maurizio scavone's Page

Well - briefly - I think that the chitarra atiorbata and the guitarre theorbee are two quite different instruments. The chitarra atiorbata has either a lute shaped or guitar shaped body with five courses on the fingerboard tuned to the same intervals as the 5-course guitar and seven or eight diapasons or open basses descending stepwise from the fifth course. This is the instrument which Granata has written music for and there are also some pieces in a manuscript - Na.Cons. Ms. 1321. The guitarre theorbee is quite different - it has five courses on the fingerboard tuned to a major or minor common chord and seven diapasons - but these descend stepwise from the third course and overlap with the courses on the fingerboard. There are twelve pieces for this unusual instrument in the Gallot manuscript - in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It is possibly a form of mandora. I have a web page - www.monicahall.co.uk and it does have on it a study of the two instruments including a transcription of all the pieces in the Gallot manuscript. I hope that is helpful. If you have time to read the whole of my study I will be very interested to know what you think. Best wishes Monica

I don't have a separate copy of Foscarini's I quatro libi della chitarra spagnola although I have seen the copy of this in the British Library. The facsimile published by SPES is of Li cinque libri but this is the same as the earlier book but with an extra section at the end. Book 5 starts on p.103 and Book 4 finishes on p.102. The dedications of some of the pieces have been changed but the music is the same. Each edition of the book was printed from the original engraved plates. It seems that there was an edition which included a sixth book but I don't know of any copies of that. Hope that is helpful. Monica