Il piu bel secreto et arte

Featuring

Paul Beier
Vincenzo Capirola

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Historical Context

The Capirola Lute Book is preserved in the Newberry Library in Chicago, having defied expectations for five hundred years.

Composition History

Around 1517 in Venice, a lutenist named Vidal created a beautiful manuscript of lute tablature, which is the source for the music on this album.

Composer Biography

Vincenzo Capirola, the composer whose works are featured, was born in Brescia in 1474 into a wealthy mercantile family and lived until at least 1548.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Vidal, the scribe of the Capirola Lute Book, adorned the manuscript with exquisite paintings of birds, animals, and flora to ensure its preservation, believing its beauty would safeguard it even if owners lacked musical knowledge.

Compositional Technique

The Capirola Lute Book uniquely uses a multicoloured system for rhythmic symbols, with red, black, and yellow indicating semibreve, minim, and semiminim figures respectively, to aid legibility.

Composer's Artistic Vision

The Capirola Lute Book contains the most detailed instructions on early sixteenth-century lute playing, explaining subtleties like plucking, left-hand technique, string selection, and tuning.

Compositional Technique

Vincenzo Capirola's solo lute arrangements of vocal polyphony use diminutions and embellishments that transform the original music into coherent and idiomatic lute pieces.