Francis Cutting (c.1550–1595/6) was an English lutenist and composer during the Renaissance period. He is best known for "Packington's Pound" and a variation of Greensleeves called "Divisions on Greensleeves", both pieces originally intended for the lute.

Cutting was employed as a musician for the Howard family, which included Philip Howard, earl of Arundel. Little is known of the composer's early life, but he had ten children with his wife, Elizabeth, eight of whom appear in the parish registers of St. Clement Danes, Westminster, the parish in which Arundel House, the London residence of the Howards, was located. Their son, Thomas Cutting, became a distinguished lutenist himself.

"Cutting is among the earliest English lute composers whose names are known." Several of his forty surviving works appear in William Barley's A New Booke of Tabliture (1596); his compositions include "Sir Walter Raleigh's Galliard," "Sir Fulke Greville's Pavan," and "Mrs Anne Markham's Pavan and Galliard." "His surviving music is of high quality, comprising about 51 lute pieces, two bandora solos and one consort part for bandora: an output exceeded only by Dowland, Bacheler and Holborne."

Cutting's mastery of the instrument is indeed impressive. The pieces in this volume range from accessible to extremely virtuosic, like his setting of the Woods so wild, for instance. Several of his pieces are direct adaptations of pieces for keyboard, several of which by William Byrd: Lord Willoughby's welcome home and the gorgeous Pavana Bray. His own compositions are worthy of note and praise, like his Mrs Anne Markham's Pavan and Galliard that can stand to the best of Holborne or even Dowland.

The orpharion was very similar to the lute except for the fact that it used metal strings and had a wider tessiture in the treble range. While pieces for the orpharion are directly playable on a lute because the tuning was identical, the sound quality is vastly different because of the timbre and longer sustained notes allowed by metallic strings. Like the bandora, its elder and bass equivalent, the orpharion had a slanted bridge and frets to compensensate for the thickness of strings in the higher register.

See more on the orpharion on the Night Watch's page

Julian Bream performs Cutting Pavana Bray