A digital corpus for exploring the lute music of John Dowland (1563-1626)

This article outlines a case for the building of a digital corpus of lute music of the period covering the sources of the works of John Dowland (1563-1626), made feasible by the existence of a large number of works in informal encodings by enthusiasts for distribution via the world wide web. Editorial work needs to be done on the basic texts, but the extra effort is likely to be less than that which would be demanded by a similarly comprehensive encoding initiative for keyboard music of the same period. Dowland’s works are very widely spread in the manuscript and printed lute tablatures of his time, but relatively few pieces come from sources that are truly ‘close’ to the composer; most are transmitted in versions that sometimes vary significantly in detail. Dowland travelled widely in Europe before receiving his long-awaited English court appointment in 1612; several pieces exist solely in continental sources, and some of these are stylistically distinct from his early repertory. This article advocates the building of a corpus of relevant lute music which would allow a digital-humanities, computer-assisted approach to problems of attribution and style analysis.