Lautentabulatur UKR-LVu 1400/I als ein humanistisches Scholarbuch

Abstract

The Krakow Lute Tablature UKR-LVu 1400/I (ca. 1555-1592) belongs to the hardly explored collections of the Lviv University Library (Ukraine). This paper considers the manuscript is in the context of humanist culture and didactic practice in Central Europe during the 16th century. At the centre is an examination of the Tablature's relation to the elaborate scholarly traditions from the first half of the 16th century, especially to the humanist Lessons Book tradition and Commonplace practice. It is argued that the Krakow Lute Tablature was a guide to poetic and musical enterntainment in the upper-middle class and aristocratic milieu of Krakow. With its clear focus on the theme of love, it was possibly intended for the non-university leisure time among Polish-Lithuanian scholars and students around 1550. Analogies between literary and musical sayings (sententiae) can be found partly in semantic parallels (in the madrigal and chanson intabulations), but above all in the technique of creating and using sententiae which is precisely in the spirit of 'commonplace' practice. In the musical entries of the Krakow Lute Tablature, sketches, fragments, dance models and intabulations, which are close to vocal models, assume the function of the literary and poetic sententiae.