Who from France studied guitar in Italy?
In the introduction to his 1640 book Carbonchi says
"Requests made by various scholars, particularly German, French and English
gentlemen, made me decide to publish the present French tablature hoping in
this way to be more helpful to French players and those of other nations".
Although Carbonchi doesn't actually say that they came to Florence
personally to study with him it is a reasonable assumption that some of them
did and at least enough people approached him on the subject for
him to
think that it was a viable proposition to publish a book in French tablature
which wouldn't have been much use to Italian dilettantes.
You need a broad knowledge of social and economic history in order to
evaluate the evidence.
We know for example that Sanz studied with Lelio Colista in Rome. Do we
assume that he was unique? That no one else who happened to be in Rome
ever studied with Colista? Or that only Spaniards who happened to be in
Rome studied with Colista? Our knowledge of how people behave suggests
that any one who had the chance would have availed themselves of it.
There was a market for publishing guitar music in mixed style in Italy,
from 1630 on. Not in France.
How do you know? It may be that due to the economic situation in France -
especially during the Fronde - that it wasn't practical to print music but
that
doesn't prove that players were not interested in music in mixed style.
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.
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.
That is the impression that you give all the time. What you have said is
"Corbetta's music transcends the scope of the re-entrant tuning...." That
is entirely your own perception of the music. You cannot possibly know
whether Corbetta thought his music transcended re-entrant stringing as
inferior as he has said nothing at all on the subject. I think it is
appropriate to point out that when you play the music you don't play what is
clearly notated in the tablature but instead you eliminate all the
dissonance including the 6/4 chords. Corbetta has given no indication at
all that that is what he intended either.
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.
You simply don't know that.
Dismissed?
Yes - in Note 65.
That is one manuscript.
You simply don't know that. What has survived to the present day is only
the tip of the iceberg. We are lucky that the Gallot ms. has survived.
There must have been other people like Gallot who copied or had copied
similar manuscripts which haven't survived.
Ms.Rés. 2344 1647 which is dated 1647 includes music in mixed style
including a version of the repicco variation - which occurs in Bartolotti's
2nd book.
And also rather late.
Rather late? Gallot's servant Monnier started to copy it in 1660 and the
repertoire he copied dates from the previous 20 years.
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?
Yes! Because that is what ordinary poeple do.
Monica
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