About the author

Douglas Alton Smith received his Ph.D. in music from Stanford University in 1977 with a dissertation on music of the Baroque lutenist Silvius Leopold Weiss. From 1974 to 1982 he served as associate editor of the Journal of the Lute Society of America, and is currently guest editor of three issues of JLSA that will be devoted to the life and music of Weiss. Since 1973 he has published many academic studies on the lute and its music, including the article “Lute” in The New Harvard Dictionary of Music