Review
Soundboard Scholar 9 © Guitar Foundation of America
French Music by an Italian Count
A Survey of Selected Recordings of Ludovico Roncalli
Roncalli: Complete Guitar Music
Bernhard Hofstöer, baroque guitar
Brilliant Classics, . s
Ludovico Roncalli: Works for Guitar
Hideki Yamaya, baroque guitar
Mediolanum, .
Sonatas for Baroque Guitar
Richard Savino, baroque guitar
Dorian, .
Ludovico Roncalli: Capricci armonici sopra la chitarra spagnola
Sandro Volta, baroque guitar
Arion, .
about the composer of a book of guitar music published in
Bergamo in , titled Capricci armonici sopra la chitarra spagnola. Ludovico Roncalli
was born in Bergamo to a noble family in , around the same time as de Visée,
and inherited the title “Count of Montorio.” Count Ludovico trained as a lawyer and
was ordained as a priest, before publishing his only musical work. He was apparently
not a professional musician but a dileante composer and guitarist of an unusually
high level of ability. He dedicated his book to the Cardinal Benedeo Panlio, a
high church ocial in Rome and important patron of composers such as Corelli,
Handel, and Scarlai, as well as an occasional author of opera librei. Roncalli’s
music is demanding on the performer but restrained in style and altogether devoid
of ashiness or gratuitous virtuosity.
soundboard scholar 9
Capricci armonici is the last Italian source of music for the ve-course Baroque
guitar. e instrument originated as we know it in Italy at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, with books devoted to strummed dance and song accompa-
niments and a highly-simplied chord-symbol notation called alfabeto. From the
s, alfabeto guitar began to evolve into a more sophisticated genre as lute-style
right hand technique was gradually incorporated into the strummed repertoire and
composers created a more and more complex solo literature for the instrument.
Roncalli’s work testies to the level of renement achieved in this branch of musical
evolution. It consists of courtly dances for an elite audience, but also shows roots in
alfabeto playing. Notated in Italian tablature, it still uses alfabeto symbols in places,
to call for the strumming of stock chords from the guitar’s alfabeto vernacular.
e contents of the book are made up of nine dance suites in French style, though
the author titled them “sonatas,” and gave the dances Italian titles. e sonatas are
named according to an anachronistic sixteenth-century nomenclature, “primo tuono,”
“secondo tuono,” and so on, that persisted in Italy well aer it had been abandoned
elsewhere; but musically they are solidly in the major-minor tonal system. e rst
eight of the “sonatas” are in relative major-minor key pairs. (e last, in G minor, is
the odd one out.)
Each sonata begins with a preludio and alemanda, followed by various combi-
nations of corrente, gigua, sarabanda, minuet, gavoa, and passacaglii (a gigua never
ends a suite). Roncalli clearly intended his sonatas as unied compositions rather
than just collections of dances in the same key; the head-motive of the alemanda
Page 7 of Roncalli’s Capricci armonici, showing the Gavotte from the First Sonata.
French Music by an Italian Count
tends to recur in other movements, though where this happens is not predictable.
For example, in Sonata it shows up in the corrente, while in Sonata it is more
obvious in the sarabanda and in Sonata it appears in the minuet. On the other
hand, formal integration is not so formulaic as to be limited to head-motive refer-
ences. Other striking resemblances can also appear between movements within a
suite: bars – of the corrente from Sonata closely mirror bar of the preceding
alemanda, for instance, while in Sonata the pitch sequence
♯
––
♮
, seen in the
bass of the preludio, returns prominently in diminution in the treble of the alemanda.
It is notable that Capricci armonici is especially carefully engraved, by comparison
with many if not most Italian guitar books of its day. is may be because Roncalli,
as a wealthy nobleman, could devote more resources to it than the average working
composer-publisher. e result is that it is not only aractive, but easier to read and
even more importantly, relatively free of the errors that plagued tablature printing
in the day. ese errors are the bane of the modern scholar and interpreter and must
have been just as exasperating to the seventeenth-century guitarist.
Roncalli’s book, though less well-known today than those of his French contem-
porary de Visée, was among the rst to be revived in the modern era when Oscar
Chilesoi published a transcription in . Oorino Respighi drew upon Chilesoi’s
transcription when he arranged the closing passacaglii from Sonata for his third
suite of Ancient Airs and Dances, published in , bringing Roncalli’s legacy, however
modestly, before the modern concert audience.
e prominence of French style is notable in Roncalli’s work, coming as it did
at the culmination of an Italian tradition rooted strongly in Spanish and Neapolitan
inuences. It seems probable that he composed his sonatas under the inuence of de
Visée and his many French contemporaries, and especially de Visée’s two volumes
of guitar music, published respectively ten years and six years before his own. e
French avor can be heard in the rhythmic character of the dance forms, especially
the correntes, with their metric alternation, and the minuets, which are unusually
rich with hemiolas.
by Bernhard Hofstöer of a complete recording of Roncalli’s
book seems a good opportunity to examine and compare several recordings that
have appeared since the tercentenary of its publication. ese include, in addition
to Hofstöer’s, discs by Sandro Volta, Richard Savino, and Hideki Yamaya. All are
well-craed recordings on ve-course guitar. e dierences, both subtle and un-
subtle, that can be observed among them will serve to illuminate the choices that
performers negotiate in approaching this repertoire.
Austrian lutenist-guitarist Bernhard Hofstöer is a busy early-music specialist. In
he issued a disc of guitar music by François Campion, reviewed in these pages
(SbS , ). His other recordings have been on Baroque lute, including e Baroque
Lute in Vienna (), a disc of Weiss, a album of lute solo and chamber
music of Baron, and Album for the Lute (), featuring premiere recordings from
a Baroque manuscript never before recorded. He is also unique among the present
company for having studied law, though this gives him something in common with
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Roncalli in addition to guitar. Hofstöer is a former law professor and the author
of Non-Compliance of National Courts: Remedies in European Community Law and
Beyond. His two-disc set, Roncalli: Complete Guitar Music (Brilliant Classics ),
was recorded in and released in , and includes all of Roncalli’s work, in order
from Sonata to Sonata.
Hideki Yamaya is a Tokyo-born, California-trained, and Connecticut-based artist
who works with Baroque guitar, romantic guitar, lutes, and historical mandolins.
His recording credits include e Archlute in Eighteenth-Century Italy (), along
with a number of collaborations with John Schneiderman such as e Mandolino in
Eighteenth-Century Italy (), Adam Darr: German Romantic Guitar Duets (),
and a recording of period arrangements of Beethoven on Beethoven for Two Guitars
(). Yamaya’s Roncalli disc is entitled Ludovico Roncalli: Works for Guitar
(Mediolanum Music ). A single disc, it includes everything except Sonata
and two movements (the corrente and the second alemanda) from Sonata.
Richard Savino is a California-based guitar and lute veteran with teaching posts
at San Francisco Conservatory and Sacramento State, known for his work in early
music but with a respectable footprint in nineteenth-century repertoire as well. His
long discography includes discs devoted to Murcia, Carulli, Giuliani, Mertz, and
Boccherini, as well as a wide variety of recordings of early stage works and chamber
music. His recording of Roncalli, Sonatas for Baroque Guitar (Dorian )
is from . Also a single disc, it lacks Sonatas , , and .
Sandro Volta is an Italian lutenist-guitarist, conductor, and musicologist. His
recording credits include guitar discs of Carulli, Giuliani, and de Visée, and lute
recordings featuring music of Dall’Aquila, Kapsberger, and Francesco da Milano, as
well as a number of recordings of early chamber and stage works. His Roncalli disc,
Ludovico Roncalli: Capricci armonici sopra la chitarra spagnola (Arion ), is
the oldest of the group, released in . Another single disc, it lacks Sonatas , ,
and , along with the alemanda and corrente from Sonata and the corrente from
Sonata.
Volta, Savino, and Yamaya have naturally had to cut some pieces in order to t
their program on a single disc; we are thus fortunate that Hofstöer was not work-
ing under such a limitation. It is worth noting, however, that of the four recordings,
only Hofstöer includes Sonata. is seems curious in that it is from this sonata
that Respighi drew the piece he used in Ancient Airs and Dances. It is a shame that
we can compare at least two recordings of all the other sonatas, but for this one we
have only a single version.
Volta’s disc is the only one of this group that adds another instrument to support
the guitar: a theorbo (or chitarrone), played by Fabio Pesenti on Sonata (which
ends his disc). Not much information about Pesenti is available, but he seems to have
played guitar with an “Italian Celtic Folk” band named Myrddin, active between
and . He also has a Baroque guitar credit on a Monteverdi disc from .
On the Monteverdi recording, Volta is credited as chitarrone player, so it is possible
that Volta actually handles the chitarrone on Sonata of the Roncalli disc, while
Pesenti takes the guitar. e booklet is silent.
French Music by an Italian Count
Recordings not examined for this essay include Giacomo Parimbelli’s disc on
the Tactus label, Jorge Oraisón’s disc on the Vanguard Classics label, and Charlie
Byrd’s pioneering recording for Washington records. Parimbelli is a guitarist
and researcher with a particular interest in Bergamo and its history; however, his
recording uses a nineteenth-century six-string guitar, and the dierences in tuning
and stringing undermine any comparison with those using the instrument for which
the sonatas were composed. e tuning and stringing of the Baroque guitar are so
unique, that a version on a six-string instrument must be considered an arrange-
ment. e same is true of Byrd’s recording, which also suers from being based on
Chilesoi’s transcription, since superseded by beer understandings of Baroque
guitar tuning and stringing. Byrd’s recording, however, is historically important as the
rst recording of complete Sonatas by Roncalli (he recorded Sonatas –), and is
still worth listening to in spite of a somewhat dated approach to embellishment and
Baroque style. Oraisón’s recording was not available for examination by this reviewer.
was smaller, with a shorter scale length, than the modern
classical guitar. ree of the recordings examined oer information about the instru-
ments used, and these illustrate three distinct approaches to historical instruments.
Hofstöer’s guitar is a Baroque original, dating from around and aributed
to the Venetian maker Maeo Sellas. It has a dark and resonant sound that he uses
to excellent eect. Savino’s guitar is a modern instrument built in by Madrid
maker José Ángel Espejo as a replica of an Antonio Stradivari original from ;
this instrument has a brighter sound than Hofstöer’s. Yamaya’s instrument is more
innovative. A contemporary design by San Francisco luthier Mel Wong, it combines
aspects of French and Italian models, with a top based on instruments by seven-
teenth-century Parisian luthier Jean-Baptiste Voboam and a rounded back typical of
Italian instruments from the period. Yamaya’s guitar achieves a particularly bright and
crisp sound, though this is also inuenced by his approach to tuning and stringing.
e tuning of the Baroque guitar is a subtle and complex issuereally, a set of
issuesthat has been discussed by scholars for more than y years. e pitches
correspond nominally to the pitches of the rst ve strings of the modern guitar in
standard tuning, with a single chanterelle and four double courses, the last two of
which are tuned an octave higher, to create a “reentrant” paern, much as is used
on the theorbo, the ukulele, and the ve-string banjo. e subtleties reside in the
dispositions of these reentrant courses.
Sylvia Murphy, in a Galpin Society Journal article, dened three basic tuning
approaches based on the few available instructions in the literature of the period. e
rst, “fully reentrant” approach, tunes both strings of the fourth and h courses
up an octave, so that the open fourth course, D, is one tone below the rst, and the
open h course one tone below the second. In this procedure, associated especially
with strummed alfabeto guitar, the third course is the lowest in pitch and the open
strings together span a compass of less than one octave. In the second approach, the
fourth and h courses are tuned in octaves, with one string at the upper octave and
one string at the lower. e lower strings are sometimes called bourdons in French or
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bordones in Italian. is paern, sometimes called “Italian” tuning, provides much
greater resources for bass harmonic support. e third tuning approach can be thought
of as a compromise between the other two, with a bourdon on the fourth course but
not on the h course. Known as “French” tuning, this is especially associated with
Corbea and his French musical descendants including de Visée and Campion.
Donald Gill, in a article in Early Music, oered a more nuanced list of ve
dierent arrangements, taking care to associate each with specic guitar sources that
supported it while acknowledging that the vast majority of sources were either reticent
on the topic or altogether silent. James Tyler, in his book e Early Guitar and
other books and articles, has added depth to the discussion and examined subtle
details such as which side of an octave-double course might bear the lower string
and which the higher, in order to facilitate the technique of sounding only one string
of the pair; he also described the option of octave-doubling the third course, with a
higher string sounding above the rst course.
Gary Boye’s contribution to Victor Coelho’s book, Performance on Lute,
Guitar, and Vihuela, digs deeper into the evidence for and against the use of bourdons
in various Italian Baroque sources, aempting to beer understand the contexts that
make one or another tuning appropriate in a given case. Finally, Lex Eisenhardt in
his book Bauto and Pizzicato and in articles on his website, and Monica Hall in
numerous essays, mostly found on her own website, have more recently carried the
discussion forward, weighing the evidence for various practices in various contexts
and keeping the discussion alive.
e recordings under consideration oer a variety of approaches to tuning the
instrument, giving us the opportunity to hear these dierent theories in action upon
the same repertoire and judge their eect. Bernhard Hofstöer uses a French tuning,
with a bourdon only on the fourth course. is makes the fourth course available for
harmonic support, while facilitating the use of the h course in a melodic role, sort
of like an alternate chanterellea resource Campion especially uses to good eect
in his music. It lends itself readily to the use of campanella eects, where notes in a
melodic line are shared between two or more courses, a peculiarly guitaristic tech-
nique that Roncalli exploits fully.
Richard Savino, on the other hand, uses bourdons on both the fourth and h
courses of his guitar. Of the four artists, he addresses the issue of tuning most exten-
sively in his notes. He asserts that this disposition was standard among Italian guitar
composers from the s, including Corbea before his relocation to France, and
nds that it, instead of French tuning, provides the best balance between Roncalli’s
campanella textures and articulation of his bass. He acknowledges, however, the
complexity of the musical evidence at play, allowing that some of it supports his
chosen tuning and some does not.
Notably, though Savino furnishes his guitar with fourth- and h-course bourdons,
he does not always use them. For example, in the cadence at the end of the minuet
of Sonata, Roncalli’s tablature calls for D on the fourth and second courses, an
octave if bourdons are used, but Savino clearly leaves out the bourdon to play a uni-
son. In another example at the end of the preludio of Sonata, the tablature calls
French Music by an Italian Count
for A on the h and rst courses, notionally two octaves apart. However, careful
comparison of this last bass with the one that opens the piece shows that Savino
eschews the lower pitch on the octave-strung h course and plays only a single
rather than a double octave.
Hideki Yamaya uses a fully reentrant tuning, an unusual choice for music as con-
trapuntal as this; he also uses the high octave doubling on the third course, which
has the eect of assigning to the third course both the highest and the lowest open
notes on the instrument. Yamaya explains in the notes to his disk that he bases this
choice primarily on internal musical evidence in Roncalli’s pieces, nding that it
optimizes linear continuity and avoids many awkward melodic leaps of a seventh or
a ninth. It also results in an overall sonic environment overwhelmingly dominated
by the treble register. Another factor combines with Yamaya’s tuning to shape the
character of his sound, and this is the absence of reverb used in his audio processing.
In listening to Volta, Savino, and Hofstöer, we hear a generous degree of reverb that
lends a feeling of deep resonance. Yamaya’s recording is mastered without the same
kind of eect. At rst I encountered this contrast as simply thin and lacking sustain,
but I found myself over time experiencing it as more honest, and at least in this as-
pect, more noble, than the supercially more resonant sound of the other recordings.
Sandro Volta oers no information about his approach to tuning in the notes to
his disc. However, careful comparison of his recording to Roncalli’s tablature (for
example, in the opening of the preludio to Sonata), as well as a general absence of
bass support throughout, indicate use of a fully reentrant tuning like Yamaya’s. (I
would not commit myself as to his disposition of the third course.) Volta does, as
noted above, add a bass accompaniment to Sonata, as if in compensation for
the bass his guitar lacks. e historical precedent of supporting the guitar’s chords
with a bass instrument is something scholars have yet to agree on. But especially in
the reentrant tuning used by Volta, many chords are heard in inverted forms that
violate harmonic norms upheld in other seventeenth-century genres. e addition
of a bass instrument solves this problem, if indeed it is such, and by doing so Volta
oers another alternative sonic model for our consideration.
’ is above all dance music, and it is reasonable to judge the per-
formers’ interpretation on this basis, taking into consideration factors like tempo,
rhythmic drive, and metric nuances characteristic of specic genres, especially in
triple-meter dances. Here, none of the four artists stands as an outlier from the
others. Yamaya tends to choose a faster tempo slightly more oen than the others,
but certainly not always. Volta takes the fastest tempo in the preludio and gavoa
of Sonata, while Savino is faster in the gavoa of Sonata and the alemanda of
Sonata, and especially the corrente of Sonata. Hofstöer is faster in the corrente
and sarabanda of Sonata and the alemanda of Sonata. Slow tempos are just
as important; here we tend to see the greatest variation between performers, espe-
cially in sarabandas: in the sarabanda of Sonata, for instance, Volta takes a quick
tempo one might associate with a minuet, while Savino and Yamaya use a much
slower tempo, closer to what one traditionally associates with a sarabande. In the
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Sonata sarabanda, on the other hand, Savino and Yamaya diverge considerably,
with the laer adopting a much slower tempo. As Richard Hudson has wrien of
a distinctly slower type of Sarabande in France and Germany in contrast to a faster
Italian type, it is interesting to see how the dierent performers handle the dance in
this French-inuenced Italian music.
Closely associated with tempo in dance music is the issue of metric strictness
(as anyone who has played for dancers will aest). Here, Yamaya stands out some-
what among his colleagues, especially in the slow movements just described. Of the
four, Yamaya alone consistently performs the sarabanda with such aention to the
beat that it sounds like a slow dance. Not that he is mechanical; he pays due heed
to cadences and allows his music to breathe properly. He is also capable of a very
exible tempo in the preludios, as for example in Sonata, and he can use such
exibility expressively, as in the alemanda of the same Sonata, where he achieves an
especially wistful feeling.
By contrast, Hofstöer generally adopts the most exible approach to tempo,
though not always and not by so great a margin. is may sometimes undermine the
dance character of pieces, as one might argue it does in the sarabanda of Sonata; it
may also tend to obscure the motivic construction of a composition, as one might
argue it does in the preludio of Sonata (though it could also be used to bring
out the motivic structure). However, it is equally an expressive device, and allows
Hofstöer room to linger over the embellishments in which he seems to revel. He is
certainly capable of a strict dance tempo, as for example in the corrente of Sonata.
If Yamaya and Hofstöer represent the two (not very widely separated) poles of
metric strictness, Savino and Volta comfortably ll the space in between. Each shows
enough individual variation to avoid easy characterization. Volta is sometimes strict,
as in the minuet of Sonata, and sometimes exible, as in the sarabanda of Sonata.
Savino, too, is sometimes exible, as in the gigua of Sonata, and sometimes strict,
as in the minuet of Sonata.
Roncalli’s triple-meter dances, even the minuets, very oen contain prominent
hemiolas, and a conscientious approach to the beat helps tremendously to bring
these out. Volta’s use of a bass accompaniment on Sonata oers an instructive
case in point. In the sarabanda of this sonata, the theorbo’s bass playing steadily on
the downbeat undermines the hemiolas in the rst and third phrases; but in the
minuet of the same sonata, the bass notes are so distributed as to reinforce rather
than obscure the hemiola.
Taken together, the four artists provide enough variety of interpretation to nourish
plenty of esthetic reection.
, all four artists bring taste, skill, and elegance
to Roncalli’s music. Here, however, Hofstöer may fairly be recognized as standing
out in terms of originality and boldness. He is generally the most generous in his use
of embellishment, although as noted above, this sometimes comes at the expense of
metric integrity. e alemanda of Sonata is a typical example, where his lingering
over luxurious agréments does not support the stately rhythmic ow usually associated
French Music by an Italian Count
with the allemande. e individual listener, however, may nd that he makes up for
this in the variety of original ideas he contributes to the music. One place he typically
introduces these is in passages he interpolates in the approach to the repeat of a section,
usually the rst section of an alemanda, as in Sonata and Sonata, though he
also treats the second section of the alemanda this way in Sonata.
Hofstöer also stands out in terms of formal embellishment: he is the only of
the four to use the petite reprise, a practice whereby the conclusion of a Baroque
dance was oen reinforced by repeating the last phrase before the nal cadence.
Sometimes this was notated by composers; Roncalli was not among them, but his
music lends itself to the gesture. Hofstöer uses it oen, as in the sarabanda of Sonata,
the sarabanda and gavoa of Sonata, and the sarabanda and minuet of Sonata.
Sometimes, as in the corrente and sarabanda of Sonata, Hofstöer adds not quite
a petite reprise, but rather a short coda in the spirit of one: in the rst case repeating
not the entire last phrase, but only part of it; and in the second case only the nal
cadence, but preceded by a long and elaborate ourish. However, Hofstöer takes
the greatest and most interesting liberties with the passacaglii of Sonata, creating
his own strummed introduction, which he brings back at the midpoint, articulating
the piece into two groups of sections; he then repeats it four times at the end as a
coda, reinforcing a unied statement of Roncalli’s composition.
perform Roncalli’s music well, with taste, sensitivity,
and variety. eir dierent approaches to stringing and tuning create dierent sound
worlds, but this reviewer is unable to say one is superior to the others. Hofstöer’s
approach is rhythmically expressive and exploits a particularly generous approach
to embellishment and formal modication. Yamaya hews the closest to a strict
dance-music interpretation of Roncalli’s music. Each artist plays delightfully, though
dierently, shines brightly in certain pieces, and may appeal more to certain listeners.
We are fortunate to have four such sensitively craed interpretations of Roncalli’s
music on the ve-course guitar, the unique instrument for which it was composed. It
is to be regreed only that Hofstöer alone oers all the movements of all the sonatas.
Greater familiarity with these recordings will stimulate greater interest in the music
of Roncalli, a prominent late gure in the Baroque guitar who bridges the Italian roots
of the instrument and the peak of renement to which it was ultimately brought in
France by de Visée and Campion. All four discs reward close and repeated listening.
bout the Author
is the Music and Performing Arts Reference Librarian at
University of Denver. He holds a in Classical Guitar Performance, an in Music
eory, and an , all from the University of Denver. His research includes data
sonication, information literacy instruction, metric structures in Baroque music,
and the bibliography of guitar literature.
soundboard scholar 9
bout Soundboard Scholar
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