Juan Carlos Amat

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Juan Carlos (Amat) , in Catalan Joan Carles i Amat , (* 1572 in Monistrol de Montserrat , † February 10, 1642 ibid) was a Spanish doctor and musician .

Juan Carlos studied at the University of Valencia and received his doctorate there around 1595. He married in 1600, became a parish doctor and poor doctor in 1618 and was a member of the Monistrol city council until his death. On January 1, 1642, he was appointed mayor of his city.

Publications

Juan Carlos, as he also called himself, but who is often quoted in professional circles under the name of his mother as Amat (his father was Joan Carles, his mother Joana Amat), published several medical writings as a doctor, one of which is no longer detailed today verifiable plague treatise and a work written in Latin with the title Fructus Medicinae, ex variis galeni locis decerpti (Lyon 1627). He was particularly successful as a man of letters: his collection of Catalan aphorisms had at least 20 editions during his lifetime and was reissued as a school book well into the 19th century.

The textbook for baroque guitar

His second work that was able to stand the test of time was the treatise for the five-course baroque guitar first published in 1596 , the first guitar textbook in Spanish. The book was published several times in Spanish, Catalan and Valencian.

Received issues

The oldest surviving copies date from 1626 (today in the Newberry Library, Chicago) and 1627 (BNE, Biblioteca Nacional de España), the last verifiable edition appeared in 1758 (BNE: call number MC / 3602/28).

From 1639 the editions appear not only with appendices in the Catalan language or Valencian dialect, but also under an extended title, e.g. 1701 or 1758 as Guitarra española, y vandola en dos maneras de guitarra, castellana, y cathalana [1758: valenciana ] de cinco ordenes […] .

The extensions of the original title refer on the one hand to the lute-like bandola ( vandola ), whose string intervals corresponded to the tuning of the Renaissance lute (4-4-3-4-4), on the other hand to two different types of guitar, the Castilian ( castellana ) and the Catalan ( cat [h] alana ), which the author will not go into further on, and which are possibly just two different methods of chord numbering.

Description of the work

The work itself consists of nine chapters, the content of which, despite the restriction to elementary chord fingerings with strokes in the rasgueado style, is by no means aimed only at less ambitious lovers, since the author's intention is to help make even more difficult , i.e. demanding music easier to perform .

First, the author describes the stringing of the five-course guitar, the 1st choir of which is only one-string, while the remaining choirs are each strung with two strings. In the further course he explains the function of the frets (2nd chapter) and describes the fingerboard positions of the major and minor chords (3rd and 4th chapters), followed by the presentation of a sophisticated system developed by the author for locating and transposing the chord fingerings in all keys, consisting of a circular diagram and a number notation. The work ends with a demonstration of his notation method based on the then popular Romanesca Guardame las vacas in twelve keys (8th chapter) and a short excursus on the four-course guitar in the 9th chapter. In this last chapter the heading guitarra de siete ordenes (seven -course guitar) can be read as siete cuerdas (seven-string, i.e. four-course guitar), as it is correctly noted in the table of contents of the book. This obvious error has been included in all subsequent editions without being checked.

The significance of the textbook in terms of music history

From today's perspective, Juan Carlos Amat's textbook offers hardly any information on the playing technique of the baroque guitar, but in its theoretical conception it turns out to be an early and therefore historically significant source of the development history of the major-minor tonality . Ruben Melendez comes to the following conclusion in the summary of his master's thesis from 2019 (translation from the English original):

“Amat introduces a new set of theoretical, educational, practical and notational instruments to explain the Rasgueado style. Amat's methods of arranging and accompanying music on the guitar show that he (...) had an understanding of chord inversions, chord theory and diatonic major-minor harmony. His treatise marks the definitive shift in music history away from ecclesiastical modes and towards harmony based on the major-minor tonality and one based on the diatonic levels . Many of the theoretical concepts in Amat's treatise precede their formalization ( e.g. by theorists such as Jean-Philippe Rameau , translator's note ) by several decades. "

- Ruben Melendez : Amat's "Guitarra Española" and its Influence on Music Theory, Arlington 2019

literature

  • Wolf Moser : The treatise “Guitarre Española” and its author Joan Carlos Amat. In: Guitar & Lute. Volume 3, Issue 3, 1981, pp. 22-28 and 46-48, as well as Issue 5, pp. 44 f. (with letter to the editor from Brian Jeffery on this: p. 70), and Volume 4, Issue 6, 1982, p. 317 f.
  • Monica Hall: The "Guitarra española" of Joan Carles Amat . In: University of Cambridge (Ed.): Early Music . tape 6 , June 3, 1978, ISSN  1741-7260 (English, scan [PDF; 4.3 MB ; accessed on July 28, 2020]).
  • Ruben Melendez: Amat's "Guitarra Española" and its Influence on Music Theory. (PDF; 2.7 MB) MM Thesis. University of Texas, Arlington, May 22, 2019, accessed July 28, 2020 .
  • Konrad Ragossnig : Manual of the guitar and lute. Schott, Mainz 1978.
  • Harvey Turnbull: The Guitar from the Renaissance to the Present Day. The Bold Strummer 1992.

Web links

  • Juan Carlos Amat. Catalog raisonné Juan Carlos Amat, primary and secondary sources in the ESD inventory. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, September 27, 2013, accessed July 28, 2020 (Spanish).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joan Carlos: "GUITARRA ESPAÑOLA with five choirs ...". Translated and edited by Wolf Moser. In: Guitar & Lute Volume 3, 1981, Heft 3, p. 23.
  2. ↑ Joan Carlos: "GUITARRA ESPAÑOLA with five choirs ...". Translated and edited by Wolf Moser. In: Guitar & Lute Volume 3, 1981, Heft 3, p. 22.
  3. ↑ BNE Biblioteca Nacional de España: Fructus Medicinae, ex variis galeni locis decerpti [Texto impreso] / Auctore Ioanne Carolo Amato; Source description of the 1627 edition and link to the digitized version (Latin).
  4. ↑ Joan Carlos: "GUITARRA ESPAÑOLA with five choirs ...". Translated and edited by Wolf Moser. In: Guitar & Lute Volume 3, 1981, Heft 3, p. 23.
  5. ↑ Juan Carlos Amat: Guitarra española de cinco ordenes la qual enseña de templar, y tañer rasgado todos los puntos […]. [Barcelona 1596] Lérida 1626.
  6. ↑ Joan Carlos: "GUITARRA ESPAÑOLA with five choirs ...". Translated and edited by Wolf Moser. In: Guitar & Laute Volume 3, 1981, Book 3, p. 54 f., Book 4, p. 6 f., Volume 4, 1982, Book 1, p. 8 f., Book 2, p. 94 f. , No. 5, p. 294.
  7. ↑ Wolf Moser (1982), p. 317
  8. ↑ Joan Carles Amat: Guitarra española, y vandola en dos maneras de guitarra, castellana y valenciana, de cinco ordenes. Gerona around 1761. Facsimile reprint, introduced by Monica Hall, Éditions Chanterelle, Monaco 1980.
  9. ↑ BNE Biblioteca Nacional de España: Source description of the 1627 edition and link to the digitized version (Spanish).
  10. ^ BNE Biblioteca Nacional de España: Source description of the 1758 edition and link to the digitized version (Spanish).
  11. ^ BNE Biblioteca Nacional de España: Source description of the 1758 edition and link to the digitized version (Spanish).
  12. ^ Wolf Moser : The treatise "Guitarre Española" and its author Joan Carlos Amat. (Description of the work, commentary and translation) In: Guitar & Lute. Volume 3, Issue 3, 1981, p. 24
  13. ^ Wolf Moser: The treatise "Guitarre Española" and its author Joan Carlos Amat. (Description of the work, commentary and translation) In: Guitar & Lute. Volume 3, Issue 3, 1981, p. 47
  14. ↑ p. 15 of the 1627 edition (digitized version of the BNE)
  15. ↑ P. 27ff of the 1627 edition (digitized version of the BNE)
  16. ↑ p. 47 ff. Of the 1627 edition (digitized version of the BNE)
  17. ^ UTA Libraries, Theses and dissertations: Summary of the MM Thesis by Ruben Melendez: Amat's "Guitarra Española" and its Influence on Music Theory. University of Texas, Arlington 2019 (see literature).
personal data
SURNAME Amat, Juan Carlos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carles i Amat, Joan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish musician and doctor
DATE OF BIRTH 1572
PLACE OF BIRTH Monistrol de Montserrat , Spain
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 1642
Place of death Monistrol de Montserrat , Spain