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Hans Judenkünig
Life Hans Judenkünig was a German lutenist, lute maker, and composer of the Renaissance, born in Schwäbisch Gmünd sometime between 1445 and 1450 into a family originally from Württemberg. By 1518 he was recorded as a lutenist active around St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, working in the orbit of the University of Vienna. He is…
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Vincenzo Capirola
Life Vincenzo Capirola was an Italian nobleman, lutenist, and composer of the High Renaissance, probably born in Brescia in 1474 and active there and in Venice, where he is documented in 1517. His music survives almost entirely in the lavishly illuminated Capirola Lutebook, compiled around 1517–1520 by his pupil Vitale, which preserves ricercars, dance forms,…
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Marco dall’Aquila
Life Marco dall’Aquila was an Italian lutenist and composer of the Renaissance, born around 1480 in L’Aquila but active for most of his career in Venice, then the center of lute playing and music printing. He performed at gatherings in noble households, and in 1505 he obtained a privilege from the Venetian Signoria to print…
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Joachim van den Hove
Life Joachim van den Hove was a Flemish-born Dutch composer and lutenist, born in Antwerp around 1567 to the musician Peeter van den Hove. After the Fall of Antwerp in 1584–85 the family fled north, and by the early 1590s Joachim had settled in Leiden, where he married Anna Rodius in 1594 and worked as…
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Emanuel Adriaenssen
Life Emanuel Adriaenssen (also recorded as Emmanuel Adriaenssen) was a Flemish lutenist, composer, and music teacher born in Antwerp around 1554. He traveled to Rome in 1574 to study music, absorbing the Italian ornamental style, before returning to Antwerp to open an influential lute school with his brother Gysbrecht. Emanuel Adriaenssen became a well-off burgher…
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Robert Dowland
Life Robert Dowland was an English lutenist and composer, born around 1591 as the son of the celebrated lutenist-composer John Dowland. Raised partly amid his father’s service at the Danish royal court, he grew up surrounded by leading musicians of the day. In 1610 he published two important collections, A Varietie of Lute Lessons and…
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Thomas Robinson
Life Thomas Robinson was an English Renaissance lutenist and composer active from around 1589 to 1610, though his exact birth and death dates are unknown. He and his father served the Cecil family, with Thomas Robinson employed by Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exeter, and evidence suggests he also worked in Denmark, teaching lute to…
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François Dufaut
Life François Dufaut, also spelled Dufault, was a French lutenist and composer probably born in Bourges around 1604 and active through the mid-seventeenth century, dying around 1670 in England. Almost nothing is documented about his personal life, but contemporary accounts consistently praised him as one of the finest lutenists of his generation. He trained with,…
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Jan Antonín Losy
Life Jan Antonín Losy, Count of Losinthal, also known as the Comte de Logy, was a Bohemian aristocrat, Baroque lutenist, and composer born around 1650 near Steken in southern Bohemia and active in Prague until his death in 1721. Born into a family ennobled for defending Prague against Swedish troops, he earned a doctorate in…
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Jacques de Saint-Luc
Life Jacques de Saint-Luc was a Walloon lutenist and composer, baptized in September 1616 in Ath and reportedly still alive as late as 1707 or 1708, making him one of the longest-lived lutenists of the Baroque era. He joined the court in Brussels as a musician in 1639, moved briefly to Paris in the 1640s,…