while the inner chapters center on manuscript collections. The book begins with a discussion of the little-known composer and lutenist Philip van Wilder, who left the Lowlands to join Henry VIII's court, probably in the early 1520s, Van Wilder's life and works (or at least works associated with his name) are briefly laid before us. The music attributed to van Wilder in volume two, often evincing a high degree of technical skill and emotional depth, deserves to be better known.

In the chapters on manuscript sources, Ward sketches out a history from the pieces left in commonplace-books, manuscripts belonging to amateurs and professionals, and collections that juxtapose the crude and the sublime. In the illustrative musical examples presented in volume two, undistinguished compositions occupy more space than they perhaps deserve, but they give a balanced picture of the music preserved in the manuscripts--music unavailable in other modern editions and, in any case, inaccessible to those who do not read tablature.

Of the manuscripts that Ward describes and discusses, the Osborne Commonplace-book (containing poetry, recipes, remedies, and of course music) and Edinburgh University Library MS Dc. 5. 125 (containing some pieces of professional quality) receive the longest commentaries; all the pieces in the Osborne Commonplace-book are transcribed. But it is with the compositions of John Johnson (fl. 1580s), the focus of the final chapter, that one reaches a significant turning point in Elizabethan lute music. His dances and variations, which anticipate the sweeping masterpieces of the later Elizabethans and early Jacobeans, remain popular today among devotees of Renaissance music; indeed, Ward lists nine recordings of Johnson's irresistible "Flat Pavan."

The seven appendices offer useful information on settings of Wyatt's and Surrey's poetry (as well as other poetry from Tottel's Miscellany) and provide thorough catalogues of lute music in English manuscripts from around the time of Elizabeth's accession to about 1570; John Johnson's music is also inventoried. Scholars interested in English poetry will find it rewarding to consult Ward's book for possible musical settings of mid-century Tudor verse. Even a poem like Gascoigne's "In prime of lustie yeares," composed in the deadly Poulter's Measure, acquires an unexpected suavity and lyricism when sung to the "Tinternell" melody that Gascoigne specified.

The book--with double columns of text, copious footnotes, musical examples, facsimiles, plates, charts--is beautifully produced. Unfortunately, the price reflects the cost and effort that must have attended the book's production, and few individuals can afford to add these volumes to their personal libraries. Two small slips caught my attention: plate one, of Hans Holbein's Man with a Lute (mentioned on 2), was apparently omitted, and Scribe B's sign (mentioned on 52) appears as a blank space in the text. Ward's scholarly thoroughness and precision, however, pervade the book, and this long-missing chapter in English music history will at last find a place on the library shelves.