The Lute Society: Home Page

Welcome to The Lute Society's website

The Lute Society, now over 60 years old, exists to promote the lute and its music. Members get a new member's pack of 100 pages of lute music, a quarterly magazine, Lute News, with music supplement, an annual journal, The Lute, discounts on our growing range of publications and other benefits. Even if you can't make it to our meetings, playing days, and residential weekends in Britain, joining is an excellent way of building up your music library, and keeping in touch with other lute players, and with news in the lute world.

News

New Beginners' lesson - 36 - Sight reading by Lynda Sayce.

Issue 129 of Lute News is now out - see its colour front cover and ezine. See a gallery of previous front covers on the publications page, under Lute News back issues.

New Lute Society Music Index - Lute Society Music Index compiled by Michael Heseltine, where you can search all the music supplements of Lute News by title or author.

Summer school listings have just been updated. Still plenty of courses if you haven't booked your lute holidays yet! (Teachers, please contact the Secretary if we've missed any; see summer school listings.

158 early Cinquecento preludes and recercars - a bumper collection of early Italian lute music, all standards, beginner to advanced, see catalogue for details.

New free plans available for a Four course guitar by Jesus Alonso Yllana

New Lute Iconography Database - the Lute Iconography Database is a new online resource holding around 2000 images and other depictions of the lute covering over 1000 years of the history of the lute, now available for scholars, players and lute makers and anyone else interested in the history of the lute. Delve in and enjoy!

Global map of Lute Society members An exciting new development to help put members in touch with each other. Find out if there are other members near you with our interactive membership map

Japanese language page on the website of Taro Takeuchi, who offers help for prospective Japanese members whose English is not very good, tarolute.crane.gr.jp/lutesociety.html

Recent additions to our free downloads listings:

  • A song setting of Miserere, My Maker (Anon) from the Turpyn Book of Lute Songs, by Wilfred Foxe.
  • The Dohna Lute Book - a digital facsimile reconstruction of a book of three German tabulatures by Mattheus Waissel: Lautenbuch 1592-12, Tabulatura Allerley [1592]-13 and Tabulatura Guter 1592-14.
  • Four Songs from the Book of Common Prayer for voice, lute and viol by Roy Marks.
  • The Improvising Lutenist, by Gilbert Isbin - designed to teach improvisation in a contemporary style.

New page covering small ads - lute music for sale.

The Lute Online Resources Portal is now live. Most websites mentioned in the last 15 years of Lute News now have links there, and some of the pages are reasonably complete. Others have only sample content - particularly the composers and sources pages - new material will be added to these each day. You are warmly invited to send in interesting links you think we have missed - let's build a Grand Universal Lute Portal!

Looking for a lute player, accompanist, duet partner, or beginner's 'buddy'? We can help you find a lute player in your area, or for your special event (wedding, banquet, advert etc). We are also starting up a lute buddying scheme to put new players in touch with lute buddies in their area.

For previous news items, see Old news

Recent pages on this website

New Music Editions

See our catalogue for details and to purchase online:

  • 158 early Cinquecento preludes and recercars - a bumper collection of early Italian lute music, all standards, beginner to advanced
  • Christmas cards and albums of Christmas music for lute(s) and voice(s)
  • Compendium of 178 Polish dances - another bumper edition!
  • Fun merchandise! Lute-playing mouse paperweight
!

Listings and services

As well as our online shop where you can purchase our publications, our website contains a number of listings of lutes for sale, makers, teachers, publishers, summer schools and other links.

Contact the secretary

The Secretary, Christopher Goodwin
Southside Cottage, Brook Hill, Albury
Guildford, England GU5 9DJ
Tel: (+44/0)1483 202159

or if your email bounces back from this, try

!



Donations







The Lute Society’s finances are ticking over nicely with the present membership fees and it is breaking even in a safe and steady manner. But we would like to be able to fund occasional additional activities without having to raise the general membership fees to a level which would put off some from joining. If you feel able to help in this way, it will be greatly appreciated.
General Fund Donation



Donating with this button will enable you to add an amount of your choice to our general fund.



There will be an opportunity for UK tax payers to gift aid their donation after they click the donate button.








Student Bursary Fund Donation



Donating with this button will enable you to add an amount of your choice to our Student Bursary Fund which will enable us to fund deserving students for places on short term music courses such as Benslow.



There will be an opportunity for UK tax payers to gift aid their donation after they click the donate button.