(b Brescia, 1474; d ?Brescia, after 1548). Italian nobleman, lutenist and composer. He lived in Brescia in 1489, 1498 and again in 1548, and Gombosi surmised that he may have been the phenomenal Brescian lutenist who visited the court of Henry VIII in 1515. By 1517 he was in Venice, where between 1515 and 1520 one of his pupils prepared a lavishly illuminated manuscript of his music, the so-called Capirola Lutebook (now in US–Cn, facs., Florence, 1981), the most important document of Italian lute composition and playing from the decades between Petrucci’s publications of works by Spinacino, Giovan Maria, Dalza and Bossinensis (1507–11), and the first prints of Francesco da Milano’s music in 1536 (for facsimile, see Notation, fig.98).
Capirola’s music varies in difficulty from ‘easy little things’ for novices to works demanding great virtuoso technique. The manuscript comprises some 23 intabulations of vocal music of the type published by Petrucci between 1501 and 1514 (French chansons, frottolas, motets and mass movements by Agricola, Obrecht, Josquin, Cara and others of that generation), three cantus-firmus dances, three padoane alla francese, a balletto and 13 ricercares. The ricercares belong to the tradition of the quasi-improvisatory style of Petrucci’s lutenists, but tend to be of greater length and substance, frequently alternating passages in brilliant toccata style with sections of three-voice counterpoint of the type found in the sacred vocal music of Obrecht and Busnoys. The preface, one of the most important documents on early lute technique, contains much practical information on subjects such as tenuto and legato playing, fingerings, the importance of careful part-writing, ornaments (tremolos or mordents), ‘secrets’ about fretting and stringing the lute, and choosing an instrument appropriate to the player's physiognomy.
O. Gombosi: Compositione di Meser Vincenzo Capirola: Lute-book (circa 1517) (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1955/R) [edn and transcription of the entire MS with a thorough study of its contents]
F. Marincola: ‘The Instructions from Vincenzo Capirola's Lute Book: a New Translation’, The Lute, xxiii/2 (1983), 23–8
R.d'A. Jensen: The Lute Ricercar in Italy, 1507–1517 (diss., UCLA, 1988)
ARTHUR J. NESS