This is the second book, published by Alessandro Piccinini's son, Leonardo Maria Piccinini, in 1639, 16 years after the first book and one year after Alessandro's death. Besides being a virtuoso player on the lute, Alessandro Piccinini made a claim to be the inventor of the archlute in the first book and his music indeed relies heavily on the additional courses. It also makes use of of the full extent of the instrument's tessiture, all the way from the 13th  course up to the 17th fret of the treble, perhaps thanks to "tastini", or little pieces of wood glued directly on the body of the lute. This caused several problems for the printer of the book who was not fully equiped to deal with such a wide range and resorted to various tricks, including the use of latin letters in the high range and the arabic numerals 12 and 13 for the diapasons. I am puzzled also by the use of a 'V' for the 11th course, probably because of spacing problems linked to using two glyphs in the Roman numerals.

I find the music in the second volume to be somewhat lighter and less cerebral than in the first book, with the dances in particular being quite accessible to players with moderate skills. The book contains a wonderful passacaglia, perhaps not intended for the archlute since it only uses the first diapason. It might even be playable on the guitar directly by lowering the low E to an F and the G to F#. I have not tried...

The book is in Italian tablature. I have linked each piece with a link to a facsimile copy of the corresponding pages (see the HTML details link above). The DjangoTab file also has those links to make it easier to verify the transcription. The DjangoTab file also lets you convert from Italian to French if you wish, although it is well worth learning to read the Italian tablature directly.

This transcription is available in its entirety to everyone with an account on this site, including a complete PDF. Feel free to point out mistakes in the comments section.

Here is a YouTube link to the integral recording of both Piccinini books by Luciano Conti and Francesca Torelli.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/xxDbHa8iN8Y