Foscarini, Giovanni Paolo

(fl 162947). Italian composer, guitarist, lutenist and theorist. He

was one of the most important 17th-century guitar composers and
served as a professional guitarist and lutenist in Brussels, Rome,
Paris and Venice. A member of the Accademia dei Caliginosi at
Ancona, he used the society's name together with his own
academic name, Il furioso, as a pseudonym in his earliest
publications. His first book for guitar is no longer extant but its
contents, and those of the second book, were reprinted in part in
his later collections. Il primo, secondo e terzo libro was the earliest
engraved Italian guitar tablature; it contains selections from
Foscarini's first two books in the battute style, and an additional
third book, which introduces the pizzicato technique. Foscarini's
fourth and fifth books were published together with the earlier
material, using the original plates but with some changes to the
dedications. Il primo, secondo e terzo libro and Li cinque libri
include an elegant portrait of Foscarini (reproduced in Kirkendale,
p.xii). He also published a philosophical discourse, Dell'armonia
del mondo, lettione due, in 1647.
In the preface to Il primo, secondo e terzo libro, Foscarini indicated
three distinct guitar styles: the older battute style; the strict
pizzicato style, which he claimed is more appropriate to the lute
than the guitar; and a style combining the two, which he particularly
emphasized and which may have been his own innovation. This
last style was favoured by later guitarists such as Corbetta,
Bartolotti and Granata. Although his notation is sometimes
inconsistent and incomplete, Foscarini's works cover the entire
spectrum of Italian guitar music up to 1640 and they were highly
regarded and copied in his own time and later.
WORKS
Libro primo (n.p., n.d.) [contents reprinted in Il primo, secondo e terzo libro della
chitarra spagnola]
Intavolatura di chitarra spagnola, libro secondo (Macerata, 1629); 4 ed. in Hudson
(1982)
Il primo, secondo e terzo libro della chitarra spagnola (n.p., n.d.) [incl. contents of
1629 book]
I 4 libri della chitarra spagnola (n.p., n.d.) [incl. contents of Il primo, secondo e terzo
libro]; 14 ed. in Hudson (1982)
Li 5 libri della chitarra alla spagnola (Rome, 1640) [incl. contents of Il primo,
secondo e terzo libro and I 4 libri]
Inventione di toccate sopra la chitarra spagnuola (Rome, 1640) [contents as Li 5
libri]
Dell'armonia del mondo, lettione due (Paris, 1647)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
WolfH, ii

S. Murphy: Seventeenth-Century Guitar Music: Notes on

Rasgueado Performance, GSJ, xxi (1968), 2432, esp. 26, 30
W. Kirkendale: LAria di Fiorenza, id est Il Ballo del Gran Duca
(Florence, 1972) [incl. portrait], 11, 22, 26, 38, 65, 77
P. Danner: Giovanni Paolo Foscarini and his Nuova Inventione,
JLSA, vii (1974), 418
R. Hudson: Passacaglio and Ciaccona: from Guitar Music to
Italian Keyboard Variations in the 17th Century (Ann Arbor,
1981)
R. Hudson: The Folia, the Saraband, the Passacaglia, and the
Chaconne, MSD, xxxv (1982)
T. Christensen: The Spanish Baroque Guitar and SeventeenthCentury Triadic Theory, JMT, xxxvi (1992), 142
G.R. Boye: Giovanni Battista Granata and the Development of
Printed Guitar Music in Seventeenth-Century Italy (diss., Duke
U., 1995), 4460
G.R. Boye: Performing Seventeenth-Century Italian Guitar Music:
the Question of an Appropriate Stringing, Performance on
Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela: Historical Practice and Modern
Interpretation, ed. V.A. Coelho (Cambridge, 1997), 18094
GARY R. BOYE