Francis Cutting was an English lutenist and composer of the Renaissance period and among the earliest English lute composers whose names are known to history. He was employed as a musician for the Howard family, including Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, and lived near their London residence, Arundel House, where eight of his ten children were baptized at the parish of St Clement Danes. Little else is documented of his early life. His son, Thomas Cutting, also became a distinguished court lutenist. Around fifty of Francis Cutting’s lute pieces survive, several published in William Barley’s A New Booke of Tabliture (1596), including his celebrated arrangements “Packington’s Pound” and “Divisions on Greensleeves.”

Francis Cutting’s surviving output of some fifty lute pieces is exceeded in quality and quantity only by Dowland, Bacheler, and Holborne among English lutenist-composers, and his elaborate divisions on popular tunes helped establish the English tradition of virtuosic variation writing for solo lute. His settings of “Packington’s Pound” and “Greensleeves” remain among the most frequently performed and recorded pieces of the entire English lute repertoire.

Sources:

• http://www.hoasm.org/IVM/Cutting.html