Here is a superb introduction to a repertory most listeners, even Baroque enthusiasts, may not know. The guitar, as Scotland's
Gordon Ferries explains in his entertaining and informative notes, was an instrument somewhat disfavored by informed opinion of the Baroque era both in Spain, where it came from, and in France, on which this disc focuses. Partisans of the quieter and more complicated vihuela and lute saw the guitar as coarse, and it intersected with a world of new dances that, as new dances always do, had the musk of sexuality about them (one tidbit
Ferries drops in is that Cervantes, although he used the dance in his plays, contended that the sarabande must have been created in hell). None of the criticism stopped the guitar from attaining considerable popularity in France, as anyone who has spent time in a gallery of Watteau's paintings can attest, and those paintings show that the role of the guitar as a seducer is by no means limited to the modern era. The key guitar composer of the French Baroque was an Italian, Francesco Corbetta; he inspired several homegrown students, and music of this circle makes up most of the music on the disc. There is also a suite by lutenist Robert de Visée and a sextet of non-guitar pieces in arrangements of the time for guitar. The dances are mostly combined into suites from five to eight pieces, often very short. The ornamentation is less intricate than that of lute music of the era (
Ferries executes what there is with supreme confidence), and the spirit of the music is more assertive and direct. It might be called simpler than lute music, or it might be called just another manifestation of the dramatic Italian musical winds that were blowing across France at the time. Essentially it's a lot of fun. Delphian's sound is a bit too fastidiously close-up;
Ferries' Baroque guitars sound twangier than they really are, and there is a good deal of extraneous string noise, but this is an enjoyable disc for any Baroque library.