Neusidler Family - Oxford Music Online
Neusidler Family - Oxford Music Online
Neusidler Family - Oxford Music Online
https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.19795
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001
German family of lutenists and composers. The first two discussed below are among the leading figures
in 16th-century German lute music.
(b Pressburg [now Bratislava], c1508–9; d Nuremberg, Feb 2, 1563). Composer, lutenist, intabulator
and lute maker. He arrived at Nuremberg early in 1530; on 21 February he received from the city
council a residence permit for one year, on 13 September he married a Nuremberg girl, and on 17
April 1531 he took the oath as a citizen. His finances apparently improved as a result of his marriage,
for he was soon in a position to purchase a house with a courtyard on the Zotenberg behind the fruit
market. He was highly regarded as a lute teacher and between 1536 and 1549 published eight books of
lute music. In judicial records of 1550 he was twice described as a lute maker. He and his wife had 13
children, which caused him such financial embarrassment that he was forced to appeal to the city
council for help and eventually to sell his house. His wife died in January 1556, and no doubt because
of his many small children he remarried on 4 May; he had four more children by his second marriage,
and his second wife died in August 1562.
Together with Hans Judenkünig and Hans Gerle, Hans Neusidler was one of the principal figures in the
early history of lute music in Germany. His lutebooks contain a rich and varied repertory, embracing
arrangements of German songs, chansons, Italian madrigals, motets, German and Italian dances and
free, improvisatory preludes. The pieces vary in difficulty, but apart from the two-part (tenor and bass)
arrangements for beginners, reduced from fuller vocal originals, three-part works (descant, tenor,
bass) are in the majority; four-part pieces appear only in the third of the 1544 books and in that of
1549. In the second 1536 book, explicitly intended for experienced players, the vocal originals are
transformed into instrumental works by means of virtuoso passage-work. Favourite pieces from the
earlier books reappear in later ones, usually with modifications.
The first 1536 book, intended for beginners, contains an important introduction on lute playing (Eng.
trans. in M. Southard and S. Cooper: ‘A Translation of Hans Newsider: Ein newgeordnet küenstlich
Lautenbuch … (1536)’, Journal of the Lute Society of America, xi, 1978, pp.5–25ff). Neusidler’s method,
designed for use without a teacher, was the first to give exercises marked with fingering for the left
hand, thus facilitating the playing of polyphonic music. The placing of one to four dots above each
letter of the tablature indicates the stopping finger; one dot indicates the forefinger, two dots the
middle finger, and so on. Neusidler also set great store by legato playing; he used a cross (+) beside a
letter to indicate a sustained note. He demanded that runs be struck by alternating thumb and first
finger, the latter being indicated by a dot, and he considered the correct use of this technique to be the
greatest art of lute playing. No particular directions are given for the playing of chords by the right
hand. The opening, fundamental pieces in the first 1536 book are marked ‘Kleines Fundament’ and
‘Grosses Fundament’. The ensuing two- and three-part pieces are supplied in part with fingering for
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Intabulations
Editions
Ein newgeordent künstlich Lautenbuch in zwen Theyl getheylt: der erst für die
anfahenden Schuler (1536¹²/R1974)
Der ander Theil des Lautenbuchs: darin sind begriffen vil ausserlesner kunstreycher
Stuck von Fantaseyen, Preambeln, Psalmen, und Muteten … auff die Lauten
dargeben (1536¹³/R1976)
7 in K; 2 in N
ein newes Lautenbüchlein mit vil feiner lieblichen Liedern für die jungen Schuler
24
(1544 )
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ein new künstlich Lautten Buch für die anfahenden Schuler (1544²³)
11 in K; 1 in N
ein new kunstlich Lauten Buch darin vil trefflicher … Kunst Stück von Psalmen und
25
Muteten (1544 )
ein newes Lautenbüchlein mit vil feiner lieblichen Liedern, für die jungen Schuler
26
(1547 )
ein new künstlich Lauten Buch erst yetzo von newem gemacht für junge und alte
4
Schüler (1549 ¹)
(b Nuremberg, 1531; d Augsburg, 1590). Intabulator, composer and lutenist, eldest son of (1) Hans
Neusidler (not his brother as Koczirz suggested). His date of birth and relationship to his father can be
deduced from his portrait at the age of 43 in his Teütsch Lautenbuch (1574; see illustration) and the
date of his father’s marriage (see above). In 1551 he applied to the German emperor for a ten-year
privilege for the printing of his works. He soon moved to Augsburg, acquired a citizen’s rights there
and on 31 December 1552 relinquished his Nuremberg citizenship. He was the leader of the so-called
‘stille musica’, a group of musicians hired to play on festive occasions in the houses of prominent
citizens; he also played with the civic musicians in public festivities. In October 1561 he visited
Nuremberg, and because of his father’s financial straits he undertook to bring up his three youngest
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Melchior Neusidler: portrait from his ‘Teütsch Lautenbuch’ (Strasbourg: Jobin, 1574)
Melchior Neusidler’s two lutebooks of 1566, which are in Italian tablature, contain arrangements of
madrigals, motets, chansons and Italian dances, as well as some mostly imitative ricercares, called
fantasias by Phalèse in his French tablature versions (1571) and by Neusidler himself in his Teütsch
Lautenbuch (1574). The first book includes two dance suites, each consisting of a passamezzo, a
saltarello derived from it and then a ripresa. In the Teütsch Lautenbuch this repertory is augmented by
German songs and dances. In making his intabulations Neusidler kept wherever possible to the same
number of parts as in the vocal originals and enlivened them with diminutions. In a preface to the 1574
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Intabulations
all for lute
30
Il secondo libro intabolatura di liuto di … Neysidler (Venice, 1566 ; some repr.
16 25
1571 ; all transcr. in Ger. lute tablature, 1573 )
Ricercare super Susanne un jour, fantasia super Anchor che col partire, 6 other
ricercares, 15 other fantasias, 10 Ger. sacred songs, 8 passamezzi, 7 galliards, 14
intabulations and dances, CH-Bu, D-DEl, DO, Mbs, W, PL-Kj
(b Nuremberg, bap. Feb 13, 1541; d Augsburg, after 1603). Lutenist and composer, son of (1) Hans
Neusidler and younger brother of (2) Melchior Neusidler. In 1562 he moved to Augsburg and on 26
January 1564 renounced his Nuremberg citizenship. He still appeared in the Augsburg tax records in
1604. A subsequent report from the master builders to the city council mentioned that ‘the late’
Conrad Neusidler used to play his lute for weddings and similar festivities. His only extant music
consists of some German dances, two intradas and intabulations of 14 German sacred songs, all in the
D-
same lute manuscript (W Aug.fol.18.7 and 18.8), and two intabulations of motets by Lassus and
Johann Eckart (DO G.I.4). A manuscript appendix to the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek copy (now lost) of
25
Rudolf Wyssenbach’s Tabulaturbuch uff die Lutten (1550 ) contained lute versions of two dances, two
chorales and a chanson by him.
Bibliography
BrownI
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E. Radecke: ‘Das deutsche weltliche Lied in der Lautenmusik des 16. Jahrhunderts’,VMw, 7 (1891), 285–336
O. Chilesotti: ‘Di Hans Newsidler e di un’antica intavolatura tedesca di liuto’, RMI, 1 (1894), 48–59
O. Körte: Laute und Lautenmusik bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1901/R)
J. Dieckmann: Die in deutscher Lautentabulatur überlieferten Tänze des 16. Jahrhunderts (Kassel,
1931)
H.-P. Kosack: Geschichte der Laute und Lautenmusik in Preussen (Kassel, 1935)
W. Boetticher: Studien zur solistischen Lautenpraxis des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1943),
317–20, 328, 346, 351–420
A. Layer: ‘Melchior Neusiedler’, Lebensbilder aus dem bayerischen Schwaben, ed. G.F. von Pölnitz and
others, 5 (1956), 180
K. Dorfmüller: Studien zur Lautenmusik in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Tutzing, 1967)
A.J. Ness: ‘A Letter from Melchior Newsidler’, Music and Context: Essays for John M. Ward, ed. A.D.
Shapiro (Cambridge, MA, 1985), 352–69
C. Meyer: Sources manuscrites en tablature: luth et théorbe, catalogue descriptif, 1–2 (Baden-
Baden, 1991)
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