Giovanni Paulo Foscarini (fl.1629–47)
Giovanni Paolo Foscarini (fl. Early C17)
Foscarini was an Italian guitar and lute player who produced several volumes of music for the baroque guitar: Il primo, secondo, e terzo libro della chitarra spagnola appeared sometime after 1629, Il quatro libri della chitarra spagnola was added in an edition printed later in the 1630s and the final edition of his work added Il cinque libri della chitarra alla spagnola. In his earlier books he styled himself: L’Academico Caliginoso detto Il Furioso (The member of the Accademia dei Caliginosi known as ‘The furious’).
He was among the first baroque guitar composers (along with Bartolotti and Pellegrini) to make use of the plucked style of playing (copying lute technique) rather than relying wholly on strumming (Strizich & Boye, 2014). As the baroque guitar scholar Monica Hall describes it (Hall, accessed 04/05/2021):
“The pieces from Books 1 and 2 are in alfabeto and entirely strummed apart from occasional auxiliary notes inserted between the chords. Most of the pieces in Books 3, 4 and 5 are in "mixed" style, combining strummed chords with lute style counterpoint but a small number of them are entirely in lute style. Some of these have been identified as arrangements of pre-existing lute pieces…”
Alfabeto was a notation that used capital letters to represent chords mixed with tablature for individual plucked notes. Hall comments (ibid.):
“Foscarini's notation is difficult to interpret as his use of time signatures, barlines and note values is inconsistent. Many of the pieces are unbarred, and those that are, are not always barred in a helpful way. Note values are ambiguous, wrongly aligned with the tablature or missing altogether and a clear distinction is not always made between black and white note values.”
See also Boye (2001)
In arranging these pieces I have used secondary sources by Bellow (1964) and Quadt (1974) and edited the pieces using Hall’s transcriptions into Italian tablature. I have changed the octave of some notes and added bass notes, occasionally rewriting bars where necessary to produce a musical result.
Alemanda [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06
Capriccio [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06
Corrente Francaise [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 07
This piece is an arrangement of a courante for lute found in the Cherbury Lute Book by one of the Gaultier family (possibly [Ennemond).
Corrente [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 05
Corrente with Variation [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06
Fantasia [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06
Passacaglio [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06
Pavaniglia [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 05
Tasteggiata [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 05
Tasteggiata Soave [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade05
Toccata [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 05
Toccata Musicale [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 05
Foscarini was an Italian guitar and lute player who produced several volumes of music for the baroque guitar: Il primo, secondo, e terzo libro della chitarra spagnola appeared sometime after 1629, Il quatro libri della chitarra spagnola was added in an edition printed later in the 1630s and the final edition of his work added Il cinque libri della chitarra alla spagnola. In his earlier books he styled himself: L’Academico Caliginoso detto Il Furioso (The member of the Accademia dei Caliginosi known as ‘The furious’).
He was among the first baroque guitar composers (along with Bartolotti and Pellegrini) to make use of the plucked style of playing (copying lute technique) rather than relying wholly on strumming (Strizich & Boye, 2014). As the baroque guitar scholar Monica Hall describes it (Hall, accessed 04/05/2021):
“The pieces from Books 1 and 2 are in alfabeto and entirely strummed apart from occasional auxiliary notes inserted between the chords. Most of the pieces in Books 3, 4 and 5 are in "mixed" style, combining strummed chords with lute style counterpoint but a small number of them are entirely in lute style. Some of these have been identified as arrangements of pre-existing lute pieces…”
Alfabeto was a notation that used capital letters to represent chords mixed with tablature for individual plucked notes. Hall comments (ibid.):
“Foscarini's notation is difficult to interpret as his use of time signatures, barlines and note values is inconsistent. Many of the pieces are unbarred, and those that are, are not always barred in a helpful way. Note values are ambiguous, wrongly aligned with the tablature or missing altogether and a clear distinction is not always made between black and white note values.”
See also Boye (2001)
In arranging these pieces I have used secondary sources by Bellow (1964) and Quadt (1974) and edited the pieces using Hall’s transcriptions into Italian tablature. I have changed the octave of some notes and added bass notes, occasionally rewriting bars where necessary to produce a musical result.
Alemanda [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06
Capriccio [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06
Corrente Francaise [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 07
This piece is an arrangement of a courante for lute found in the Cherbury Lute Book by one of the Gaultier family (possibly [Ennemond).
Corrente [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 05
Corrente with Variation [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06
Fantasia [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06
Passacaglio [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 06
Pavaniglia [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 05
Tasteggiata [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 05
Tasteggiata Soave [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade05
Toccata [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 05
Toccata Musicale [PDF] [MIDI] [XML] Grade 05
