Diego Fernández de Huete

Diego Fernández de Huete was a Spanish harpist, theorist and composer born in Navalmoral, in the province of Toledo, around 1633–1643, and who died in Toledo before 21 July 1713. His career belongs to the closing years of the Spanish musical Golden Age, when the harp was a central instrument in the practice and teaching of music in Spain.

His training is probably linked to the theorist Andrés Lorente and to the court harpist Juan de Navas, although both attributions should be treated with caution. Between 1681 and 1710 he served as harpist at Toledo Cathedral, a post he held from 13 October 1681 until 14 June 1710.

His best-known work is the Compendio numeroso de zifras armónicas, published in Madrid between 1702 and 1704. The treatise deals with both the single-order and double-order harp, combining theoretical and practical sections, and it brings to a close a period of great popularity for both types of harp, the diatonic single-row harp and the chromatic double-row harp, which were dominant in Spain between 1550 and 1700. The first part, dedicated to King Charles II, gathers secular pieces arranged in three books according to the player's level; the second contains sacred pieces: twenty-six pasacalles presenting his system of eleven modes, series of ascending and descending scales, and psalms for voices, harp and organ, with the harp in the foreground.

Huete was one of the last Spanish composers to use the four-line tablature of Venegas de Henestrosa, followed the fingering of Ruiz de Ribayaz and introduced crossed fingers to avoid consecutive octaves and fifths. His division of the eleven modes into two groups, according to whether the third is minor or major, anticipates Rameau's major-minor codification by about eighteen years, which places him among the theorists who departed from the ecclesiastical modes.