On Sunday, January 20th at 4:00 p.m., USF music professor John Robison will present a program of 

solo music for the Renaissance lute, the Baroque theorbo, and the Baroque archlute; he will be 

joined by guest artist Maggie Coleman for some English and Italian lute songs.  The first portion of the 

concert will be devoted to lute music written between c. 1580 and 1620, the period towards the end 

of the Renaissance when lute music becomes particularly complex in style.  This part of the program 

will feature music for the highly distinctive ten-course late Renaissance lute, including music by 

various composers from England, Germany Italy, and the Netherlands. For this portion of the program 

Dr. Robison will be performing on a ten-course lute with nineteen strings, an instrument that was 

especially popular with early seventeenth-century composers.  Several Elizabethan lute songs will be 

included on the program, along with seventeenth-century Italian songs performed with either a large 

fourteen-course theorbo or with the archlute.  The final portion of the program will feature Dr. Robison 

performing on the Baroque theorbo and archlute, both of them large instruments with two necks and 

fourteen courses that were immensely popular during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. 

 The demanding theorbo and archlute portion of the program will include toccatas, ballettos, 

correntes, and variations by early seventeenth-century Italian masters (Alessandro Piccinini, Pietro 

Paolo Melii, Giovanni Kapsberger), as well as a sonata by one of the last composers for the archlute, 

the early eighteenth-century master Giovanni Zamboni. 



	The most active lutenist in the state of Florida, John Robison received his doctoral degree 

in early music from Stanford University in 1975, where he studied with George Houle, Imogene 

Horsley, William Mahrt, Stanley Buetens, and Leonard Ratner.  Dr. Robison joined the music faculty 

at the University of South Florida in 1977, where he is currently a Professor of Musicology and 

Director of Early Music Ensembles in the School of Music.  A versatile musician who performs 

regularly on plucked string, bowed string, and woodwind instruments, he has done numerous solo 

Renaissance lute recitals over the past thirty-nine years, and also performs regularly on the viola da 

gamba, Renaissance/Baroque recorders, Renaissance double reeds (shawm, rackett, curtal), 

Baroque oboe, and modern oboe/english horn.  As a performer and as a scholar he has appeared 

throughout the United States, Canada, England, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, Australia, China 

and South Korea.  An active researcher, he often selects the repertory for his lute recitals from 

European lute manuscripts that he examines in person.  His articles and books have been published 

in the United States, Europe and Asia, and he has received numerous grants for his work on 

Renaissance/Baroque music and for his research on contemporary intercultural composers.  His 

research interests include Renaissance lute music, German Renaissance composers, early 

performance practices, and the seventeenth-century fugue.  He also specializes in the music of 

contemporary African and Asian composers (Egypt, Nigeria, Azerbaijan, India, China, South Korea), 

and his long-awaited book on Korean Women Composers and Their Music was published in 2012. 

And in addition, he has never once been arrested for luting!!!