The Rise of Lute Tablature

In the sixteenth century, tablature let lutenists read polyphony without staff notation.

Related

RenaissanceTablatureLute

Time and place

Sixteenth-century Europe, in Venice, Nuremberg and London. In 1507 Ottaviano Petrucci printed the first lute tablature book, and for two centuries tablature remained the everyday notation for plucked and keyboard instruments.

What happened

Tablature records actions, not pitches. Six courses become six lines; a number gives the fret, 0 an open string, and stems above the staff carry rhythm. The player sees where the fingers go without translating note names. Italy, France, Germany and Spain used their own letters or numbers, so printers reset type for each market.

What changed

Amateurs could now play polyphony at home. Books were organised by instrument rather than voice, so dances, fantasias and intabulated madrigals travelled faster than manuscripts. Staff notation later won on many voices and transposition, yet guitar and ukulele tabs still follow tablature's logic.

Listen to the turn

Dowland's Galliard divides bass and treble across six courses. A Varietie of Lute Lessons, printed in 1610, sets several composers in one volume. Jane Pickering's Lute Book preserves short household pieces with free ornament. None is an original tablature sheet, but each shows the texture it served.

Related

This turn belongs to Renaissance; see Tablature and the Lute.

Sources

• Grove Music Online, entry "Tablature"（Oxford University Press），用于核对起源与各国体系
• Howard Mayer Brown, Instrumental Music Printed before 1600（Harvard University Press, 1965），用于核对佩特鲁奇 1507 年印本

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.