Biography
(d ?Rome, ?Nov 23, 1608). Italian lutenist and composer. While his origins and his possible identification as the ‘Cavaliere del liuto’ cannot be confirmed, it is likely that most of the various references to a late 16th-century and early 17th-century lutenist by the name of Lorenzino refer to the same person. The first record refers to a lutenist called Lorenzino who was in the service of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este in Ferrara and Tivoli in 1570–71. He was probably Lorenzino Trajetti (d Rome, 20 July 1590), the son of Franciscus ‘Gallus Belgicus’; he died in Rome in his house in the via dell'Olmo (now via Vicolo del Lento), leaving to his widow, Lucrezia Paolini, ‘tre liuti usati’ and ‘un chitarrone usato’, among other possessions (Pesci, 1997).
According to Valdrighi, a ‘Lorenzino Bolognese’, a ‘singer’ in the service of the Farnese family in Parma between 1573 and 1586, studied as a page with the celebrated Neapolitan Fabrizio Dentice (who served at the Farnese court in both Rome and Parma). On 12 August 1570 a ‘Lorenzino dai Liuti’ was called for by the Duke of Mantua, but he had already left Rome in the retinue of the Prince of Bisignano (and was possibly involved in the theatrical celebrations organized the same year in Naples for the prince by Dentice). In 1586 (when the ‘Bolognese’ Lorenzino left the service of the Farnese family), a ‘Cavaliere del liuto’ appears for the first time in the register of house musicians of Cardinal Montalto (Alessandro Peretti) in Rome. This virtuoso is mentioned several times (as well as in Jean de Macque's letters from Naples) during his time in Montalto's service, until his death in the cardinal's palace in 1608.
Read full biography ↓
The identification of ‘Lorenzino dai Liuti’ with the Cavaliere del Liuto, apart from their biographical coincidence, is suggested by a poem in the Thesaurus harmonicus of 1603 by Jean-Baptiste Besard, in which he is described as ‘Laurencium civem romanum, qui propter insignem testudinis experientiam Eques Auratus [i.e. Knight of the Order of the Golden Spur] Roma fieri promeruit’. It was not unusual for Roman cardinals, particularly Montalto, to obtain titles for their most important musicians. The problem is that the styles of the pieces by Lorenzino, the so-called ‘Eques Romanus’ (whom Besard listed separately in his index), and the Cavaliere del Liuto are at times so far apart as to call into question this identification. But it is also true that there are cases where the same piece is attributed in different sources to different composers. It may well be that Lorenzino became a pupil of Dentice, probably in Rome, not in Parma. Nicola Tagliaferro, a singer in the Neapolitan Chapel Royal may have been referring to Lorenzino when he stated that Cavaliere Dentice, who was a ‘Neapolitan knight of noble standing’, had no equals, not even the ‘little knight (Cavaglierino) in the service of Cardinal Farnese in Rome’. The only surviving vocal piece attributed to ‘S. Cavaliere del liuto’ (Di pianti e di sospir, a villanella for 3 voices on a text by G. Paratico: I-Moe) is almost certainly by Fabrizio Dentice. The connection between Lorenzino and Dentice and other Neapolitan lutenists is also documented by the manuscript
PL-Kj, formerly
D-B, Mus. 40032 (a rich source of single pieces by Lorenzino). The other lutenist in the service of the Farnese family appears in this source: Santino Garsi, to whom another manuscript attributes a capriccio (D-DO G.I.4), which a later Hebrew hand ascribed to a ‘Kawalis Lorenzo’, thus almost confirming the identity of ‘Cavaliere Lorenzo’.
The situation is complicated by the fact that other ‘Cavalieri del liuto’ were active in Rome after 1608. Franca Camiz has discovered a reference to ‘Cavaliere del liuto’ in the service of the Roman Orsini family and still alive after 1608, and T. Boccalini (Ragguagli di Parnaso, 1612–15) refers to a Vincenzo Pinti, a Roman nobleman, as ‘Cavaliere del Liuto’.
Lorenzino (to whatever extent he can be identified with the Cavaliere) was the most important lute teacher in Europe at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th. In the monumental edition ‘Divo Laurencini dicata’ of the Thesaurus harmonicus (1603), Besard stated that he was a pupil of the lutenist in Rome and that he acquired from him the valuable Istruzioni published in his work entitled De modo in testudine studendi libellus, which was shortly afterwards reprinted in English (Dowland, 1610) and by Besard himself in Latin and German (1617). A manuscript copy of a similar Istructio received in Rome from a ‘Cavaliero maestro di Roma’ (another piece of evidence to identify him with Lorenzino) was copied in Latin by a Polish student on a collection of Venetian lutebooks of the years 1546–7 (which was once held in Sorau but which disappeared after 1942).
Evidence of the fame of the Cavaliere del Liuto is provided by many contemporary references in dedications by musicians close to Cardinal Montalto, such as Raval 1590, and in later documents. Alessandro Piccinini (1623) declared that one of the ‘archlutes’ he had invented in 1594 was taken from Ferrara to Naples by Prince Carlo Gesualdo and then entered the possession of the Cavaliere del Liuto, returning to Piccinini on the latter's death (an important confirmation of a connection between the Cavaliere and Naples). Besides Besard, Lorenzino's works were made known in England and the German states in the publications by Dowland (1610) and Fuhrmann (1615) and throughout Europe in a vast number of manuscript versions. In ‘Mary Burwell's lute book’, Lorenzino is credited as the ‘inventor’ of modern lute music and he is also mentioned in the manuscript treatise by E.G. Baron (1727) and in the Lexicon by J.G. Walther (1732).
Lorenzino's compositional style is derived from that of his probable teacher, Fabrizio Dentice, particularly in his adept use of counterpoint alternating with chordal homophony and in a taste for unprepared dissonances and suspensions. His mature style (and that of the Cavaliere del Liuto) is more clearly modern, with a prevalence of short, prelude-like compositions, and characteristic formulas, in which an early use of style brisé starts to appear. There is an overriding impression of compositions that are not complete but are exercises of remarkable craftsmanship and artistry, intended primarily for teaching purposes.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.