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 lute tablature using a method of his own devising, though no such edition survives, possibly because Ottaviano Petrucci’s competing privilege blocked it. Most of Marco dall’Aquila’s surviving music is preserved in a manuscript now in the Bavarian State Library in Munich, and he appears alongside Francesco da Milano in a 1536 lute anthology. He was last recorded as alive after 1538.
Impact
Marco dall’Aquila was a pivotal figure in the lute’s transition from late-medieval practice into the fully formed Renaissance idiom, among the first to apply the term ‘fantasia’ to independent lute composition and favoring free contrapuntal ricercars over dance forms and vocal transcriptions. His technique, shaped by the polyphony of Josquin des Prez, introduced an arpeggiated, broken-texture ‘style brisé’ that influenced idiomatic instrumental lute writing for the following two centuries.
Repertoire
Ricercar No. 33, c. 1510s
One of dall’Aquila’s best-known ricercars, prized for its flowing imitative counterpoint idiomatic to the early 16th-century lute.
Marco Dall’Aquila Ricercar 33 — Performed by Yair Avidor · lute
Ricercar #33 by Marco Dall’Aquila for Renaissance Lute — Performed by Daniel Shoskes · renaissance lute
Ricercar No. 13, c. 1510s
A contrapuntal ricercar attributed to the Venetian lutenist dall’Aquila, surviving in manuscript sources of early Italian lute music.
Marco Dall’Aquila – Ricercar 13 – Lute — Performed by Luthval · lute
Ricercar, c. 1510s
An untitled ricercar typical of dall’Aquila’s free, exploratory writing for solo lute, blending scalar runs with imitative points.
Marco dall’ Aquila – Ricercar – Lute – Luth — Performed by Luthval · lute
Marco Dall’Aquila: Ricercare for lute — Performed by Yair Avidor · lute