Renaissance solos

This is not a sales pitch, just a review. I recently bought John Holenko’s “Renaissance Solos”, published by Mel Bay. It’s a great little collection of pieces ordered in difficulty from ultra-easy to intermediate. Most of the easy pieces are even satisfying to play musically. Anyone who wants to play ancient music on the mandolin should definitely start here.

[Mandrake]

Hello Zman, I bought this book and I'm finding it very interesting but quite challenging! Some of the chords and time signatures are finger/foot busting!

Yeah, some of them do get tricky. I'm sure that has to do with the fact that most of the pieces were originally written for the cittern, which had a re-enterent tuning similar to the modern-day ukulele.

One of my favorites in the book is "A Horne Pype", by Anthony Holborne, from The Cittharn Schoole, 1597. It's on page 54.

BTW, I was poking around the net and found this wonderful recording of that piece, performed by Jacob Herringman on a cittern itself. Here's a link to the audio page - click on the first selection. (The website asks you not to copy and post the MP3s directly into another site.)

http://www.cittern.theaterofmusic.com/audio/index.html

[Mandrake]

Cool, thanks for the MP3. Unfortunately I can't listen to music on my computer but will try to download it, then transfer it to my phone and listen to it on that (!!!)
I found a cd in the library "Watkins Ale" by the Baltimore Consort which has a few tunes from this book (again with a cittern)
BTW, I am finding the tunes a lot easier since I got a new mando!