G.B. Granata. Soavi concenti di sonate musicali per la chitarra spagnuola [guitar], Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1659

GRANATA, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1620-1687)

Soavi concenti di sonate musicali per la chitarra spagnuola...opera quarta, Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1659

FIRST EDITION. 168 pages, oblong 4to (163 x 222mm), engraved frontispiece showing guitars and lutes, with a naked figure embarking from a ship, receiving a viol and music (lettered: "Miscet utile dulci"), engraved portrait on B4, title within a woodcut border, dedicatory epistle and verses, preface, type-set tablature for five-course guitar, forty pieces dedicated to noble families throughout Emilia Romagna, Lombardy and the Veneto, pages 115 to 152 contain a substantial 'Sonata di Chitarra, e Violino, con il suo Basso Continuo', followed by a concluding 'Modo di accompagnare sopra la parte', contemporary vellum, contemporary corrections to the tablature (pp.33-49), and figures to the cover, some staining to preliminaries and browning on S⁴, otherwise clean  

A FINE AND RARE GUITAR BOOK. We have traced no auction record for Granata's book and only five copies in institutional libraries: in Bologna, Vicenza, Madrid, London (ex-Spencer) and Washington. This volume contains the allegorical frontispiece, missing from the Madrid copy (and thus from the 1979 facsimile that reproduces it), and the portrait, missing from the Spencer copy. 

Granata's Soavi concenti op.4 "is one of the longest guitar tablatures of the period and also one of the most varied" (Gary Boye in The New Grove, (2001), x, 282). James Tyler writes: "The extraordinary sonata on pages 115-152 consists of several suite-like sections, with ever-changing moods; a beguiling, distinctive and often daring piece of music...[this is] one of the best books of guitar music of the seventeenth century". Monti was the only publisher of this period to print guitar tablature in moveable type.

LITERATURE:

IT\ICCU\MUS\0271547; RISM G 3393 (3 copies); G.R. Boye 'Music for Baroque Guitar' [online resource, Appalachian State University]; G.B. Granata, Soavi concenti, facsimile publication, edited by James Tyler (1979)

Please note: Condition 11 of the Conditions of Business for Buyers (Online Only) is not applicable to this lot.

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