(Paper read at the Colloque, 'Le luth en l'Occident' at the Musée de la Musique, Paris in May 1998)
I want to open this discussion in England. This may seem strange at first because, although we have documentary evidence of Dufault's residence there, he seems to have left little lasting trace, whereas in German-speaking countries, where the evidence for a visit is little more than circumstantial, more of his music survives than in French sources. What was it about this man and his music that appealed so strongly to the German and, in particular, Austrian lutenists who followed him?
In 1662 the Dutch lute-enthusiast Constantijn Huygens had been in Paris on a diplomatic mission for about a year, and had thoroughly enjoyed soaking up the musical atmosphere, meeting many musicians for the first time whom he had only previously known by correspondence. One of these was François Dufault, to whom he entrusted some letters for friends in England where he was about to travel. Huygens's copies of those letters survive, and in two of them he mentions his illustrious postman, calling Dufault 'the rarest man I ever hope to see upon the lute', and exclaiming, 'Surely he is the rarest compositor that I ever heard, and the sweetest humor of a man.'(1)
To which, perhaps, we should add that Dufault, born around 1600, was by this time an old
man by the standards of his age. Huygens himself was possibly a few years older in fact,
having been born in 1596 (he died in 1687 at the ripe old age of 91). The Dutchman, a fine
composer himself, and a close friend of Mersenne, Dumont and many other French musical
luminaries, including Jacques Gaultier, with all of whom he conducted a lively
correspondence, had submitted some of his own lute pieces to Dufault's scrutiny, and was
clearly proud of his approval.
French lutenists, such as Jacques Gaultier, Jean Mercure or Dufault himself, were not
regarded with complete adulation by all sections of society in England. A satirical poem of
1658 speaks scornfully of lute music 'from the dungheap of Gaultier and the Privyhouse of
Dufault'.(2) We should not forget that an instrument with the lute's aristocratic associations
was by no means to be admired during the Commonwealth that followed Charles I's
execution in 1649, and music took a somewhat different social direction during those quasi
republican times. Musicians who had formerly served aristocratic patrons were now forced to
find what employment they could, often playing in taverns for a paying public. It would not
be surprising if the rarified nature of French lute music and its courtly associations rendered it
less than successful in such a context.
In London and in Oxford several music clubs sprang up, where former professional
musicians such as William Ellis, organist of St John's College before the Revolution,
organised musical soirées whose intent was probably as much educational as recreational.
This more conducive atmosphere allowed several lutenists to perform, such as the Oxford
professor of music, John Wilson, and the equally well-known lutenist, John Rogers, whose
brother, Benjamin, was a fine harpsichordist.(3)
Ellis's manuscript book of keyboard music
contains music by himself, Ben Rogers and Dufault. One of the pieces by 'Ben Rogers'
(significantly the name 'Ben' is altered in the manuscript from 'John') is a version of the
'Courante suedoise' we know as a piece by Dufault;(4)
actually it also appears in a Swedish
source of orchestral music, and Dufault is unlikely to be the composer.
(5) Another piece
ascribed to a lutenist, the 'Courante Mercure' on ff. 44v-5,
(6) is credited to Dufault in a lute
manuscript of Austrian origin.(7)
The e minor 'Courante Dufault' on ff. 42v-3 of Ellis's
manuscript is reproduced at the end of the 2nd edition of the CNRS Dufault edition (p. 200).
(See Music example 1a.)
This piece was not included by the editors in the main body of the
edition since no lute version had been identified at the time. A German keyboard version of
the same courante, however, transmits it in a more characteristic lute key, a minor, although
at a higher octave, and gives it a title, 'La Civile'. (See Music example 1b.) The source, a
manuscript written by Father Honorat Reich of the Benedictine Abbey of Ottobeuren and
dated 1695,(8) contains, as well as a
comprehensive collection of keyboard music by Ebner,
Froberger, Kerll, Muffat, Poglietti and others, several lute pieces transcribed rather literally
from tablature and using the higher octave.
In this key it is easier to recognise that the piece is
in fact a version of an anonymous lute courante which is found in manuscripts in
Kremsmünster and Brussels, important Dufault sources to which I shall return below.
(9) (See
Music example 1c and Fig. 1.)
So Dufault's music was indeed well-received in the right circles - especially among his
fellow-professional musicians - in England as well as elsewhere. I imagine that it is to music
such as Dufault's courantes that the highly chauvinistic English composer Matthew Locke
was referring in his statement: 'I never yet saw any Forain I[n]strumental Composition (a
few French Corants excepted) worthy an English mans Transcribing'.
(10)
The satirical mention of Dufault in Flecknoe's 1658 poem suggests that Dufault was living in
London at that time, or had visited there within recent memory. So the Huygens letter of
1662 quoted at the beginning of this paper probably relates to Dufault's return to the English
capital in more favourable circumstances, after the Stuart monarchy had been successfully
restored, and aristocratic patrons once again needed fine performers to grace their
households. In September 1655, Huygens's famous son, the scientist Christiaan Huygens,
was in Paris and wrote to his father at The Hague giving a list of musicians to be seen (and
heard): 'Chambonière, Lambert, Hotteman, Constantin, Du Faut, Gaultier, Pinel, Gobert.'
(11)
Since the recommendations came from friends in Paris, it seems more likely than not that
Dufault was present in the city at that time. Eight years later, in 1663, Christiaan visited
London for the first time and, a few days after hearing Pinel, heard Dufault play 'excelent
goed' with a 'Mrs Warwick', whose mother, 'Mrs Fretwell' (or Frescheville), had been a
Maid of Honour in Queen Henrietta Maria's French court at the Savoy palace in London in
the 1630s.(12) Constantijn Huygens was in London with his eminent son at the time, and
presumably resumed his acquaintance with Dufault. By 1669, however, he was writing to
'Lady Warwick' (whom I assume to be the same person, although Brugmans identifies her
as Joan Fanshawe) from the Hague and asked whether 'l'illustre Mr Dufaut' was still alive
and vigorous.(13) (There may be a case for suggesting that Dufault - by now around 70 years
old - died somewhere around this time. I have not had time yet to check all the English
records to see if his death is recorded in England; that possibility remains open.)
Apart from the few Dufault pieces (of varying degrees of authenticity) preserved in various
English and Scottish manuscripts of the mid-17th century, Dufault's music seems to have
had little lasting influence in Britain.(14) The unique copy of the printed collection for flute
(recorder) or violin and continuo, Suittes faciles, published by Roger in Amsterdam around
1700,(15) and which contains a well-known gigue by Dufault(16) and a few other arrangements
of lute pieces, was owned by an English clergyman, to which we owe the fact that it has
survived in Durham Cathedral Library. But there is no significant later English tradition of
French lute music - no 'School of Dufault'.
Dufault's younger contemporary, Esaias Reusner the younger (1636-1679), was among the
German-speaking musicians who clearly admired the French lutenist. In the autograph
manuscript additions to a copy of Neue Lauten-früchte (1676) he states that certain pieces in
D major for lute and viola da gamba (only the lute part is extant) were intended to be played
in a suite with an 'Allem: et Gigue von Duffaut', presumably to be played from a separate
manuscript copy.(17) As the CNRS Dufault edition points out, the D major allemande no. 85
and gigue no. 156 appear in suitable sequence in Brussels MS II 276 (ff. 57v-59), and may
have been those referred to by Reusner.(18)
Reusner studied with a well-known French lutenist, whose name, frustratingly, is not
recorded, when he was in the service of Princess Radziwill in Poland between 1651 and
1654.(19) Could this have been Dufault? Whether it was or not, Reusner's music clearly shows
the influence of our composer. This is particularly noticeable in two genres: the pavan and the
sarabande. The d minor pavan from Delitiae Testudinis (1667), p. 2, opens with the same
theme as Dufault's great G minor pavane, CNRS edition no. 161, and references to it can be
found elsewhere in the piece. This pavane was well-known in Germany as the versions for
lute in Rostock Universitätsbibliothek MS mus. saec. xvii 54, and for harpsichord (1699) in
the Ottobeuren manuscript attest. (See Music example 2.)
A sarabande in a minor by Reusner from Delitiae Testudinis (f. 14) shows a remarkable
adherence to a type of sarabande that seems especially characteristic of Dufault. (See Music
example 3.) This type of sarabande, in contrast to the earlier chaconne-like (faster?)
sarabandes which were often characterised by much use of repeated strummed chords
(played 'tirer et rabattre'), seems to owe something to the Italian passacaglia, and particularly
to the laments over the stepwise-falling-fourth 'passacaglia' bass which became such a
prominent feature of opera in the 17th century. Jacques Gallot, in his sarabande, 'Les larmes
de Gallot par [recte: pour] Mr du Fault', although he uses strummed chords at the opening of
his homage to the earlier composer, clearly alludes to this style, including a petite reprise of
the final four bars, a striking feature of Dufault's sarabandes of this type.(20) (See Music
example 4 and Fig. 2.)
While we cannot be sure that Dufault was the first to introduce these 'lament-sarabandes' to
the lute repertory, they are among his most popular works, to judge from their appearances in
manuscripts from all periods. No. 66 in the CNRS edition, for example, appears in about 16
sources, including an arrangement for 'Spinett'(21) and it is even 're-dedicated' to the memory
of William III of Orange, King of England, in Lord Danby's lute book.(22) Another beautiful
example of a sarabande of this type, although it is unascribed in all sources,(23) bears all the
hallmarks of Dufault's composition, and the circumstantial evidence of its context in the
sources strongly supports the possibility that he was the composer. There are variants
between some of the versions in the manuscripts, and I reproduce two of them here. (See
Fig. 3 and Music example 5.) The Darmstadt version (Music example 5) is somewhat
different in the central episode, and may represent an earlier state of the piece.(24) The version
in Brussels II 276 (Fig. 3) contains one highly unusual copying error: the final note c in bar
26 is duplicated an octave higher, giving rise to a glaring and unacceptable parallel octave.
The note c' is clearly wrong, and appears in no other source, yet it is a perfectly logical
continuation of the cantus melody at this point. It is not explicable as a mere slip of the pen
during copying from a correct exemplar, since it appears three tablature-lines higher than the
right note c; more likely is that it is an 'aural' lapse made while writing the piece out from
memory. The final bar is also lacking from this copy.
In general, the music in this layer of Brussels II 276 is copied exceptionally accurately, and it
is my belief, for reasons that are too complex to explore in detail in this paper, that this layer
is in fact an autograph of the composer, François Dufault himself. None of the music in this
hand in the Brussels manuscript bears a composer's name. With a single exception (a popular
sarabande highly suitable as a beginner's piece)(25) all the music that is in this hand and which
appears with a composer's name in other sources (23 pieces) is there ascribed to Dufault.(26)
The style of the music in this hand is remarkably consistent and certainly matches that of the
music in the Dufault edition. If my hypothesis is accepted, we can, therefore, add another 30
excellent pieces to Dufault's oeuvre, a body of work which should be published, together
with a complete facsimile of Brussels II 276, as a matter of priority.
Like Reusner, Philipp Franz Le Sage de Richée was a native of Breslau, the capital of the
province of Silesia, but he says in his Cabinet der Lauten (1695) that his pieces are
'established according to the fundamental rules of the most famous masters Messieurs
Dufault, Gautier and Mouton', adding that he heard Mouton play and had the good fortune to
become his pupil.(27) To these three Frenchmen he added the 'Prince of all artists in this [kind
of] string-playing', Count Johann Anton Losy, and four lute-books with their names
inscribed on the spines can be seen in the background of the engraved frontispiece to Le
Sage's book.
As François-Pierre Goy has pointed out to me,(28) there are some clear references to Dufault's
music in the Cabinet der Lauten. The allemandes in B flat major and C minor, in particular,
begin with unmistakeable quotations of allemandes by Dufault. (See Music example 6a and
6b.) Note that the explicit allusion to the earlier composer is confined to the opening phrase
only; no such obvious quotations appear later in the same pieces.
There are many examples in the baroque lute repertory of such quotations from earlier
composers, presumably intended as homage in the Renaissance rhetorical tradition of
imitatio, and this should be a fruitful area for scholarly research.(29) Another case of Dufault
parody is provided by the little-known lutenist Hinrich Niewerth, probably a German, who
was employed by the Swedish court between 1666 and his death in 1699.(30) A 'Courante de
Hen. NeuWert' in c minor (Rostock Universitätsbibliothek, Ms. mus. saec. xvii-54, pp.
196-7), which Kenneth Sparr convincingly attributes to Niewerth,(31) and the non-attributed
sarabande that follows it in the same manuscript (p. 197) in fact both begin with quotations
of the first phrases of pieces by Dufault (CNRS edition, nos. 37 and 57). (See Music
examples 7a and 7b.) Again, as with Le Sage de Richée, Niewerth only cites the opening
phrase more-or-less exactly, and the rest of each piece does not coincide with the model. The
Dufault pieces form part of a four-movement suite that is found in no 'French' source, but is
transmitted entire in three trustworthy Germanic manuscripts and partially in another four
(see the Dufault edition: 16, allemande - also quoted by Le Sage de Richée; 37, courante; 57,
sarabande; 75, gigue). A recently-rediscovered lute manuscript of North German, or possibly
Swedish, origin(32) contains second lute parts for the first three movements of the same
Dufault suite (allemande, courant and sarabande) which are different from the contreparties
given for the whole suite in Goëss MS V.(33) Interestingly, the three contreparties are clearly
attributed to Niewerth: the allemande (No. 47 in the MS, ff. 37-38) is entitled 'Contrepartie
de Nievert sur Marechal Linde. Allem:', while the courante (48, ff. 38v-9) and sarabande
(49, ff. 39v-40) are labelled 'du mesme.' (Note that these do not fit with the Niewerth
parodies, which have different harmonies and numbers of bars from their models.) Almost
adjacent in the manuscript is a similar three-movement suite of contreparties in C major (51
53, ff. 41v-44), the opening piece of which bears the title: 'Contrepartie de l'Allemande de
Nievert sur le grand Connestable. Mons. le Comte Wrangel.'; these fit precisely with a solo
lute suite attributed to Niewerth in a manuscript now in Paris, but of Polish provenance.(34)
While at present the significance of the (? Swedish) names 'Mareschal Linde' and 'le grand
Connestable. Monsr. le Comte Wrangel' in this musical context remains obscure, Niewerth's
interest in Dufault's music is clear enough.
Elsewhere in German-speaking Europe, especially in the Imperial cities of Vienna and
Prague, some noble families seem to have exploited the waning in fashion of the lute in its
'native' country, France, by offering employment to visiting French players. Prince
Ferdinand August Leopold Lobkowitz (1655-1715), head of a family of Silesian origin, but
resident in Prague and Vienna, maintained close links with some famous players throughout
the late 17th century.(35) An important manuscript by Charles Mouton(36) and an annotated copy
of his Pièces de luth are in the Lobkowitz library, although there is - as far as I am aware - no
confirming evidence that he actually travelled to Bohemia. The printed lute and guitar music
by Gaultier (both the Livre de Tablature and the Pièces de luth), Gallot, Derosier, Corbetta
and De Visée in the same library could have been purchased on journeys to France or through
an agent. A fine and accurate manuscript of lute music by the Gaultiers and others has a title
page stating that it was copied by Julien Blovin in Rome in 1676.(37) That was the year in
which Prince Ferdinand August Leopold came of age (he succeeded his father as head of the
family in the following year), and a visit to Rome would have formed an essential part of the
young nobleman's Grand Tour; Blovin taught several non-Italian lute pupils, mostly of high
birth, there between 1672 and 1710.(38)
That the Lobkowitz library is important to the survival of French lute music is well
recognised. The recent second edition of Dufault's music in the Corpus des Luthistes
Français(39) adds a further 76 pieces to the 86 presented in the 1964 edition. 17 of these come
from the Lobkowitz manuscript II Kk 73, which also contains a further 9 pieces by Dufault
supplied in the edition from other sources.
Another large source of lute music was discovered in Austria as recently as 1979 by Douglas
Alton Smith. The 13 manuscripts in the library of the Goëss family at Schloss Ebenthal in
Carinthia (together with another discovered still more recently in the Goëss family archive in
Klagenfurt) are of similar musical importance to the Lobkowitz collection, and share with it
some scribes and much repertoire. Four pieces were added to the Dufault edition from this
source, and a further 18 pieces by Dufault have been identified within it. For reasons too
involved to consider during this paper, it is clear that the manuscripts from the Goëss library
of significance in a study of Dufault actually come from the Sinzendorff family; Maria Anna
von Sinzendorff-Erstbrunn (1670-1709) married Johann Peter, first Count Goëss, in Rome
in 1693, bringing with her many of the manuscripts. Goëss MS V was begun by Julien
Blovin, who wrote in 16 solos and 12 duets, including the c minor duet for two lutes referred
to above, probably around this time.
A number of pieces by Dufault come from manuscripts originally owned by members of the
Wolckenstein family. Count Christoph Franz von Wolckenstein-Rodenegg (c.1635?-1679)
was highly placed in the Tyrolean court at Innsbruck. His son, also called Christoph Franz
(d.1707), married Anna Apollonia von Sinzendorff-Erstbrunn, the sister of the lute playing
Countess Goëss I have just mentioned. The Berlin manuscripts 40068 and 40149, which
were apparently handed down from father to son, are the chosen source between them for 9
pieces in the Dufault edition, and also contain a further 11.
The most important Austrian Dufault source not owned by or compiled for a member of the
aristocracy is a large manuscript at Kremsmünster Abbey, which was written (together with a
few others) by the highly expert musician Father Ferdinand Fischer (1652-1725), from
Salzburg, whose education in that city coincided with the great violinist Heinrich Biber's
period of greatest glory.(40) Kremsmünster L79 (together with its companions L82, L83 and
L85) adds 12 pieces to the Dufault edition, and contains another 10 identified by concordance
or edited from other sources.
Between them, these Austrian sources contribute 42 pieces to the Dufault edition, that is,
approximately 26%. Other 'German' sources are of great importance, such as the Rostock
manuscript,(41) from which no fewer than 21 Dufault pieces were supplied for the edition. In
this paper, mainly for reasons of time, I shall concentrate on Austrian manuscripts.
It is clear that an Austrian 'Dufault tradition' can be perceived in the pattern of manuscript
transmission of his music. It is my belief that Dufault was in fact the dominant influence in
the emergence of an 'Austrian school' of lute music towards the end of the 17th century, and
I present some of the evidence for that here, although a full discussion must await the
completion of further research. As an example of how widely Dufault's music became
known within Austria and southern Germany, Music example 8 presents six versions of the
very wide-spread gigue, CNRS edition no. 77, which exists in both duple- and triple-time
forms. 8a gives the tablature of a duple-time version from Kalmar MS. 21072, a manuscript
of Austrian or Silesian origin which uses the unusual notation '11' for the 11th course, rather
than the normal '4', and 8b is the version printed in Amsterdam, c1700. The Ottobeuren MS,
whose keyboard repertory is substantially Viennese in origin, presents the gigue (8c) in
triple-time (corresponding to a modern 12/8 time signature). Whether Count Losy himself
actually made the arrangement for guitar of the same piece (given in 8d from a modern edition
of Losy's guitar music(42) from the Prague MS(43) which appears to credit it among many others
to him) remains a matter of controversy, but this 3/4 version, while not a precisely accurate
rendition of the lute piece, is clearly an arrangement rather than a parody of the type
discussed above in connection with Le Sage de Richée and Niewerth. Finally, and perhaps
most surprising, are two versions of the gigue(44) which both appear in a violin manuscript in
Klagenfurt, southern Austria (8e and 8f). While much of the music in this MS (music for
violin, much in scordatura tunings, by Schmelzer and others),(45) requires a continuo
accompaniment, some of it, including the several arrangements of popular lute pieces (by
Dufault, vieux Gautier, Mercure, Dubut, Strobel and others), is for solo unaccompanied
violin.
In the Austrian capital, Vienna, Andreas Bohr von Bohrenfels, born in 1662, was appointed
as lutenist in the Kaiserliche Hofkapelle on 1 July 1696 and retained that post until his death
in 1725.(46) Between August 1704 and March 1705 'dem H[err] Andreas Bohr Kays[erliche]
Kön[igliche] Lauttenisten' was employed by Prince Lobkowitz.(47) From the fact that four
pieces in Prague Ms II Kk 73 are signed 'AB' we can identify this particular hand as that of
Bohr himself.(48) He turns out to be a prolific copyist of lute music in various 'Austrian'
collections, including several in the Lobkowitz library and several in the Goëss collection (in
both collections are a number of pieces by aristocratic composers in Bohr's hand, mostly by
Count Losy, of course, but also including pieces by members of the Lobkowitz family).
Bohr had probably been earlier employed by the Sinzendorff family: the version of Gallot's
allemande 'L'Amant malheureux'(49) copied into Goëss MS III by Bohr carries the title: 'Les
plaintes de Gallot pour le depart de Mademoiselle MariAnne de Sinzendorff'. This is highly
unlikely to be a dedication from the composer, but rather a 're-dedication' of the piece on the
departure of Maria Anna for Rome, where she married Count Peter in October 1693. It is
probable that the teaching association continued after Maria Anna's marriage: Goëss MS V,
begun in Julien Blovin's equally characteristic hand, and thus almost certainly begun in
Rome, contains music in Bohr's hand that was added in a later layer.(50)
In 1712 Bohr was officially entrusted with teaching lute and guitar to the Hapsburg
princesses.(51) Teaching was clearly as important in his career as performing, a pattern by no
means unusual, but one of great significance in the transmission of lute music, in particular,
of the French compositions of a previous generation which formed such an important part of
the Austrian 'aristocratic' repertory. Bohr's manuscripts are admirably consistent in
notational clarity, and frequently contain the extra markings (fingerings for both hands in
particular) that characterise teaching manuscripts. Such markings are almost entirely absent
from Fischer's Kremsmünster manuscripts, which were intended exclusively for his own
private use, no doubt; indeed, they are interesting for a number of pieces in more than one
draft copy, which are possibly compositions by Fischer himself. He was, after all, regarded
at Kremsmünster Abbey as a 'Meister des Lautenspiels',(52) and had little need to notate
elementary fingerings, tenues and so on.
The extent of Andreas Bohr's transmission of various composers is shown crudely in Table
1, which compares the number of pieces by each composer copied into various MSS by
Bohr. It can be seen that Dufault dominates with ease, even over aristocratic composers
(marked in the table with an asterisk) such as Losy, Bergen and Lobkowitz. The pattern is
repeated in Father Fischer's manuscript L79 at Kremsmünster, also in Table 1. (In
calculating the percentages, I have deliberately not counted the 137 pieces copied by Fischer
directly from Reusner's printed books; Kremsmünster Abbey also holds exemplars of the
original prints.) For comparison, I have included a similarly crude breakdown of composers
in another important and well-known manuscript whose provenance is not yet completely
clear, although south-west Germany seems most likely, Rostock, Universitätsbibliothek, MS
mus. saec. xvii 54, which possibly came from the Württemburg court library. Here Pinel
dominates, but Dufault is not far behind, although the general distribution of composers is
much more even in this manuscript.
Andreas Bohr, like most official court employees in 17th-century Vienna, was a minor
aristocrat himself. There seems little doubt that Baron was speaking something of the truth
when he characterised Bohr thus in the 1727 Untersuchung: 'Herr Bohr is the Imperial Court
Lutenist, but because he is very guarded with his pieces, he is not known outside Viennese
society.'(53) Bohr evidently did well out of his chosen profession; at his death the inventory of
his possessions includes two lutes by 'Lauchsmaler' (one is 'etwas grosser'), two (of equal
size) by 'Marx Unterdorn in Venedig' and a 'kleine Lauten', as well as four guitars and a
mandolin. (Note that amongst the manuscripts copied by Bohr there are tablatures for guitar
and for mandolin).(54)
Another lutenist who was very much part of Viennese society - what the English would have
called a 'Person of Quality' - was Freiherr (Baron) Wenzel Ludwig Edler von Radolt (1667-1716). It is surely not without significance that among the distinguished sponsors at Radolt's
baptism were: 'Excellentissimus Princeps de Logowitz' and 'Excellentissimus Dominus
Comes de Sintzendorff Aulae Camerae Praesidens'.(55) In the prefatory material to his Aller
Treueste ... Freindin of 1701, Radolt tells us that he has dedicated his life to music.
Presumably his music-loving godparents ensured that he received the 'right kind' of musical
education and he must have been taught to play the lute by a serious master of the instrument.
In the same preface, Radolt explicitly states that in his music 'the rules of counterpoint are
adhered to most precisely'(56) and that 'the Manier and style of Du Faut are complied with as
much as possible, for he can be called rightfully the most noble and best master of the lute.'(57)
Of course, Radolt was too young to have been taught Dufault's music by the composer, but
its tradition was evidently still alive during his youth. Among Radolt's pieces, there is little of
much musical inspiration. As Mary Burwell's tutor put it back in the mid-17th century,
'There be Rules for composeing lessons but to compose good lessons there be none it is God
that is pleased to bestowe that Guift ...'. But one sarabande in E minor by Radolt is so
clearly in Dufault's 'lament-sarabande' style that I feel sure it is intended to be recognised as
such.(58) (See Music example 9 and Fig. 4.) Radolt's tablature (Fig. 4) includes explicit
notation of etoufement (a form of staccato similar to Thomas Mace's 'tut'), vibrato, and
various ways of playing chords, all of which are used here to heighten the expressive nature
of this modest, yet effective sarabande.
Radolt's mention of the rules of counterpoint and Dufault's high reputation as a performer
and composer (some 40 years after his death, it should be remembered) should remind us of
Huygen's assessment of 1662: '... the rarest man I ever hope to see upon the lute ... the
rarest compositor that I ever heard'. Furthermore, it is also strongly reminiscent of the
comments by Mary Burwell's tutor, apparently representing the views of vieux Gaultier: 'Mr
Du fault would have made a good organist because his way is heavy and affects too much the
pedantick rules of Musicke.'(59) Dufault's playing is characterised elsewhere in the same
source as: 'very grave and learned'.(60) Vieux Gaultier (who may have been illiterate, as is
stated elsewhere in the Burwell Tutor) may not have considered a strong insistence on the
'pedantick rules' of counterpoint an advantage for a lute player. It was, however, a trait in
Dufault's music that is discernible; few pieces of 17th-century lute music are more 'grave and
learned' than the great pavanes in E minor and G minor, to which can be added an equally
fine one in C major from the Brussels 'autograph' manuscript.(61) This gravity and intellectual
rigour is likely to have been highly appealling to Dufault's German and Austrian
contemporaries and followers such as the keyboard-playing Father Reich at Ottobeuren, the
musically-sophisticated Father Fischer at Kremsmünster, the various highly-skilled
professional lutenists such as Reusner and Le Sage de Richée from the Breslau tradition,
Niewerth in Sweden and the Viennese Bohr, as well as to the many aristocratic dilettantes of
various levels of attainment, including the musical devotees Count Losy and Wenzel von
Radolt, for whom Dufault was 'the most noble and best master of the lute.'
In conclusion, I should add that the substance of Dufault's 'Manier und Art' as transmitted by Radolt, how this and other aspects of the non-French sources reflects an authentic 'French' view of the music and its performance style, and the precise ways in which Austrian lute composers reacted to the French music they 'inherited' from such composers as Dufault is the subject of a more detailed ongoing study than can be reported at this time.
Prague II Kk 73, II Kk 78; Goëss III, IV, V, VI, X ('1740')
[Other MSS not considered here to which Bohr contributed include: Prague
II Kk 36 (mandoline tablature); Prague MS X Lb 211 (guitar tablature);
Brno Stadarchiv MS 103 (from Veselí castle)]
Total number of pieces: 293
Dufault | 43 | (14.7%) |
*Losy | 25 | (8.5%) |
Ginter | 20 | (6.8%) |
*Bergen | 20 | (6.8%) |
Gallot | 7 | |
*Lobkowitz | 7 | |
Bohr | 4 | |
Reusner | 4 | |
Mouton | 3 | |
Gaultier | 2 | |
Pinel | 1 | |
Mercure | 1 | |
Dufresneau | 1 | |
Porsille | 1 | |
*C:W: | 1 (i.e. 'Comtesse Wilhelmina' [Lobkowitz, née Althan]) | |
St Luc | 1 | |
*Questenberg | 1 |
Kremsmünster Abbey MS L79
Total number of pieces: 339; excluding Reusner: 202
Reusner | 137 | (copies of both printed books) |
Dufault | 23 | (11.4% of 202) |
Gallot | 7 | (3.5% of 202) |
Du Pres | 4 | (including Tombeau for Dufault) |
'Gaultier' | 3 | |
Mercure | 2 | |
Mouton | 2 | |
Dubut | 2 | |
Pinel | 1 |
c) Anon, c1670?
Rostock Mus. saec. xvii. 54
Total number of pieces: 358
Pinel | 41 | (11.5%) |
Dufault | 37 | 10.3%) |
'Gaultier' | 33 | (9.2%) (Gaultiers other than 'le vieux') |
Dubut | 31 | (8.7%) |
Bechon | 28 | (7.8%) |
Vincent | 27 | (7.5%) |
Merville | 18 | (5.0%) |
vieux Gaultier | 17 | (4.8%) |
Gumprecht | 17 | (4.8%) |
Strobel | 12 | (3.3%) |
Niewerth | 7 | |
Mercure | 5 | |
Mezangeau | 3 | |
Rosette | 3 | |
Emond | 2 | |
Blancrocher | 1 | |
Montrovil | 1 | |
Villiers | 1 | |
Bouvier | 1 |