Francesco Corbetta

• Scherzi Armonici (Bologna, 1639) • Varii Capriccii per la Chitarra Spagnola (Milan, 1643) • Varii Scherzi di Sonate per la Chitara Spagnola, Libro Quarto (Brussels, 1648) • [Guitarra española y sus diferencias de sones?] After 1656, Place of publication unknown. • La Guitarre Royalle, dediée au Roy de la Grande Bretagne (Paris, 1671) • La Guitarre Royalle (1674)

Five collections of his music for the five-course guitar survive today. Corbetta's two earliest books include compositions in the Italian tradition, but his three later publications are increasingly in the French style. At least two others are lost. His first book includes mostly strummed dance music, while his later books are increasingly written in mixed style, culminating in his La Guitarre Royalle of 1671. His last book, also called La Guitarre Royalle, of 1674, returns to a simpler, more strumming-based style. These publications also included important information for continuo playing on the guitar. A substantial amount of music attributed to him also survives in manuscript. Corbetta's compositional style has been noted for its liberal use of dissonance, which is often not prepared or resolved according to the conventions of seventeenth-century music. This quality was first noted by Richard Pinnell among modern scholars, and has led to a considerable amount of debate. Pinnell and Lex Eisenhardt have suggested, based on internal evidence, that Corbetta's tablatures may present notes that are not meant to be played, as a kind of left-hand fingering aid for the performer. Eisenhardt has also cited Antoine Carré's somewhat simplified versions of Corbetta's pieces in support of this hypothesis. Monica Hall, on the other hand, has argued that Corbetta's dissonances are not unique in Baroque guitar literature, but that his writing shows instead a difference in the degree to which the less formal practices of the early battuto style are incorporated into the more formal notation of the mature mixed style, especially in the 1671 La Guitarre Royalle. Corbetta was the most significant guitar composer of his day (Gaspar Sanz called him "el mejor de todos," or "the greatest of all") and one of the first to publish in the mixed style. Other guitarists, however, especially Giovanni Paolo Foscarini and Michele Bartolotti, were also influential in establishing and popularizing the mixed style. Corbetta was also influential as a teacher. As well as Granata, the French guitarist Rémy Médard was probably his student. Another French guitarist, Robert de Visée, composed a Tombeau de Monsieur Francisque that is thought to be an elegy for Corbetta. He may have known Corbetta personally, though there is no evidence he was his student. Corbetta was definitely employed as a guitar teacher to Princess Anne, later Queen Anne of Great Britain. On the other hand, he was probably not employed as a guitar teacher to Louis XIV.