‘Playing Techniques on the Baroque Guitar’ Style and Interpretation: Baroque Module Alec O’Leary To give an accurate
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‘Playing Techniques on the Baroque Guitar’ Style and Interpretation: Baroque Module
Alec O’Leary
To give an accurate account of the playing techniques employed on the baroque guitar one must first appreciate the various treaties published on the instrument, understand how the guitar worked, and establish its specific uses during the Baroque period. These aspects influenced the techniques used on the baroque guitar and to a large extent shaped the music written for it. The first guitars in use were very small and light in comparison with the modern guitar. They were originally strung with four pairs of strings each called a course. At the end of the 15th century a fifth course was added expanding the instrument’s possibilities thus inspiring more composers to write for it. This guitar became known as the five-course or baroque guitar. It was in use in the second half of the 16th Century until the end of the 18th Century in many countries in Europe, most notably in Italy with guitar composers such as Lelio Costa, Nicola Matteis, Francisco Corbetta (who moved to France and became Louis XIV's guitar teacher), Spain with Gaspar Sanz, Santiago de Murcia, Francisco Guerrau and in France with Antoine Francisque, Robert de Visée. The first treatise on the baroque guitar was published in Barcelona in 1596 by Joan Carles Amat (c.1572 - 1642), no original copies of this edition are known to survive. One copy of the original, printed in 1626, is now in the Newberry Library, Chicago. After Amat’s pioneering methodological study there came many more treaties on the subject. Some of the more important ones came from Gaspar Sanz, Francisco Guerau and Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz, one by the Portuguese Doizi de Velasco and those of the Italians Giovanni Colonna, Girolamo Montesardo and Paolo Foscarini. These books provide us with an overview of what techniques were employed on the instrument. They offer explanations on the ‘strumming style’, ‘plucked style’ and a certain style that incorporates a mixture of strumming and plucking. Strumming consists of dragging the thumb or index finger across the strings from the top to the bottom string or vice versa, this allows a number of notes that sound together. The strumming style is also known as the Spanish rasgueado style. Plucking means to simply pull a string up from the fretboard allowing it to vibrate. The music within these books also gives us an important clue as to how the instrument was played. The most famous of the Spanish guitar books, ‘Instrucción de música para guitarra española’ by Gaspar Sanz (Calanda 1640-Madrid 1710), appeared in 1674. The work included a great variety of popular dances and frequently used a technique known as campanella (little-bells). The campanella effect can be achieved by playing open strings where possible during scale passages. This allows the notes to fuse softly
together creating an effect similar to the sound of chimes. This is also a common technique in modern guitar playing. Sanz also places a large emphasis on the punteado (plucked) style rather than the strumming. In the drawing below by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1712) we can see the two different types of technique used on the baroque guitar. On the left the strumming is done above the rose (sound-hole), and on the right the punteado technique is played behind the rose with the hand closer to the bridge.
The position of the right hand determines the type of sound produced. The closer the hand is to the bridge the thinner the sound. So when strumming the baroque guitar the performer would create a rich full-bodied sound. Left-hand positions were shown using a system Sanz calls the ‘labyrinth’, which is a rather misleading name as the actual system is relatively simple with each square of the chord grids showing both the minor and major chord shapes. This a series of these chord diagrams from Sanz’ book commonly used on the baroque guitar:
We can see here that the left-hand technique is very similar to the present day system. Francisco Guerau's ‘Poema Harmonico’ of 1694 was the last of the guitar books published in Spain in the 17th century. In this book he makes much use of the punteado style of playing. He gives the following advise on righthand technique1: ‘alternate i and m on descending passages down to string 4, and then use the thumb. On ascending passages, use the thumb up to the 2nd string, and then alternate i and m from there on up’. Guerau did not use the strumming effect much and gives little information on the performance of it. The baroque guitar was often used as an accompaniment instrument. It had a clear yet rich timbre that is perfect for accompanying the voice while still being capable of making itself heard in the company of other instruments. The strumming capability gave allowed it to be used in continuo playing and was often included in ensembles with the theorbo, archlute, viola da gamba and other continuo instruments. The baroque guitarist had to be able to improvise a continuo accompaniment from the bass line usually read from tablature (known as alfebeto). Instructions on how to perform continuo on baroque guitar appeared in ‘Le false consonanse della musica’ (c1680) by Nicola Matteis. The tuning and the combination of strings used on the baroque guitar also influenced the playing techniques. There are three main stringings for the Baroque guitar depending on the particular period, nationality and composer. To a large extent the player had to decide on what tunings were 1
In guitar technique the fingers of the right-hand are known by the initial letters of the Spanish words for them: p for Pulgar (Thumb), i for indicio (Index finger), m for medico (Middle finger), and a for anular (Ring finger).
appropriate depending on the particular piece. Each of these tunings had treble strings a d' g b e', in the order of what is known as 5th string to 1st string (top to bottom). The variations come about depending on which, if either, of string 5 and string 4 were paired with bass strings (bourdons). Reference to the usage of bourdons can be found in ‘Instrucción de música para guitarra española’ by Gaspar Sanz as well as Francisco Guerau's ‘Poema Harmonico’. Bourdons were used especially for strumming passages and were used as a kind of pedal point that, in the context of 18th and 19th century guitar harmony, seemed particularly suited to harnessing polyphonic energies. The music for guitar during this period was not written in conventional notation but tablature. The baroque guitarist had to be able to read two different types of tablature. Baroque tablature consisted of five or six lines representing the strings of the guitar on which letters or numbers were placed. The letters or numbers referred to the fret at which the finger had to press on the string to give the desired pitch. The French tablature system used five lines and used letters, an open string is marked with an 'a', the first fret with a 'b' etc. The Italian tablature system had six lines and used numbers to show the frets. The highest pitched string was represented by the bottom line, rather than the top line as in French tablature. The playing techniques employed on the baroque guitar were quite varied. They became increasingly more complex throughout the baroque as composers began to move away from the conventional strumming patterns and embarked upon new ways of producing combinations of notes. Composers also started to compose solo music for the instrument rather than just as an accompaniment for other instruments, this in turn made the instrument technically more difficult to master.
Bibliography: The new Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, edited by Stanley Sadie The Larousse Encyclopedia of Music, edited by Geoffrey Hindley. The Baroque Guitar, Fredrick Noad.