Giovanni Paolo Foscarini

Giovanni Paolo Foscarini was one of the most important composers for the guitar in the seventeenth century. Italian and active in the first decades of that century, he built his career as a professional guitarist and lutenist, with documented posts in Brussels, Rome, Paris and Venice. His published output sits at the heart of the transition between the guitar of the older style and the forms that would come to dominate Italian music for the instrument.

He belonged to the Accademia dei Caliginosi of Ancona, and in his earliest publications he signed with the name of the society alongside his academic name, "Il furioso". His first book for guitar has not survived, although part of its contents reappears in later collections, as does that of the second. The work entitled Il primo, secondo e terzo libro is the first Italian guitar tablature printed from engraved plates, and it contains pieces in the battute style, as well as a third book that introduces the technique of pizzicato. Books four and five were published together with the earlier material, reusing the same plates with some changes to the dedications.

In the preface to that collection, Foscarini distinguishes three ways of playing: the old battute, strict pizzicato, which he considers more appropriate to the lute, and a combination of the two which he emphasised in a special way and which may have been his own invention. This last style was adopted by later guitarists such as Corbetta, Bartolotti and Granata. His notation is at times irregular and incomplete, but his works cover the full range of Italian guitar music up to 1640 and were much esteemed and copied, both in his own time and afterwards.

As well as music, in 1647 he published in Paris the philosophical discourse Dell'armonia del mondo, lettione due. His legacy lies above all in his role as a bridge between older practices and the modern repertoire for guitar.