RT info:eu-repo/semantics/bookPart
T1 Lute, Vihuela, and Early Guitar
A1 Kieffer, Paul
A1 Griffiths, John
AB Lutes, guitars, and vihuelas were the principal plucked instruments in use in Europe until around1800. Ancient forms of the lute existed in many parts of the ancient world, from Egypt andPersia through to China. It appears to have become known in Europe, where its earliestassociations were with immigrants such as the legendary Persian lutenist Ziryab (b. c. 790–d.852), who was established in Moorish Spain by 822. The origins of the various flat-backedinstruments that eventually became guitars are more difficult to trace. The vihuela is one suchinstrument that evolved in the mid-15th century and was prolific in Spain and its dominionsthroughout the 16th century and beyond. Very few plucked instruments, and only a handful offragmentary musical compositions, survive from before 1500. The absence of artifacts andmusical sources prior to 1500 has been a point of demarcation in the study of early pluckedinstruments, although current research is seeking to explore the continuity of instrumentalpractice across this somewhat artificial divide. In contrast, perhaps as many as thirty thousandworks—perhaps even more—for lute, guitar, and vihuela survive from the period 1500–1800.The music and musical practices associated with them are not well integrated into generalhistories of music. This is due in part to the use of tablature as the principal notation format untilabout 1800, and also because writers of general histories of music have for the most partignored solo instrumental music in their coverage. (For example, the Oxford Anthology ofWestern Music, Vol. 1 (2018), designed to accompany chapters 1–11 of Richard Taruskin’sOxford History of Western Music, does not contain a single piece of instrumental music prior toFrescobaldi [1637]). Contrary to this marginalized image, lutes, vihuelas, and guitars were arevered part of courtly musical culture until well into the 18th century, and constantly present inurban contexts. After the development of basso continuo practice after 1600, pluckedinstruments also became frequent in Christian church music, although the lute was widelyplayed by clerics of all levels, particularly during the Renaissance. It was also one of theprincipal tools used by composers of liturgical polyphony, in part because tablature was themost common way of writing music in score. From the beginning of music printing, printedtablatures played a fundamental role in the urban dissemination of music originally for churchand court, and plucked instruments were used widely by all levels of society for both leisure andpleasure. After 1800, the lute fell from use, the guitar was transformed into its modern form withsingle strings, and tablature ceased to be the preferred notation for plucked instruments.
PB Oxford University Press
SN 9780199757824
YR 2018
FD 2018
LK http://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/40351
UL http://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/40351
LA eng
NO Kate van Orden (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in Music, New York, 2018
NO Producción Científica
DS UVaDOC
RD 17-jul-2024