Amat's "Guitarra Española" and its Influence on Music Theory

Abstract

The guitar was one of the most popular instruments of the 17th century and played a large role in the way that theorists and musicians thought about music during the 16th and 17th centuries. A new style of guitar playing for the Spanish five-course guitar, called rasgueado, had just burst on to the music scene and was changing the way people thought about music. The spark that ignited the popularity of this new style originated from the first treatise on rasgueado music, written by physician and amateur guitarist Juan Carlos Amat. In his treatise “Guitarra Española,” Amat introduces new theoretical, pedagogical, practical, and notational tools to explain the rasgueado style. Amat’s methods of arranging and accompanying music on the guitar show that he had an understanding of inversional equivalence, chord theory, and major/minor diatonic harmony, prior to the formal conceptualization of these theories. His treatise marks a definitive shift in music history away from the church modes and towards major/minor tonality and scale based diatonic harmony. Many of the theoretical concepts found in Amat’s treatise precede their formalization by several decades. In this paper, I discuss Amat’s treatise as well as its impact on guitar music and music theory. I will be expanding on the work of Thomas Christensen by explaining the pedagogical tools and theoretical concepts found in Amat’s treatise, as well as comparing them with the work of theorists who came after him.