Galanteries of the Lute

Lutenist Brian Bartling has put together a program of music from another time, place, and instrument. This is lute music from the German-speaking territory of Silesia, a historical region situated around modern day Poland, in the late 17th- and early 18th- centuries. The lute was such a popular instrument at this time that one organist quipped that you could “cover the roofs of many great palaces” with them!

This program will feature works by a number of lutenist-composers who were all active in and around Silesia. S.L. Weiss was one of the most famous & prolific lute players in history — we have almost 1,000 of his works extant. Ph. Lesage de Richee was a noted teacher and one of Weiss’ predecessors, whose music was quite popular with the Jesuit monks in these territories. W.J Lauffensteiner was an Austrian lutenist whose music was of such high quality that much of it was misattributed to Weiss (and vice versa). And lastly, the program will close with anonymous program music based on the pastoral Il Pastor Fido, which was perhaps played as part of a dance production.

Nowadays we refer to this music as galant, and its individual movements as galanteries, but it’s truly a snapshot of a people who had a flair for the dramatic, loved the theater, and couldn’t resist a good tune.