Life
Melchior Neusidler was a German lutenist and composer, born in Nuremberg in 1531, the eldest son of lutenist Hans Neusidler. Around 1552 he settled in Augsburg, giving up his Nuremberg citizenship, and became a leading figure in the city’s musical life, directing chamber music at patrician households and forming close ties with the wealthy Fugger banking family. He traveled to Italy in the mid-1560s and briefly served as lutenist to Archduke Ferdinand II in Innsbruck around 1580–81. His tablatures, published in Venice (1566) and Strasbourg (1574), show a refined, Italian-influenced style more virtuosic than his father’s. He failed to secure a permanent court post and died in 1591 in Augsburg, supported in his final years by Fugger charity.
Impact
Melchior Neusidler brought Italianate polish and virtuosity to German lute music, elevating technical writing for the instrument with brilliant divisions and high-register passagework. His roughly 250 surviving pieces mark a bridge between his father’s more didactic style and the increasingly cosmopolitan lute repertoire of the later sixteenth century.
Repertoire
Pass’e mezzo antico con il suo saltarello, 1566
A passamezzo-and-saltarello pair from Neusidler’s 1566 Intabolatura di Liuto, built over the traditional passamezzo antico bass pattern.
Pass’emezzo antico – renaissance lute music by Melchior Neusidler — Performed by Israel Golani
Der Fuggerin Tanz (Lady Fugger’s Dance), c. 1574
A graceful Renaissance dance from the Teutsch Lautenbuch (1574), named in honor of a lady of the Fugger banking family, Neusidler’s Augsburg patrons.
“Der Fuggerin Tanz” by Melchior Neusidler — Performed by Nicolas Kyriakou · classical guitar
Der Fuggerin Tanz (Lady Fugger’s Dance) by Melchior Neusidler — Performed by Michael Bemmels · Renaissance lute