ISBN 9781513459547. 8.75x11.75 inches.

This book of 53 intermediate-level guitar pieces is derived from Le Secret des Muses, a two-volume collection of lute tablature by Nicolas Vallet (c. 1583 c. 1642). Born in France, by 1614 Vallet had relocated to Amsterdam where he established a dance school and was active as a composer, lute teacher and leader of a consort that played at weddings and festivals. Le Secret des Muses is among the last published collections of French lute tablature intended for the 10-course Renaissance lute, which was ultimately supplanted by the larger 13-course Baroque model. Most of these pieces consist of traditional European dance forms, but also contains a few settings of popular lute themes and longer works suitable for concert performance are included. Written in standard notation only with occasional drop-D tuning, these pieces make excellent sight-reading and warmup material as well as historically significant concert selections.

This is the seventh volume of an extensive collection of folk songs arranged for the classical guitar mostly in two-part counterpoint. The arrangements are of moderate difficulty and the aims of this publication are to familiarise, entertain and educate guitarists (and other musicians) with a melodic repertoire of lasting aesthetic value, under the light of contrapuntal treatment. The thirty five volumes of this collection can certainly be printed on paper if so desired and there are a few pages in each volume, either blank or with photographs of various musicians, which can be inserted at will in any place for the correct ordering of left and right hand pages so that page turns can be avoided. The principle of avoiding page turns has been maintained in all volumes, but this edition is also designed with mobile electronic devices in mind such as tablets etc, using the environment and facilities of a score reading application, towards a paperless world, at least in music. Therefore the size of the staves is bigger than usual for ease of reading on a small screen but not big enough to exceed the limit of a two-page view. Active internal links for navigating from thematic indexes to particular songs and back to indexes have been added, and also external internet links to sites that give further information for the 945 songs of this first collection for classical guitar.