Guitar & Its Music P [Paperback]

Sparks Tyler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 25, 2007

Following on from James Tyler's The Early Guitar: A History and Handbook(OUP 1980) tthis collaboration with Paul Sparks (their previous book for OUP, The Early Mandolin, appeared in 1989), presents new ideas and research on the history and development of the guitar and its music from the Renaissance to the dawn of the Classical era. Tyler's systematic study of the two main guitar types found between about 1550 and 1750 focuses principally on what the sources of the music (published and manuscript) and the writings of contemporary theorists reveal about the nature of the instruments and their roles in the music making of the period. The annotated lists of primary sources, previously published in The Early Guitar but now revised and expanded, constitute the most comprehensive bibliography of Baroque guitar music to date. His appendices of performance practice information should also prove indispensable to performers and scholars alike. Paul Sparks also breaks new ground, offering an extensive study of a period in the guitar's history--notably c.1759-c.1800--which the standard histories usually dismiss in a few short paragraphs. Far from being a dormant instrument at this time, the guitar is shown to have been central to music-making in France, Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and South America. Sparks provides a wealth of information about players, composers, instruments, and surviving compositions from this neglected but important period, and he examines how the five-course guitar gradually gave way to the six-string instrument, a process that occurred in very different ways (and at different times) in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Britain.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Books on the history of the guitar are not in short supply but this one is one of the very best...Tyler's contribution is excellent...The Guitar and Its Music will open the eyes of those who think that the instrument is fit only for rock stars, born-again evangelists, and the occasional Prime Minister."--Times Literary Supplement

"Will appeal to a wide range of readers, from historians with little interest in the guitar for its own sake, to performers with little interest in history for its own sake."--Notes

"This informative book, with contributions from two of the most notable scholars in the field of early plucked instruments, fills in a far more complete historical account of the guitar than James Tyler's already impressive 1976 OUP volume, A Handbook of the Early Guitar. Much new research figures in the detailed accounts of the guitar covering the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries."--The Lute Society of America Quarterly

"Not only does [The Guitar and Its Music] offer a detailed guide to the sources, it integrates recent work from the fields of organology and iconography, archival and patronage studies, performance practice, and the analogous area of lute music, resulting in a coverage that is impressively inclusive in the best sense of the word. ...with its detailed discussions of the sources, clear explanations of performance issues, and the extension of the coverage into the eighteenth century, all formed upon a solid musicological base, this book will surely be a cornerstone of future research and performance of early guitar repertories...an important and essential study."--Renaissance Quarterly

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

James Tyler, lute player and musicologist, is Professor of Music and Director of the Early Music Performance Programme at the University of Southern California, Thornton School of Music. He was a member of The Early Music Consort of London, the Julian Bream Consort, and Founding Director of the London Early Music Group, and has toured extensively throughout the world as a performer, also making several recordings. His books include The Early Guitar: A History and Handbook (OUP 1980), and (with Paul Sparks) The Early Mandolin (OUP 1989), and he contributed many articles to the revised edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Macmillan 2000). Paul Sparks, a perfomer and musicologist specializing in plucked string instruments, was awarded a doctorate at City University, London, for his thesis on the 18th-century Neapolitan mandolin. As a mandolin player and guitarist he has worked with most leading British orchestras, and in his numerous recitals (including several for BBC Radio 3) he has endeavoured to rehabilitate forgotten items from the 18th-century repertoire. He is the co-author (with James Tyler) of The Early Mandolin (OUP 1989), author of The Classical Mandolin (OUP 1995), and a contributor to The Classical Guitar: A Complete History (Balafon 1997) and to the revised edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Macmillan 2000). --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Oxford (January 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199214778
• ISBN-13: 978-0199214778
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,699,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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