Special Project - Paston Present
Our first major programme, Paston Present, featured music from the Paston Lute Books. We have become fascinated by the music, some of which is familiar in other versions, some of which is only in the Paston Lute Books, most of which is previously unpublished and unrecorded. Stewart McCoy has made modern editions of these and the group has developed a programme which enabled us to hold a series of concerts, initially in the East Midlands, performing in some of the places associated with the composers and patrons involved.

Lute Songs
Richard Lindsay and Stewart McCoy are also available for voice and lute recitals. A demo CD is available - please contact us:

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a page from a Paston manuscript

Edward Paston (1550-1630) was an amateur lute player, who owned a huge collection of music. Much is now lost, but five of his lute books survive, along with various other manuscripts of music from the 16th and early 17th centuries. The lute books contain a large amount of music: madrigals, motets, extracts from masses, In nomines, fantasies, consort songs, and so on. There are hundreds of pieces. Some are continental, but most of them are English, and many by William Byrd. None of the music was written originally for the lute, but Paston (or one of his servants) arranged it to be played on a lute with the top part missing. The lute was used to accompany one or more singers. Although Paston's lute books have been known for a long time, scholars and performers have tended to ignore them, since none of the music had been intended for the lute. The vocal pieces would normally have been sung unaccompanied (or perhaps with an organ), the consort songs would fare better with viols instead (as originally intended), and there are no solos by Elizabethan lutenists such as Dowland, which would attract lutenists. I have handled many manuscripts in the British Library. Those with music by well-known composers have dirty pages, where countless scholars over the years have leafed through the manuscripts. Less familiar music survives on clean pages, shunned by musicologists, and largely ignored. The pages of Paston's lute books are very clean. There is a great deal of lute music which has been published in recent years, either in facsimile or in a modern edition. There are still no facsimiles of Paston's lute books available. Much of the music (for example all the pieces by William Byrd) has been published as a vocal score, but most of Paston's lute arrangements have not been published. Apart from a handful of exceptions, all we have are arcane references to them in critical commentaries at the back of the vocal editions. The "Paston Present" project of Cantiones Renovatae is an attempt to recreate some of the music from Paston's lute books, performing them with the lute, as he would have done at home with his family and friends.
Stewart McCoy.

Venues of performances of Paston Present
Gainsborough Old Hall  May 2004
St Botolph's, Boston (Boston Stump)  August
Lincoln Drill Hall  September
Grimsthorpe Castle  September
Wren Library of Lincoln Cathedral  May 2005