As I have
pointed out music printed in Italy would have been readily available
elsewhere and some Italian books specifically include helpful information
for French and other players. People from England and France regularly
travelled abroad and studied with Italian lutenists/guitarists.
Who from France studied guitar in Italy?
Bullen
Reymes is a well known example. Incidentally Granata apparently asked
friends in Paris to send him copies of French lute music and Foscarini has
included arrangements of French lute music in his books so it was a two
way
process.
That's French lute music in Italy.
2. From 1640s on Italian virtuosi visited Paris - Foscarini,
Bartolotti,
Corbetta .......they would have performed an advanced battuto-pizzicato
repertoire on guitars in Italian tuning and notated in Italian notation
which would have been incomprehensible to some. This repertoire would
have
been out of reach for most French dilettanti...
What patronising thing to say. There were just as many
Italian dilettanti buying little books by Millioni and playing simple
music
transmitted aurally.
There was a market for publishing guitar music in mixed style in Italy, from
1630 on. Not in France.
It is anyone's guess how much work there was. Apparently Lully employed
as
many as eight guitars in some of his operas so there must have been at
least
some work for them.
The whole sentence in my article was 'Apart from some occasional stage
performances in ballet or opera there may not have been much work playing
the guitar.'
Not enough for someone like Corbetta, probably.
Lex then goes on to say
"Corbetta's music transcends the scope of the re-entrant tuning....perhaps
his advice to add a bourdon to the 4th course to conform to the
then-emerging French tuning was a sort of "rapprochement" or
"compromise-concession" to French guitarists"
I think my comment "Eisenhardt's suggestion that musicians in France (and
presumably in England too) were so unfamiliar with Italian guitar music,
including that of Corbetta, that they opted for what he seems to regard as
an inferior method of stringing is not very convincing" sums up what he
has
said fairly accurately.
Sorry, you mix up things here. What I write about Corbetta's position is
hypothetical. You seem to think that I myself regard re-entrant stringing as
inferior.
Which brings us to Carre. It is certain that Carre and Corbetta
knew one another and it is quite clear that Carre was familiar with
Corbetta's music and that of Bartolotti. At least as far as Carre is
concerned Italian music seems to have fallen on fertile ground.
We know of a few guitarists, Carré, Gallot, that they were familiar with
Italian solo music before or around 1671.
I never said that no one was. But compared to Italy, in France there was
very little activity with respect to solo music.
The Gallot manuscript - which Lex has dismissed in a
note - includes most of the music from Corbetta's 1643 and 1648 books,
about
20 pieces which are definitely by Bartolotti and passages copied from
Foscarini and
Carbonchi.
Dismissed?
That is one manuscript. And also rather late.
But players didn't need to copy the pieces into manuscripts -
because they could have purchased the printed books.
They could indeed. Should we therefore suppose they did?
Lex
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