Dear all, thanks to all who have been helping me with info on Adrian Denss.
This Netherlands lute player published his "Florilegium..." In Cologne 1594. I have a theory that he might have spent some time in Wolffenbuettel, serving Duke Henry Julius in or around 1593, along with his countryman, Gregorius Hewet, and John Dowland. The Duke published a number of plays in 1593. In some of them there appears a quartet, consisting of treble and bass viol, lute and pandora. A viol is played by "Thomas, der Geiger", who also has speaking parts, so I assume that he was German. The others are named "Adrian, Gregorius and Iohan", as in "Denss, Hewet and Dowland". None of these speak, which may point to their being of foreign extraction. The lute player is extolled as being an "aussbuendigen Lautenisten" (= an exemplary lutenist). So, who got to play the actual lute, and who the (bass) viol and the pandora? Maybe they took turns, flipped coins or something like that... There is a problem with the theory, since it seems that Dowland didn't arrive in Wolffenbuettel until 1594. I have tried to argue that he might have gone there a year before normally assumed, but it just won't play. The only, maybe far-fetched explanation that I can come up with, is that Henry Julius, always used to get his way, fully expected Dowland to respond positively to the invitation to come to Wolffenbuettel, which might have been sent already in 1593. He would then provisionally include "Iohan" in the playlists of the plays printed in 1593. He might have used some of these prints as stage-MS; the plays are rather verbose, so a printing one year ahead of the actual stageing would make sense, would give the actors a better chance of rehearsing sufficiently. On the upside, the theory seems to be supported by the fact that there are Hewet fantasias in Denss' lute book, as well as in (Robert) Dowland's, suggestive of a direct connection between the lute players. Any thoughts on this? Dramatically, Arne. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
