This release may seem from the looks of it to be of a specialized kind. It's devoted, not to a selection of lute pieces devised by the performer, but to a single manuscript, the so-called ML Lutebook housed in the British Library. The name comes from the fact that the initials ML are stamped on the book's cover. That created a mystery of the sort that keeps musicologists in business; the initials are now thought not to refer to composer Matthew Locke (the book was assembled before he was born), but to a gentlewoman named ...
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This release may seem from the looks of it to be of a specialized kind. It's devoted, not to a selection of lute pieces devised by the performer, but to a single manuscript, the so-called ML Lutebook housed in the British Library. The name comes from the fact that the initials ML are stamped on the book's cover. That created a mystery of the sort that keeps musicologists in business; the initials are now thought not to refer to composer Matthew Locke (the book was assembled before he was born), but to a gentlewoman named Margaret, who wrote her name on some of the interior pages. It attests, in the words of lutenist Elizabeth Kenny, who writes her own booklet notes, to the "remarkable level of virtuosity . . . associated with private performance by women" in Jacobean England. Kenny suggests that the book might have been involved with lessons for one of these women, but she must have been a fearsomely talented student if so. The book contains pieces by various composers, written in at different times,...
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