There have been two significant Robert Johnsons in musical history – one the bluesman reputed to have traded his soul at the crossroads; the other a virtuoso lutenist who played for Shakespeare's King's Men and whose greatest hit was a setting of Ariel's lament from the Tempest, Full Fathom Five. The York early music festival included both, with a concert that pitted the Theatre of the Ayre, a demure lute consort led by Elizabeth Kenny, against the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. It's not often you witness a player attacking their instrument with a bottleneck while another strokes theirs with a quill. Yet it was more than just a gimmick, the correspondence between the two Johnsons proved to be instructive: both created sublime musical expressions of melancholy. Even their repetitive structures are similar – though what renaissance Johnson would have recognised as a passacaglia blues, Johnson called the boogie woogie.

Lucrezia Borgia may have belonged to one of the most depraved political dynasties in history, yet she had excellent taste in music, as demonstrated by Ensemble Medusa using instruments partly reconstructed from paintings in Borgia palaces. The lulling, late-night sequence of Lucrezia's easy listening unfolded like an early renaissance iPod in shuffle mode; the otherworldly voice of Patrizia Bovi made an arresting counterpoint to the caterwauling of her colleagues in a madrigal based around the mewling of a kitten.

La Risonanza's concert of Corelli's vocal works may have seemed to be a misprint given that he didn't actually write any. Yet Corelli – whose tercentenary was celebrated by the festival – was such a trendsetter in early 18th-century Rome that his disciples adapted many of his pieces for singers. The interplay between Yetzabel Arias Fernandez and Elena Biscuola demonstrated that Corelli produced some spectacular chamber duets, literally without even trying.

• What have you been to see lately? Tell us about it on Twitter using #GdnGig