Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Echoes of Love and Lost invites the listener into a sound world shaped by intimacy, memory, and emotional ambiguity. The title itself is a deliberate poetic departure—suggesting not just the act of losing, but the lingering, uncertain state of being lost in the aftermath of love. Like the refined elegance of French Baroque music, where emotion is woven through ornamentation, subtle dissonance, and graceful restraint, these works speak in sighs and shadows. Each prelude, allemande, and chaconne becomes a fragment of something once cherished, now echoing through time. This recording is not a lament, but a quiet wandering—a meditation on how love transforms us, and how its absence leaves us beautifully undone.

A Brief History

The European Renaissance lute had existed in various forms since at least the 15th century, but it was in France during the first half of the 17th century that the instrument underwent a transformation. The Renaissance lute was extended to eleven courses, and its tuning was altered from the vieil ton (G-c-f-a-d’-g’) to the new D-minor accord nouveau (A-d-f-a-d’-f’). This new tuning allowed the player to produce a commonly used chord with open strings, facilitating the rich and expressive harmonies characteristic of the Baroque period.

Additionally, the top string or chanterelle was lowered from G to F, enabling the construction of larger lutes capable of producing deeper, more resonant tones. This preference for lower pitches can be seen across French instrument-making of the time, with extant woodwind and keyboard instruments tuned as much as a tone below modern pitch. The French eleven-course lute remained dominant until the early 18th century, when German lutenists further expanded its range, increasing the instrument’s size, string length, and bass courses to create the thirteen-course lute.

It was during the mid-seventeenth century that this characteristic style of French lute music emerged. Later described by 20th-century scholars as style brisé (broken style), this performance technique is defined by the asynchronous playing of chords, creating an effect reminiscent of counterpoint. Unlike keyboard instruments, which can sound multiple notes simultaneously, the lutenist’s right hand typically plucks notes in succession, using the thumb and fingers in various combinations.

Composers sometimes indicated the order in which these notes should be plucked, but more often, the decision was left to the performer. The most common approach involved the thumb plucking the bass note while the remaining fingers articulated the upper notes, either in succession or simultaneously where practical. For chords spanning three or four notes, the thumb, index, and middle fingers were commonly used, though the ring finger—while possible—was rarely employed in historical sources. For more extensive arpeggiation, the player could either repeat the use of the thumb or employ the index finger in a strumming motion (rasgueado) before concluding with the middle finger, which, being closest to the bridge, produced a distinctively nasal and projecting tone.