Francis Cutting
Francis Cutting (c.1550–1595/6) was an English lutenist and composer of the Renaissance. Among the earliest named English lute composers, he left about fifty works of high quality.
He served as a musician to the Howard family, including the Earl of Arundel. His output is almost entirely for the lute: pavans, galliards, character pieces and sets of divisions.
Surviving titles include Sir Walter Raleigh’s Galliard, the substantial Mrs Anne Markham’s Pavan, a Gig, A Toy, and variations on the ballad tune Walsingham. Several pieces were printed in William Barley’s A New Booke of Tabliture (1596).
On Move his music appears among Elizabethan lute solos on What if a Day or a Month or a Year (MD 3151) and in the Marian rondo of Walsingham variations on Walsingham (MCD 637).
Compositions by Francis Cutting appear on
What if a Day or a Month or a Year
Elizabethan lute songs and Ayres sung by Gerald English, a founding member of the Deller Consort, with Jonathan Rubin on lute and Sharyn Wicks on gamba.
Walsingham
Renowned Australian lutenist Rosemary Hodgson’s Walsingham gathers Elizabethan lute variations on a sacred ballad into a contemplative Marian rondo of mysticism and pilgrimage.