Album Notes

Palestrina’s Lute is a program of music by Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina (1525/26 - 1594), one of the most celebrated composers of all time. The creation of this concert program was inspired by the recent discovery that Palestrina was himself a lutenist and actually used the lute when composing his vocal music. Members of the Venere Lute Quartet have taken Palestrina's finest pieces in a variety of genres including his masses, spiritual madrigals, polychoral motets and arranged them for lute quartet. Anchored by the complete Missa Brevis and selections from the Song of Songs, this program is a monument both to Palestrina's sublime genius and the magic of the lute ensemble sound.

"...delicate, tactile arragements or Palestrina movements and motets."
Allan Koznin, New York Times

"A quartet of lutes opens up a host of exciting possibilities for harmony, intricate rhythms, counterpoint and syncopation..."
Beth Adelma, Early Music America


The Venere Lute Quartet is named after the Italian Renaissance luthier Vendelio Venere, who (like Stradivarius) was regarded among the finest luthiers of his age. The exquisitely crafted "family" of Renaissance lutes on which the Quartet performs are all strung in gut and are modeled after instruments from Venere's workshop by luthiers Grant Tomlinson, Joel van Lennep, and Lawrence K. Brown. Sized according to Pythagorean proportions, instrument makers and musicians of the Renaissance were highly influenced by the ideas attributed to Pythagoras and the belief that the "symphony" of sounding numbers in music expressed the orderly workings of the universe. Indeed, for many humanists of the Renaissance, the harmony of the universe was most clearly revealed in the well-tuned, well-played strings o