John M Ward. The vihuela de mano and its music: (1536-1576)

[Dmitry Medvedev]

If anyone wants to get a copy of John Milton Ward's dissertation on the vihuela, you can order one at ProQuest:

http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb

Just fill in the search fields

    Author: ward

    Title: vihuela

and it will give you the right link.

The cheapest option is an instantly downloadable PDF for 37$, but you can also order a printed copy.

Hope this will be helpful.

[Theo]

Hello Dimitry,

A late response, but thank you in any case for the link to this interesting material.

Here is another link (for free) to a later dissertation regarding the world of the vihuela within a social context that you might also like:

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~lsa/publications/J/1989/JLSA-22-01-198...

Ciao!

Theo

[Dmitry Medvedev]

Thanks, Theo. Actually, John Griffiths has a lot more information regarding vihuela and its music available through his web site:

http://www.lavihuela.com/Vihuela/My_publications.html

The link you posted is not his dissertation, but an article in JLSA. His dissertation is called "The Vihuela Fantasia: A Comparative Study of Forms and Styles", and is more than 600 pages long. It is also available for free (you can find it in the publications list), and is probably a must-read along with John M Ward's groundbreaking work.

[Theo]

Hi Dmitry,

I am sure you know lots more about this than I do! I also have "The Vihuela Fantasia" here and jumbled them together.

Since the book you mentioned cost money, (in my view well worth it), I just thought the free materials might be good to mention for those who are just getting their feet wet with the vihuela and don't want to build up a library too quickly...

Ciao

Theo

[Dmitry Medvedev]

I am just an amateur myself, and I don't really know that much... If you come across other noteworthy publications about vihuela, either free or not, I will be very grateful to know. It looks like there are not too many, mostly relatively short papers, so building a library too quickly is not an immediate danger...

I think another book worth mentioning is "Luis Milan on Sixteenth-Century Performance Practice" by Luis Gasser. I don't know if there is an ebook edition, but it is available as paperback from Amazon.