The website improvisedcounterpoint.com has recently been launched as a dedicated research platform focused on Renaissance improvised counterpoint, bringing together modern editions, analytical tools, and sound-based resources for scholars and performers.
Within this broader platform, a project site specifically devoted to Vicente Lusitano is now available at lusitano.improvisedcounterpoint.com. This site is centred on Lusitano’s manuscript Del arte de contrapunto (Libro segundo, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, F-Pn Esp. 219), which preserves the largest surviving corpus of examples for Renaissance improvised counterpoint. The project site provides structured access to this material through a complete modern transcription of the 247 counterpoint examples, a stable editorial numbering system aligned with manuscript folios, navigational tables linking each example to its manuscript context, and a full set of corresponding audio and MusicXML files.
The aim of the platform is not merely documentary. By restoring the aural and procedural dimension of the sources, it seeks to make explicit the practical knowledge embedded in Lusitano’s examples, knowledge that is often obscured when these materials are approached only through abstract theory or isolated notation.
The Lusitano project site forms part of a wider ecosystem that also includes parallel corpora dedicated to other sixteenth-century Iberian sources, all developed within an ongoing doctoral research project on Renaissance improvised counterpoint. Together, these resources are intended to support both historical inquiry and historically informed practice, and to facilitate direct engagement with counterpoint as a lived, performative discipline.
Visitors interested in Lusitano’s work are invited to explore the project site and its associated resources at: lusitano.improvisedcounterpoint.com
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