A Guide to Playing the Baroque Guitar

10. Pieces Suitable for Stringing B

49 10 PIECES SUITABLE FOR STR INGING B PR ELUD[IO]–CHIACONA—FR A NCESCO COR BETTA (1648) A much-travelled native of Pavia, Italy, francesco Corbetta (ca. 1615–81) was one of the most influential guitarists of the seventeenth century. Throughout his life, he managed to win the support of powerful patrons, including two kings, Charles II of England and france’s Louis xIV. His several published guitar books were well known throughout Europe , beginning with his first, published in Bologna in 1639. The present pieces are from his fourth book, Varii scherzi di sonate per la chitara spagnola, which was published in Brussels in 1648 and dedicated to Archduke Leopold wilhelm of Austria, then Regent of the Spanish Netherlands. There is no record of Corbetta’s ever having held a post at the Regent’s court in the Netherlands, so perhaps the dedication was made in the hopes of securing one. The Prelud[io] al 5to tuono (in the fifth mode; that is, the Lydian mode in Renaissance music theory, transposed by Corbetta to C) is a delicate, free-style, introductory piece. As it would go against the character of a prelude to perform it with a steady beat throughout, the player is encouraged to speed up or slow down certain passages. for example, where the texture is lacy with many upper notes, speed up to suggest a burst of emotion. Or slow down for passages that seem to suggest that a thoughtful, lingering feeling is wanted. The piece opens with a nice flourish of campanelas in the first bar and a rapid series of slurs in the second, which should steady by bar 3. In order to emphasize the pungent discords in the middle of bar 5 and in beats 2 and 3 of bar 20, the chords should be spread, even the ones comprising just two notes. Bars 11–12, which involve a sequence of 7–6 chords, should be spread as well; likewise the 4–3 cadence at the end of bar 22. In the final bar, a gentle down-strum combined with an extended main note trill on the second course is effective. Two ornament signs are used. The first is , which Corbetta calls tremolo but doesn’t explain how it is executed. Based on musical context, he seems to be calling for a main note trill in some places and an upper note trill in others, while in one or two other spots he wants a quick lower mordent. Corbetta, like numerous other contemporary guitar A N A NTHOLOGY OF MUSIC FOR BAROQUE GUITAR 50 composers, appears to be leaving the specific choice of ornament up to the player. The second sign is x, called by Corbetta tremolo sforzato, or accento, by which he clearly means vibrato. Corbetta’s Chiacona (Italian, usually ciaccona or ciacona; Spanish, chacona) is quite different in character from the slightly later french chaconne, and exceedingly different from J. S. Bach’s eighteenth-century chaconne. The ciaccona began life in the late sixteenth century, possibly in Mexico, as a lively, suggestive dance-song, traditionally accompanied by guitar and castanets. It soon was taken up by the Italians and, from 1606 through the late seventeenth century, one or more ciacconi could be found in every alfabeto guitar book, published or manuscript. Musically, it’s a four or eight bar harmonic pattern or ground, always in triple time and in the major mode, and often with a progression of I-V-vi-V (filled out with intermediary harmonies). Corbetta’s version follows this pattern with a chain of units in eight-bar groups presenting harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic variations. Although today the appearance of three half notes in a bar immediately suggests a somewhat slow tempo, for players in Corbetta’s time it suggested the quick three-quarter time waltz tempo of a later period, or half note = 112. A key stylistic feature of the ciaccona is the hemiola, a shifting of the accent from three to a broad two in or across certain bars. It is found most often in the two bars before a cadence; in the present piece, however, it makes its first appearance near the beginning at bars 2–3, where the stress occurs on the first and third beats of bar 2 and the second beat of bar 3. The hemiola should be emphasized, and for that reason I have placed editorial accent marks in the tablature wherever one occurs. In bars 24–27, syncopations in...