Cutting: Lute Music

Composer: Francis Cutting Artist: Domenico Cerasani Online streaming and purchasing: More information: The only available album dedicated to a notable musician of Elizabethan England. By the time of Francis Cutting’s death in 1596 he had become among the best-known of English lutenists, and but by then his reputation as a lutenist and composer had reached far beyond the Howard family of Catholic aristocrats whom he served. As a lutenist, Cutting was probably an amateur, not a professional musician, but his works show the hand of a skilful musician and composer. His music is characterized by a preference for intricate polyphony, although he also wrote light pieces using simple homophony. In the pavans and galliards we often find a complex interplay between chordal and imitative writing. Harmonically, Cutting’s music is sometimes forward-looking, with its exte