Dear Herbert,
There are dozens of sources in Latin, including sources which may have
Italian titles and Latin prefaces, like Spinacino.
You can do a CTRL-F search on my lute pages and search for "testudi"
(Latin for lute, with various endings):
http://applications.library.appstate.edu/music/lute/home.html
In the 16th century
(http://applications.library.appstate.edu/music/lute/C16/1500.html),
many prints by Pierre Phalèse, as well as the works of Sixt Kargel and
Matthäus Waissel have Latin prefaces and textural matter. In the 17th
century
(http://applications.library.appstate.edu/music/lute/C17/1600.html),
Johann Rude, Joachim van den Hove, Jean-Baptiste Besard, Matthias
Reymann, and many others, all the way up to Reusner 1697. Printers in
the Low Countries, especially, favored it over the more localized Dutch
or Flemish; helped international sales, I'm sure.
Also, many of the standard music treatises of the period that mention
the lute--Agricola, Besard, Fludd, Praetorius, et al.--were commonly in
Latin.
For textual matter, Latin is quite common; there are Latin vocal works
as well, especially mass or motet settings in lute and vihuela books . .
. Interesting that it does begin to die out after 1700, but it is still
encountered in manuscripts and treatises.
Gary
On 12/11/2012 6:29 AM, Herbert Ward wrote:
According to Wikipedia, Latin was the language
of scholarship, science, and internation communication
until around 1725.
However, I've not seen much of Latin in lute music.
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
Dr. Gary R. Boye
Professor and Music Librarian
Appalachian State University
