Instrument of Change: The Baroque Guitar and the Emergence of Harmonic Tonality in England and France, 1626-1737

Abstract

My thesis argues that the five-course ‘baroque’ guitar was instrumental to the emergence of three core principles of harmonic tonality in 17th- and early 18th-century England and France. My thesis’ geographic scope centres on London and Paris, whilst its temporal scope spans the 111 year period from 1626 – when the earliest known printed source of guitar music to appear in either England or France was published in Paris – to 1737 – when Jean-Philippe Rameau’s third treatise on harmonic theory was likewise published in the same city. The three core principles of harmonic tonality under consideration are the basse fondamentale, the primacy of harmony and dependency of melody, and the corps sonore, which are first expressly codified by Rameau in his theoretical treatises, Traité de l’harmonie, Nouveau système de musique theorique, and Génération harmonique. Firstly, by analysing the published guitar treatises of Nicolà Matteis and François Campion, I show how the instrument’s stringing and tuning arrangement predisposes human hands towards both grasping chords as whole units, through their physical shapes, and moving harmonically between chords via the interval of a rising fourth between their roots, thereby tacitly embodying the basse fondamentale. Secondly, taking the Anglo-French Henry François de Gallot guitar manuscript as a case study, I show how pieces are grouped together according to alfabeto symbols, which designate particular chord shapes, thus not only making harmony the framework for melody but also grounding harmony in the guitar’s physicality. Thirdly, I show how the concept of the corps sonore – which Rameau adopted from the French acoustician and Academician, Joseph Sauveur – emerged from the use of the guitar as an instrument of acoustic experimentation, as well as recreation, in the early modern English and French scientific communities. My thesis, therefore, offers a revised history of harmonic tonality wherein the guitar’s crucial contribution is re-centred.