Tonal harmonic syntax and guitar performance idiom in two mid-seventeenth-century Italian guitar books by Angelo Michele Bartolotti (c. 1615--after 1682)

Abstract

Since the 1960s the publications of American musicologist Richard Hudson, along with recent articles by other scholars, have shown the five-course Spanish guitar to have been at the forefront of harmonic innovation in the early seventeenth century. Existing publications in this area, however, deal exclusively with guitar music in the rudimentary battuto strumming style and do not address the development of harmonic language in guitar music after circa 1630. From circa 1630 the battuto style gave way to a new guitar idiom that combined both strumming and plucking, thus affording guitarists the opportunity to incorporate more sophisticated harmonic devices into their music. This thesis endeavors to furnish a preliminary case study on the development of harmonic language in guitar music after circa 1630 by tracing the evolution of a tonal harmonic syntax in minor-mode Allemandes from two mid-seventeenth-century guitar books by Bolognese guitarist Angelo Michele Bartolotti (c. 1615--after 1682).