Alonso Mudarra
Alonso Mudarra (c. 1510–1580) was a Spanish Renaissance composer and vihuelist. His 1546 Seville print Tres libros de musica en cifras para vihuela holds the earliest surviving music for the four-course guitar.
The three books gather fantasias, variations (including a set on La Folia), tientos, pavanes, galliards and songs in Latin, Spanish and Italian. Among the best-known pieces are harp-imitating fantasias and lyrical songs such as Claros y frescos rios and Si me llaman, a mi llaman, still central to the vihuela and early-guitar repertory.
On Move his music appears in programmes of sixteenth-century Spanish song and solo vihuela, drawn from the Tres libros.
Compositions by Alonso Mudarra appear on
Music of the Spanish Renaissance
La Compañia's first CD gathers seventeen Spanish Renaissance works on period instruments with soprano Vivien Hamilton, including cues heard in the film Elizabeth but omitted from its commercial soundtrack.
The Echo of Opheus
Vihuela music of Renaissance Spain. On vihuela, the ‘Spanish lute’, John Griffiths offers an intimate programme of fantasies, variations, intabulations and dances by the great sixteenth-century Spanish masters, framed by the Orpheus legend.