Guitar music of Francisco Corbetta
‘The guitar is no more than a cowbell, so easy to play... that there isn’t a stable boy who isn’t a musician of the guitar’.Sebastian de Covarrubias (1611)
‘The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth’.Jean de la Bruyere (1645–1696)
Something interesting happened in the 1580s. The renaissance guitar (think of a ukulele, its direct descendant) was enlarged and given a fifth string. This new instrument was perfect for strumming and people just couldn’t help themselves, they chucked the rules of polyphony out the window and started having fun on the guitar (Its first method book teaches you how to strum your way through a Palestrina mass!) A guitar craze started which spread through Europe and lasted over a century. The guitar was played by almost everyone, from Spanish stable boys to the crowned heads of Europe and by the middle of the seventeenth century there was a tremendous variety of music for it, from simple strummed chord patterns to some of the most complex and subtle music ever written for a plucked instrument. The apex of this pyramid of quality is occupied by the figure of Francisco Corbetta. In his music the guitar found a voice, which allowed it to match in refinement and expressiveness the best solo music for the viol, harpsichord or lute.
Corbetta’s life as a wandering virtuoso was filled with incident and adventure and if the rough sketch we can reconstruct at this distance is anything to go by, the loss of his memoirs (mentioned by Adam Ebert in 1701) is a tragedy. He settled on the guitar early; his obituary in the Mercure Galant; tells us that ‘From his youth he was so fond of this instrument that his parents, who had destined him for something different, used caresses and menaces in vain to detach him from it.’ He published his first book of guitar music in 1639 (at about the age of twenty) and then left Italy and headed north. After successes in Vienna, Hanover and Brussels, he travelled to Spain (where they were still talking about him 30 years later; Gaspar Sanz calls him ‘El mejor de todos’, meaning the best of all). This was followed by an invitation to Versailles from the Cardinal Mazarin, where he not only taught the guitar to the young Louis XIV, but also had the honour of dancing alongside him in one of the Ballets de Court, the music to which was by another guitar playing friend of Louis: Jean-Baptiste Lully.
He also moved in expatriate English circles and when Charles II returned to England, Corbetta came with him. This earned him some sour entries in Samuel Pepys’ diary; Pepys preferred the music of the lute and found the guitar irritating:
5 August 1667After done with the Duke of York, and coming out through his dressing room, I there spied Signor Francisco tuning his guitar, and Monsieur de Puy, with him who did make him play to me which he did most admirably — so well that I was mightily troubled that all that pains should have been taken upon so bad an instrument.
Corbetta lived in London for a few years as part of the King’s ‘Private Music’, playing and teaching the royal brothers as well as other members of the nobility. Corbetta also used his royal influence to set up a complicated confidence game called ‘The Catalan Lottery’ and after swindling a number of people he left for Paris under a cloud.
It was in Paris that Corbetta published his last two books of music. The first Guitarre Royalle is his largest work and the source of most of the music on this recording. It’s dedicated to Charles II and is filled with extended suites and complex character pieces, many of them dedicated to members of the English and French nobility. The second collection is dedicated to Louis XIV and includes some extraordinarily chromatic guitar duets and solos mostly in the strummed style. This was apparently Louis’ favourite sort of music, for when Louis was in residence at Versailles he heard guitar music in his bedchamber every evening (except Saturday) as a way to wind down before going to bed. These private concerts were given by a variety of guitarists; among them Bernard Jourdain de la Salle and Robert de Visee, but my conceit for this programme is that sometime in the 1670s, perhaps recently returned from a concert tour or gambling trip, Corbetta gives de Visee the night off and plays his old friend Louis to bed.
Corbetta’s music is well suited to the night, for though it’s exceptionally demanding, it is rarely showy for its own sake and almost never ends with a bang. Similarly, in writing about ‘batterie’ (strumming) Corbetta goes to great lengths to stress the sweetness and delicacy he wants the player to strive for. Perhaps he considered a flashy ending inappropriate for the aristocratic circles in which he moved. Whatever the case, there is scarcely anything here to disturb the reveries of a weary monarch.
When Corbetta died in 1681 he was widely mourned, poems were published referring to him as ‘The Amphion of our Times’. Guitarists continued to play his music for another seventy years but, perhaps because his music survived only in tablature, the rest of the world forgot him quickly.
Regular supporters of the orchestra will be familiar with William Carter, principal lutenist and a regular face on stage with AAM. Bill’s solo recording of Music for the King’s Bedchamber by Francisco Corbetta is released on 11 October 2004 by Linn Records. AAM stalwarts may recall Bill’s performance of music for Baroque guitar by Corbetta in a chamber programme with Andrew Manze, Alison McGillivray and David Gordon in June 2002. In this excerpt from his sleeve note, Bill Carter discusses the programme, the history of the guitar, and Corbetta’s life from the early years as a wandering player to his appointments at Versailles as tutor to Louis XIV and in London as part of the King’s ‘Private Music’.