The ancestry of the Baroque guitar

[Harry Jess]

Dear friends,
I'm glad I found this forum with a lot of names I have come across previously in my quest for early guitars and vihuela.

I have often read that the Renaissance guitar was plucked like the lute and almost never strummed. I have noticed this playing technique in Luthval's videos on YouTube for example. But the early Baroque guitar was normally strummed, the mixed style was adopted at a later stage (Foscarini?) But then I have problems in viewing the Renaissance guitar as the precursor of the Baroque guitar, as one should expect the same playing tecnique to be transferred to the 5 course instrument. Is it possible that the Chitarra Battente was the first 5 course guitar having evolved independently alongside the Renaissancee guitar ,and that the Baroque guitar as we know it evolved from Chitarra Battente and was later influenced by the lute? Perhaps there is no connection whatsoever between the Renaissance guitar and the Baroque guitar apart from the shape and the name?

[Valéry Sauvage]

Renaissance guitar was strummed, even if remaining printed pieces are plucked, but many people strumming on it (I don't... sorry...) So I'm sure mixed style was used and then when a fifth string added both style were played. I see (but just a personnal opinion) 4 and 5 courses guitars in the same family, and vihuela more close to the lute. And also vihuela had, according to music published for it, a very short life. But I know there is a great debate about the Belchior Diaz instrument : 5 course or six ? guitar or vihuela ? This instrument is often copied by luthier as a model for renaissance guitar (as mine for example) and other luthiers said it was a vihuela ??? who knows... H.G. Wells and his time machine could help ! ;-)
Val

[Alexander Batov]

> I have often read that the Renaissance guitar was plucked like the lute and almost never strummed. ... But the early Baroque guitar was normally strummed, the mixed style was adopted at a later stage (Foscarini?) But then I have problems in viewing the Renaissance guitar as the precursor of the Baroque guitar, as one should expect the same playing tecnique to be transferred to the 5 course instrument. br />

There is very little evidence that has come down to us about the early days of the 4-course (renaissance) guitar and hence this kind of speculation that you mention. Nevertheless the book by Joan Carles Amat (1596) that only deals with strummed music for 5-course guitar also mentions 4-course guitar as an alternative instrument (supposedly, it was mostly out of use at the time and largely replaced by 5-course one). One of the earliest paintings by Velazques (c. 1620), that I've already mentioned about in another discussion, depicts both 4- and 5-course guitars. The idea that the 4-course guitar was a kind of 'strummed' precursor of the 5-course guitar is possible but it is equally possible that they have been existing side by side from c. mid-16th century, also sharing strummed technique.

> Is it possible that the Chitarra Battente was the first 5 course guitar having evolved independently alongside the Renaissancee guitar, and that the Baroque guitar as we know it evolved from Chitarra Battente and was later influenced by the lute? Perhaps there is no connection whatsoever between the Renaissance guitar and the Baroque guitar apart from the shape and the name? br />

I can't really see any evidence in support that the baroque guitar could have evolved from chitarra battente, the other way round would seem more probable. Moreover, I think the very idea of chitarra battente being as a kind of strummed counterpart of the baroque guitar (as is often perceived) is rather overblown. As far as I know there is no evidence, neither in form of surviving instruments nor iconography, that the chitarra battente existed earlier than c. mid-18th century and is mainly (if not exclusively?!) associated with Southern province of Italy Calabria. There is an interesting parallel here with Portuguese tradition of viola d'arame which is also a metal-strung strummed kind of guitar (well earlier examples, around mid-late 18th century, could have had a mixture of gut and metal strings).

[Jean-Marie Poirier]

The so-called "Renaissance guitar" could not possibly ignore the technique of strumming, which is completely idisyncratic to this sort of plucked-string instrument. Moreover here's a quotation from an early Elizabethan play (before 1553) which clealy indicates that the "gitterne" was synonymous then with strumming. It is a comedy, "Ralph Royster Doyster", and the following passage comes from act 2, scene 2, in which the charcacter evokes instruments (lute, recorder and guitar) with the help of onomatopoeic sounds :

"Then vp to our lute at midnight, twangledome twang,
Then twang with our sonets, and twang with our dumps,
And heyhough from our heart, as heauie as lead lumpess:
Then to our recorder with toodleloodle poope
As the howlet out of an yuie bushe should hoope.
Anon to our gitterne, thrumpledum, thrumpledum thrum,
Thrumpledum, thrumpledum, thrumpledum, thrumpledum thrum."

No doubt is left as to the strummend nature of the "gitterne", I think...

The whole txt of the play, plus bibliography etc, can be found there :
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21350/21350-0.txt

[Alexander Batov]

Encouraged by this enchanting 'thrumpledum'-ry I had a look at some music that could be contemporary (or just about) with the quote.There is a number of a really lovely pieces in the so-called Braye Lute Book, some of them almost entirely consisting of cords on all four courses. Although strumming is not suggested, well at least by the direction of duration signs above the four-line tablature, I can't really imagine playing them without it.

If anybody is interested, the Bray MS is available online at http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/ (type 'Bray' in the search box, the gitterne pieces are on pages 40 - 44). If memory serves me right, some more examples of gittern music that can possibly be strummed, can be found in 'Sprightly and Cheerful Music: Notes on the Cittern, Gittern & Guitar in 16th- & 17th-Century England' by John M. Ward but I haven't got it at hand to double-check.

[Harry Jess]

Thank you Alexander Batov for useful and interesting information on this topic, i'll try this link!
Harry

[Harry Jess]

Thank you very much for interesting answers, Valéry, Alexander and Jean-Marie!
The onomatopoeic sound of trumpledum reminds me of flamenco rasgueo, so this must be a clear indication that the Renaissance guitar also was strummed. Very interesting!

[Michael Fink]

I am more and more convinced that strumming was a common technique in much Renaissance (4-course) guitar music. If applied to chords at the ends of phrases that appear to be in (the dreaded) 6-4 inversion (a no-no in Renaissance vocal polyphony), strumming will obscure and neutralize the actual chord spelling (also adding subtle dynamic and textural dimensions, incidentally).

Also, don't you 4-course enthusiasts think that some pieces just cry out for strumming? I'm thinking particularly of Morlaye's "Conte Clare" (Premiere livre -- Brown 1552/5 -- f. 22v), right from the first chord. The folky Spanish origins of this romance chord pattern might even support the idea here. For your delectation, I have attached a rough scan of the first page.

BTW, all the "guitar" pieces in the Osborn Commonplace Book (aka "Braye") at Yale are edited in tab and discussed at length by John Ward in his "Sprightly and Cheerful Music" (title of the Lute Society Journal XXI, 1979-81). Stemming from c. 1560, It contains many pieces that are obviously strummed, because the chords are literally repeated (i.e., written out that way) using short, repeated rhythmic values. Ward contends that the collector/scribe actually had in mind two instruments: for the strummed pieces the English gittern, possibly metal-strung; for the more contrapuntal pieces the gut-strung French guiterne (guitar).

So, strum away!

Mike

[Michael Fink]

Just a little ammendment to my previous comment. It was Monica Hall who introduced me to the idea of strumming on pre-Baroque guitars a couple of years ago. Sorry, Monica, for the oversight. -- M.