Baroque guitar
Overview
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
from the baroque era
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
(c. 1600–1750), an ancestor of the modern classical guitar
Classical guitar
The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
. The term is also used for modern instruments made in the same style.
The instrument was smaller than a modern guitar, of lighter construction, and had gut strings. The frets were also usually made of gut, and tied around the neck. A typical instrument had five course
Course (music)
A course is a pair or more of adjacent strings tuned to unison or an octave and usually played together as if a single string. It may also refer to a single string normally played on its own on an instrument with other multi-string courses, for example the bass string on a nine string baroque...
s, each consisting of two separate strings although the first (highest sounding) course was often a single string, giving it a total of nine or ten strings.
The conversion of all courses to single strings and the addition of a bass E-string occurred during the era of the early romantic guitar.
Three different ways of tuning the guitar are well documented in seventeenth century sources as set out in the following table.
Unanswered Questions
Encyclopedia
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
from the baroque era
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
(c. 1600–1750), an ancestor of the modern classical guitar
Classical guitar
The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
. The term is also used for modern instruments made in the same style.
The instrument was smaller than a modern guitar, of lighter construction, and had gut strings. The frets were also usually made of gut, and tied around the neck. A typical instrument had five course
Course (music)
A course is a pair or more of adjacent strings tuned to unison or an octave and usually played together as if a single string. It may also refer to a single string normally played on its own on an instrument with other multi-string courses, for example the bass string on a nine string baroque...
s, each consisting of two separate strings although the first (highest sounding) course was often a single string, giving it a total of nine or ten strings.
The conversion of all courses to single strings and the addition of a bass E-string occurred during the era of the early romantic guitar.
Tuning
Three different ways of tuning the guitar are well documented in seventeenth century sources as set out in the following table. This includes the names of composers who are associated with each method. Very few sources clearly indicate that one method of stringing rather than another should be used and it may have been up to the player to decide what was appropriate.| Composer | Tuning |
|---|---|
| [Ferdinando Valdambrini] (Italy, 1646/7) [Gaspar Sanz] (Spain, 1674) |
 |
| [Francesco Corbetta] (Italy/France/England, 1671) [Antoine Carre] (France, 1671) [Robert de Visée] (France, 1682) [Nicolas Derosier] (Netherlands, 1690) |
 |
| [Girolamo Montesardo] (Italy, 1606) [Benedetto Sanseverino] (Italy, 1620) [Francisco Guerau] (Spain, 1694) |
 |
Repertoire
- Giovanni Paolo FoscariniGiovanni Paolo FoscariniGiovanni Paolo Foscarini was an Italian guitarist, lutenist, theorist and composer.A note at the end of the list of contents in his earliest surviving guitar book Intavolatura di chitarra spagnola. Libro secondo refers to him a Musico, e Sonatore, di Liuto e Tiorba, della Venerabile Compagnia del...
(c.1600 - 1650) - Angelo Michele BartolottiAngelo Michele BartolottiAngelo Michele Bartolotti was an Italian guitarist, theorbo player and composer. Bartolotti was probably born in Bologna as he describes himself as "Bolognese" on the title page of his first guitar book and "di Bologna" on the title page of his second. His early career was probably spent in...
(c.1615-1680) - Giovanni Battista GranataGiovanni Battista GranataGiovanni Battista Granata was an Italian classical guitarist and composer. By profession, Granata was a barber-surgeon.- Career :...
(1620 - 1687) - Gaspar SanzGaspar SanzGaspar Sanz was an Aragonese composer, guitarist, organist and priest born to a wealthy family in Calanda in the Spanish comarca of Bajo Aragón. He studied music, theology and philosophy at the University of Salamanca, where he was later appointed Professor of Music...
(c.1640–1710) - Robert de ViséeRobert de ViséeRobert de Visée was a lutenist, guitarist, theorbist and viol player at the court of Louis XIV, as well as a singer, and composer for lute, theorbo and guitar.-Biography:...
(c. 1658 – 1725) - Francisco GuerauFrancisco GuerauFrancisco Guerau was a Spanish Baroque composer. Born on Majorca, he entered the singing school at the Royal College in Madrid in 1659, becoming a member of the Royal Chapel as an alto singer and composer ten years later. Named a member of the Royal Chamber of king Charles II of Spain in 1693, he...
(1649 - 1722) Poema harmonico - Francesco CorbettaFrancesco CorbettaFrancesco Corbetta was an Italian guitar virtuoso, teacher and composer. He spent his early career in Italy. He seems to have worked as a teacher in Bologna where the guitarist and composer Giovanni Battista Granata may have been one of his pupils...
(1615–1681) - Henri Grenerin (fl. mid-17th century)
- Ludovico RoncalliLudovico RoncalliCount Ludovico Roncalli , or simply Count Ludovico, was an Italian nobleman who published a collection of suites for five-course baroque guitar, Capricci armonici sopra la chitarra spagnola , in 1692. This was transcribed to modern notation and arranged for the six-string guitar by Oscar...
(1654 - 1713) - Santiago de MurciaSantiago de MurciaSantiago de Murcia , was a Spanish guitarist and composer.-Biography:Until new research was published in 2008, few details about the life of Santiago de Murcia were known. However it is now known that he was born in Madrid and that his parents were Juan de Murcia and Magdalena Hernandez...
(c. 1673 - 1739)
Historic baroque guitar makers
The Voboam family, ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
- Nicholas Alexandre Voboam II
- René Voboam
- Domenico Sellas
Modern baroque guitar makers
- R.E.Brune
- Stephen Barber and Sandi Harris
- Daniel Larson
- John J van Gool
- Martin de Witte
- Jaume Bosser
Modern performers
- Julian BreamJulian BreamJulian Bream, CBE is an English classical guitarist and lutenist and is one of the most distinguished classical guitarists of the 20th century. He has also been successful in renewing popular interest in the Renaissance lute....
- Gordon Ferries
- William CarterWilliam CarterBlessed William Carter was a Roman Catholic English printer and martyr.-Biography:William was born in London, 1548; suffered for treason at Tyburn on 11 January 1584...
- Jacob Lindberg
- Eduardo EgüezEduardo EgüezEduardo Egüez is a lutenist, theorbist, and guitarist acclaimed for his interpretations of music by J.S.Bach....
- Paul O'DettePaul O'DettePaul R. O'Dette is an American lutenist, conductor, and music researcher specializing in early music.O'Dette began playing classical guitar, and while in high school also played electric guitar in a rock band in Columbus, Ohio, where he grew up...
- Hopkinson SmithHopkinson SmithHopkinson Smith is an American lutenist.Born in New York, he graduated from Harvard with Honors in Music...
- Stephen StubbsStephen StubbsStephen Stubbs is a lutenist and music director and has been a leading figure in the European early music scene for nearly thirty years....
- Lex Eisenhardt
- Xavier Díaz-LatorreXavier Diaz-LatorreXavier Díaz Latorre was born in Barcelona in 1968. He studied at advanced level with Oscar Ghiglia at the Musikhochschule, Basel, graduating in 1993. His subsequent interest in early music led him to study the lute with Hopkinson Smith at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis...
- Marco Meloni
- Franz Löffler
- Pablo Zapico
External links
- Technique "Baroque guitar for the modern performer - a practical compromise", by Don Rowe and Richard d’A Jensen.
- http://www.monicahall.co.uk "The baroque guitar made simple", by Monica Hall
- The Baroque Guitar Printed Music from 1606–1737 by Dr. Gary R. Boye
- Francois Campion - Pieces for Baroque guitar in alternate tunings
- Instructions for the Baroque Guitar by The Lute Society, UK.
- Musical Instruments in Vermeer's Paintings: The Guitar, by Adelheid Rech
- The Guitar, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art