THINKING LIKE A GUITARIST IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ITALY

Abstract

Placing amateur performers and their instrument of choice at the forefront of inquiry, this article makes a case for the Spanish guitar as an instrument through which knowing subjects sought an epistemology of musical practice, a way-of-knowing-and-doing that could even surpass other musical epistemologies already in circulation during the seventeenth century. Leading this investigation is a handwritten book of lessons wherein there emerges a preference for learning the violin using the principles of guitar playing. Next, I discuss the appearance of annotated guitar tablature in the copy of Giulio Caccini’s Le nuove musiche held in the Library of Congress, which edits Caccini’s songs to purpose their accompaniments for easier guitar playing. Together, these two documents reveal earnest attempts at being musical with a guitar in the hands or guitar playing in the mind, opening us to a world-view that hinges on the guitar as the locus of musical knowledge.