Some people will be angry, others will laugh, but since there are many orphaned lute pieces in English sources that have come down to us with no name at all, Hopkinson Smith has taken the liberty of christening four such pieces in this program with names that seem to suit their musical spirits. The title of the album itself, Mad Dog (admittedly something that doesn’t quite sound like a respectable name for a Renaissance music album, but marketing will be marketing), is taken from such an apocryphal title given my Smith to what is really a galliard by Anthony Holborne found in the 2nd Matthew Holmes Lute Book. Ward’s Repose is a homage to Smith’s deceased musicology teacher… But, as so marvellously said by the Bard, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, so who cares really what these pieces were or were not called back four hundred years ago, when wen don’t even really know who wrote or arranged some of them – and here again, what’s in a name, be it Dowland, Byrd (whose lute pieces are all rewritings of keyboards works as done by his contemporary Francis Cutting), Johnson, when just the beauty of the music counts… Hopkinson Smith plays an 8-course lute built in the 1970s by Joel van Lennep, one of the world’s foremost lute-doctors and instrument makers. © SM/Qobuz