In this dissertation, I analyse what I term the Petrucci lute prints, the prints of Francesco Spinacino, Joan Ambrosio Dalza, and Franciscus Bossinensis, the first lute music ever to be printed by the pioneering Ottaviano Petrucci between 1507–1511. The arrangement and adaptation of the contents – respectively French chanson, dances, and frottole, as well as each of the lutenists’ own ricercari – sit awkwardly between the oral cultures of fifteenth-century instrumental performance, and the emerging written culture of lute tablatures. As a result, their importance has been overlooked, and are commonly viewed as written remnants of fifteenth-century Italy’s “unwritten tradition”. Firstly, through a combination of approaches from musicology and literature studies, I present a revised view of the contents of each print. I place them within the contemporary debates around la questione della lingua, a dispute around what it meant to place vernacular speech into writing. In doing so, I argue how each print is designed to be used as a book. I propose that Bossinensis’ prints of frottole are memory palaces, Dalza’s print is a zibaldone (commonplace book) of dance, and Spinacino’s libri are miscellanies of French chansons that emphasise the variety of its contents. As such, the notation of each print functions between different levels of fluidity and fixity. Secondly, I construct an original analytical methodology derived from the recent research into improvised early-modern contrapuntal practices, and modal theory seen through the concept of “tonal space”. I identify the textures used within the ricercari, and through a comprehensive analysis of the displacement of textures, I examine the compositional process of each lutenist. I determine each composer’s relationship to their written ricercari, and subsequent fluidity or fixity of any potential performance. When viewed through my methodology, the ricercari become a unique musical reflection of the contemporary literary debates around the volgare.
| Date of Award | 25 Mar 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Catherine Haworth (Main Supervisor) |
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