Bartolomeo Lieto Panhormitano

Bartolomeo Lieto Panhormitano, also known as Panormitano or Palermitano, was an Italian music theorist and, according to some sources, a composer. He was born in Palermo, although what is documented about his life comes mainly from his activity in Naples, where he is recorded as active around 1558. He was a priest.

The most important testimony to his work is the Dialogo quarto de musica, published in Naples in 1559 (with a later reprint). This treatise is intended for those who could not read mensural notation and explains how to transcribe music in several voices for the viola da mano, probably a vihuela, or for the lute. It includes fourteen tables setting out the gamut, the clefs, the staves, the accidentals and the figures corresponding to Italian lute tablature. The lowest note of the bass part indicates which table to consult, and the voices are transcribed in the order soprano, bass, tenor and contralto. The book also deals with the choice of a well-proportioned lute, the placing of the frets and tuning.

According to Lieto himself, besides this dialogue he wrote other treatises that are now lost, among them one on transposition and the reading of ligatures, and another on counterpoint. In the dialogue he presents himself as a reputed composer of masses, motets, hymns and madrigals, but no work by a composer of that name survives, so his role as a composer remains doubtful.