04Feb19: Completed work on Hans Gerle “Ein newes sehr künstlichs Lautenbuch” (1552). Most, if not all, of the pieces in this book appear to have been taken from Italian tab sources and rendered into German tab. Many were taken from Rotta (1546), Crema (1546), Bianchini (1547), Gintzler (1547), and especially Castigliono (1536). But obviously Gerle put a lot of time and thought into his editions, which are not merely copies but display his own hand in adding some embellishments, filling out some chords, and putting in some different musica ficta, as well as correcting obvious errors, so that the Gerle version of many of these pieces are, in my opinion, actually better than the sources they were taken from. The book starts with 31 “preambles”, which in other editions are called ricercars or fantasias, and then “Italian pieces”, consisting of dances: passamezzoz, padoanas, galliards, and saltarellos, and a couple of pavanes.
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