Emmanuel Adriaenssen (c.1554 – 1604) was a Flemish
lutenist, composer and master of music. He authored the
influential Pratum Musicum, which contains scores for
lute solos, and more importantly settings of madrigals
for multiple lutes and different ensembles involving
lutes and voices. He also had an important influence on
the next generation of lutists through his activity as
a teacher of music in his own music school. He was born
in Antwerp between 1540 and 1555. Little is known about
his ea...(+)
Emmanuel Adriaenssen (c.1554 – 1604) was a Flemish
lutenist, composer and master of music. He authored the
influential Pratum Musicum, which contains scores for
lute solos, and more importantly settings of madrigals
for multiple lutes and different ensembles involving
lutes and voices. He also had an important influence on
the next generation of lutists through his activity as
a teacher of music in his own music school. He was born
in Antwerp between 1540 and 1555. Little is known about
his early life and training. It is known that he
travelled to Rome in 1574 to study music. Upon his
return to Antwerp he started a lute school with his
brother Gysbrecht. The brothers had in 1587 a conflict
with the musicians' guild of Antwerp because they
practised as musicians without becoming members of the
guild. Emanuel later became a master of the guild.
When Emanuel (or Hadrianus) Adriaenssen was born in
mid-sixteenth century Antwerp, lute music had already
been central to the city's musical culture for several
decades. But Adriaenssen would be the talent to put the
mercantile city's lute players on an international map.
He absorbed aspects of the Italian ornamental style
while studying music in Rome starting in 1574; he
propagated his own playing style in a lifetime of
public performances, in three large pedagogical printed
collections of music, and above all, through a lifetime
of teaching. Adriaenssen founded a school in Antwerp
with the help of his brother Gysbrecht, and may have
taught many of the next generation of Antwerp
lutenists. Judging by the level of ornamentation with
which Adriaenssen encrusts his surviving lute
compositions, the man must have been a powerful player.
The charge has even been leveled against him (in
historical hindsight) that his ornamentation tends to
overwhelm his musicality. In his time, however, the
best of Antwerp society apparently delighted in his
skill.
It was his teaching, however, that would cement
Adriaenssen's position in music history. Not only did
he maintain students (apparently including future stars
such as Jaochim van den Hove) who would proceed to
their own fame, his printed collections of "Practical
Music" for the lute must have been highly influential.
Not only did these books include large collections of
music in several styles and levels of difficulty (as
well as music for two, three, and even four lutes
playing simultaneously), they also contained tables for
the teaching of tablature notation. Among the important
international figures known to have owned copies of his
printed music were astronomer Konstantin Huygens, the
music-loving King of Portugal, and Cardinal Mazarin of
France. Interestingly, three of Emanuel's children went
into painting instead of music -- the Dutch master
Alexander Adriaenssen and his two brothers Vincent and
Niclaes.
The Pratum Musicum contains lute solos, and more
importantly settings of madrigals for multiple lutes
and different ensembles involving lutes and voices
giving much study material for the researcher into
renaissance performance practice. The book contains
around 85 tablatures for fantasias, songs and dances.
Most of the vocal pieces are in Italian. The Neapolitan
songs, with their parallel fifths (which not required
in Italian text, so it is a question here of a style
marker) have a more rustic character. One of them, Del
crud’amor, has an almost Oriental character. Various
dances for solo lute also tend toward the rustic.
Although originally written for Lute, I created this
Interpretation of the Almande Prince from Pratum
musicum (1584) for Celtic or Concert (Pedal) Harp.
SHEET MUSIC