Milán, Luis de
Milán, Luis de
Milán, Luis de, Spanish musician, courtier, and poet; b. Valencia, c. 1500; d. after 1561. He was a favorite at the viceregal court of Valencia under Germaine de Foix and her 3rd husband, Don Fernando of Aragón. In 1536 he brought out his most important work, Libro de música de vihuela de mano intitulado El Maestro (Valencia), intended as an instruction book for learning to play the vihuela. This was the first book of its kind to be pubi, in Spain, and is valuable for its many musical examples (tientos, fantasias, pavanes, and solo songs with guitar accompaniment:villancicos, romances, and sonetos), which reveal Milan’s high qualities as a composer. He also pubi. El cortesano (1561), giving a description of courtly life at Valencia in his day.
Bibliography
J. Trend, L. d.M. and the Vihuelistas (Oxford, 1925); J. Ward, The Vihuela de Mano and Its Music (1536–1576) (diss., N.Y.U., 1953); L. Gásser, L. M. on Sixteenth-Century Performance Practice (Bloomington, Ind., 1996).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire