THE
STRINGING ON THE 5-COURSE GUITAR
Monica
Hall
This is a compilation of information about the stringing of the 5-course guitar in the 17th and early 18th centuries, taken from original documents of the period. It is not exhaustive, but it includes the most important sources.
The main part deals with the different methods of stringing the fourth and fifth courses, with or without low octave strings (usually referred to as bourdons.) It is arranged under three headings - 1. Spain; 2. Italy; 3. France, England and the Netherlands (including Belgium). This arrangement is intended to bring together information from clearly defined geographical areas, written in the same language, Spanish, Italian and French. The one exception is Briçeño whose book is in Spanish but was printed in France. A further section sets out the documentary evidence for octave stringing on the third course.
There were three ways of stringing the fourth and fifth
courses:
1. Without low octave strings (bourdons) on the fourth or fifth courses - "the re-entrant tuning".
2. With a low octave string (bourdon) on the fourth course, but not the fifth - often referred to as the "French" tuning. I prefer to refer to it as "the semi re-entrant tuning".
3. With low octave strings (bourdons) on both fourth and fifth courses - which I refer to as "the conventional tuning".
Information about stringing is found in two types of
source
1. Tutors and collections of guitar music. Information in most guitar books is in the form of advice to beginners on how to tune the instrument, or to check that it is in tune. This does not indicate that the writer of the book thought that one particular method of stringing rather than another was to be preferred. Readers of the book would have ignored the instructions if they did not suite their purpose.
Only a very small number of writers - Doizi de Velasco, Sanz, Corbetta, Carré and De Visée - express any opinion about the suitability of one method of stringing or another for different types of music. Most collections of guitar music give no indication at all as to the method of stringing, if any, which the composer preferred, perhaps because composers in the seventeenth century attached less importance to this matter than we do today. Players would have done whatever they found most convenient.
2. Theoretical works including dictionaries. Theoretical works usually reflect the status quo at the time and place where they were written.
For each source the text in the original language is given together with an English translation. The foreign language text is as in the original, generally without accents which were not much used in the 17th century. Brief comments on the possible significance of some of the information are included where this seemed appropriate.
A fuller version is available in booklet form (The Lute Society Booklets, no. 9; Baroque guitar stringing : a survey of the evidence) from the Lute Society, Southside Cottage, Brook Hill, Albury, Guildford, GU5 9DJ.
CONTENTS
Alonso Mudarra (1546)
Joan Carles Amat (1596)
Nicolao Doizi de Velasco (c1640)
Gaspar Sanz (1674)
Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz (1677)
Francesco Guerau (1694)
Pablo Nassarre (1724)
Pablo Minguet y Irol (1752)
University of Granada Ms.16972 (ca.1763)
Girolamo Montesardo (1606)
Benedetto Sanseverino (1622)
Ferdinando Valdambrini (1646/47)
Pietro Millioni (1627)
Fabritio Constanzo (1627)
Girolamo Foscarini (ca.1640)
Stefano Pesori (1648)
Ludovico Monte (1625)
Giulio Banfi (1653)
Giovanni Abadessa (1627)
Giovanni Abadessa (1653)
Antonio Michele (1680)
Athansius Kircher (1650)
Antonio Stradivarius (ca.1700)
F:Pn.Res.Vmc ms. 59, fol. 108v
Luis de Briçeño (1626)
Marin Mersenne (1636/37)
Pierre Trichet (1640)
Francesco Corbetta (1671)
Antoine Carré (1671)
F:Pn.Ms.Res. 1402 (Undated)
Robert de Visée (1682)
Nicolas Derosier (1690)
Sebastien Brossard (1703)
B.Bc.Ms.S5615 (1730)
GB:Och Ms.1187 (ca. 1690)
Denis Diderot (1757)
Joseph Bernard Merchi (1761)
Michel Corrette (ca.1763)
OCTAVE STRINGING ON THE
THIRD COURSE
I.Bc Ms. AA 360. (c.1660)
I.MOe Ms. Campori 612. (Undated).