author
Luis Milán
d. 1559
A pioneering figure of the Spanish Renaissance, this Valencian composer and vihuela player helped bring instrumental music into print. His work opens a window onto both the sound of the 1500s and the polished life of a court musician.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Valencia around 1500, Luis Milán was a Spanish Renaissance composer, writer, and celebrated player of the vihuela, a plucked instrument closely related to the lute and an ancestor of the guitar. He is especially remembered as the first composer known to publish music for the vihuela, making him a landmark figure in the history of printed instrumental music.
Milán was associated with the cultured court of Germaine de Foix in Valencia, where music, literature, and courtly performance were closely intertwined. That mix of artistry and social life shaped his writing as well as his music, giving his work an unusual sense of personality and place.
His best-known book, El Maestro (1536), was designed both as music and as instruction, and it remains one of the richest surviving sources for vihuela repertoire. He also wrote about courtly behavior and life in Valencia, which helps modern readers see him not only as a musician, but as a sharp observer of the world around him. Sources disagree on the exact year of his death, but it appears he was alive after 1561.