Hans Neusidler

He fathered thirteen children with his first wife, which resulted in his having enormous financial troubles; he eventually sold his house to pay his debts.

His eight publications feature intabulations of German songs, French chansons, Italian madrigals, dance pieces, and preludes of an improvisatory nature.

The initial 1536 publication, which was a beginner's collection, opens with a written introduction to lute playing which gives insight into contemporaneous performance practice.

[1] It was first transcribed in Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich[2] and appears in Davison & Apel's Historical Anthology of Music as a melody in a sort of diminished D ♯ accompanied by an E/B drone.

Apel gives a facsimile of the tablature in The Notation of Polyphonic Music[3] that includes Neusidler's scordatura instructions, but he interprets "die Obrer quint saitten muß man dem t gleich ziehen" (with the "fifth" string being the chanterelle and "t" the lowest drone) as requiring the tuning G-d-d-a-d-'f'♯.