Intabulation

Intabulation, from the Italian word intavolatura, refers to an arrangement of a vocal or ensemble piece for keyboard, lute, or other plucked string instrument, written in tablature.

[1] The earliest intabulation is from the mid-14th century Robertsbridge Codex, also one of the first sources of keyboard music still in existence.

[1] The large Buxheim manuscript is dominated by intabulations, mainly of prominent composers of the time, including John Dunstaple, Gilles Binchois, Walter Frye, and Guillaume Dufay.

[1] The exception is the 16th- and 17th-century Italian keyboard pieces which included both vocal and instrumental music.

Intabulations are an important source of information for historically informed performance because they show ornaments as they would have been played on various instruments, and they are a huge clue as to the actual performance of musica ficta, since tablature shows where a musician places their fingers, which is less up to interpretation than certain staff notations.