Corbetta, Francesco [Corbette,

Francisque]
(b Pavia, c1615; d Paris, 1681). Italian guitarist and composer. He
was considered by his contemporaries to be the greatest guitar
virtuoso of his time. By 1639 he was established as a guitar teacher
in Bologna, where he numbered Granata among his pupils. After
serving the Duke of Mantua (c1643) and the Archduke of Austria
(c1648) he was brought by Cardinal Mazarin to Paris, where he
became guitar master to the young Louis XIV. In the early 1660s he
followed Charles II to London, where he taught the king and members
of the nobility. By 1671 he was back in Paris as guitar master to the
dauphin. After a second stay in London, during which he took part in
Crownes masque Calisto in 1675, he returned to Paris.
Corbettas works for five-course Baroque guitar comprise five extant
collections, and there is evidence that two more books have
disappeared. His first book contains mainly dance pieces in the
battute (strummed) style. However, the second and third books
contain pieces exhibiting greater mastery and sophistication in which
battute and pizzicate (plucked) textures are combined. While these
first three books are mainly in the Italian tradition, Corbettas later
(and finest) books, both entitled La guitarre royalle, are firmly in the
French style the result of his residence in France and at the Frenchinfluenced English court of Charles II. The first, dedicated to Charles
II, contains 14 suites, a large number of miscellaneous pieces, and
four pieces arranged for voices, guitar and continuo. The second is
dedicated to Louis XIV and contains 39 pieces, the first 12 of which
are guitar duets. In these last two books, written for a guitar tuned
a/ad'/dg/gb/be', Corbetta achieved an ideal balance between the
battute element characteristic of the instrument and the more refined
textures of contemporary lute music; he produced works that together
with those of Vise represent the high point of the Baroque guitar
literature in the French style. Like other guitarists of the era Corbetta
also cultivated the art of figured bass accompaniment, and three of
his books (1643, 1648 and 1671) include instructions for continuo
playing on the guitar.
WORKS
for sources and concordances see Pinnell

Scherzi armonici, gui (Bologna, 1639)

Varii capricii, gui (Milan, 1643)
Varii scherzi di sonate, gui (Brussels, 1648)
La guitarre royalle dedie au roy de la Grande Bretagne (Paris, 1671/R1975)
La guitarre royalle ddie au roy (Paris, 1674)
BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Keith: La guitare royale a Study of the Career and Compositions

of Francesco Corbetta, RMFC, vi (1966), 7393
M. Benoit: Versailles et les musiciens du roi, 16611733 (Paris,
1971), 28, 264
R.T. Pinnell: Alternative Sources for the Printed Guitar Music of
Francesco Corbetta, JLSA, ix (1976), 62
R. Pinnell: Francesco Corbetta and The Baroque Guitar, with a
transcirption of his Works (Ann Arbor, 1980)
R. Hudson: The Folia, the Sarabaude, the Passacaglia and the
Chaconne, MSD, xxxv (1982)
ROBERT STRIZICH