Wow ! Ralf, How can you be so blunt an unfair towards guitar music and guitar players. When the Chevalier de Grammont in his Mémoires, speaks of Corbetta he uses very laudatory terms, and of course, after praising Corbetta's talent, he sneers at the universal fashion to play the guitar just because it was the fashion, "la raclerie universelle", meaning that amateurs who pretended to imitate the masters were ridiculous... But the important point is that he acknowledges Corbetta's immense talent as a player and a musician. And you can't deny that Corbetta's music is quite often so sophisticated that it is very hard to play properly. It is a bit too simple to brush aside all the treatises for continuo realization on the guitar. They are perfectly justified and are the reflection of a common practice at the time.
Here is the passage in question (I am confident that you can read French) : "Il y avoit un certain Italien à la Cour, fameux pour la guitare. Il avoit du génie pour la musique, et c'est le seul qui de la guitare ait pu faire quelque chose; mais sa composition étoit si gracieuse et si tendre qu'il auroit donné de l'harmonie au plus ingrat de tous les instruments. La vérité est que rien n'étoit plus difficile que de jouer à sa manière. Le goût du roi pour ses compositions avoit tellement mis cet instrument à la mode que tout le monde en jouoit bien ou mal, et sur la toilette des belles on étoit aussi sûr de voir une guitare que d'y trouver du rouge et des mouches. Le duc d'York en jouoit passablement, et le comte d'Arran comme Francisco lui-même. Ce Francisque venoit de faire une sarabande qui charmoit ou désoloit tout le monde : car toute la guitarerie de la Cour se mit à l'apprendre, et Dieu sait la raclerie universelle que c'étoit !" I do not agree at all that the music of Visée, Bartolotti, Campion, Grénerin, just to name a few, was not "sophisticated". Quite the contrary IMHO. Best, Jean-Marie Poirier -------------- >First, as I've said before: a guitar accompaniment is not a vaild source >for continuo realizations! Guitar players where actually known for there >inability to play sophisticated music (and that's why everyone and their >grandmother sneered at them). To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
