THE LUTE INSTRUCTIONS OF JEAN-BAPTISTE BESARD

Abstract

J EAN-BAPTISTE BESARD (c. 1567-c. 1625), a peripatetic Burgundian gentleman educated in Italy who worked in Germany, was a man of wide interests; he seems to have been at once a jurist, a physician, and a lutenist. He was responsible for five books, two published in Cologne in 1603 and 1604, and three published in Augsburg in 1617. The volume of 1604 was part of a series of collected historical documents: Mercurii Gallobelgici, sive rerum in Gallia et Belgio potissimum Hungaria quoque: Germania, Polonia, Hispania, Italia, Anglia, alijsqu [sic]; Christiani orbis Regnis, & Provincijs ab Anno 1598 usq; ad Annum gestarum.' One of the volumes of 1617, the Antrum philosophicum, was a large compendium of medical knowledge of the time. The other three publications concern us here. The first is Besard's Thesaurus harmonicus divini Laurencini Romani, nec non praestantissimorum musicorum, qui hoc secolo . . . excellunt, selectissima omnis generis cantus in testudine modulamina continens ... (Cologne, 1603).2 It is a major collection of lute music in French tablature containing 403 compositions divided into ten books according to genre. The music is for solo lute, or lute and voice (three compositions are for two lutes), and represents twenty-one different composers. In addition to the ten books of music, Besard appended to the Thesaurus a set of instructions on how to play the lute, the De Modo in testudine