Any suggestions, corrections or other comments will be most welcome: just email martin@luteshop.co.uk.  Downloadable files are provided in Fronimo, Tab and PDF.  To hear my own recording of one or more of the pieces just click on the MP3 files.

Fantasia by Benedict de Drusina
Benedict de Drusina (c.1520 - after 1573) published his Tabulatura at Frankfurt an der Oder in 1556.  It starts with four fantasias: the first and second appear in publications by Matthäus Waissel (the second also in various other sources including Besard's 1603 anthology).  The third is cognate with a piece by Melchior Newsidler and a version is also found in the Siena Lute Book (without title, in the section headed "Del Libro di F.B.", on ff.42-42v.).  The fourth (on sig.2v.-b3v.), presented here, has no known concordances but is apparently based on the opening theme of the motet Verbum iniquum et dolosum by Cristóbal de Morales (c.1500 to 1553), of which the opening bars are presented here for comparison.  Full intabulations of this motet were made by Hans Newsidler, Albert de Rippe and Miguel Fuenllana - to be the subject of a forthcoming study.

The present piece may well not be by Drusina himself:  it seems he was more of a collector than a composer and probably acquired some of his pieces on his travels in Italy.  In 1573 he published a German tablature version of  the books of Melchior Newsidler which had appeared in Venice (in Italian tablature) in 1566.

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