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• "La  chitarra  in  Spagna  e,  in  particolare,  a Madrid  durante  la  seconda  metà  del  secolo XVIII  e  gli  inizi  del  secolo  XIX. Quinta Parte: La musica punteada". In: il Fronimo, nº 196, October 2021, pp. 25-33. Click HERE to visit the publisher's website.

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• "La  chitarra  in  Spagna  e,  in  particolare,  a Madrid  durante  la  seconda  metà  del  secolo XVIII  e  gli  inizi  del  secolo  XIX. Quarta Parte: La musica rasgueada". In: il Fronimo, nº 190, April 2020, pp. 31-48. Click HERE to visit the publisher's website.

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• "La  chitarra  in  Spagna  e,  in  particolare,  a Madrid  durante  la  seconda  metà  del  secolo XVIII  e  gli  inizi  del  secolo  XIX. Terza Parte: Il rasgueado e il punteado nella trattatistica di chitarra e il cambiamento stilistico alla fine del secolo XVIII". In: il Fronimo, nº 185 and nº 186, January and April 2019, pp. 35-42 and pp. 39-52. Click HERE to visit the publisher's website.

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• "Guitar Music Circulation in Spain in the Second Half of the 18th Century". In: Soundboard, Vol. 44, No 4, pp. 11-14, dezembro 2018. Click HERE to visit the publisher's website.

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• “Guitar Music Manuscripts in the Senate Library of Madrid: The Canción Patriótica de la Alianza and its Experimental Notation”. In: Soundboard Scholar, nº 3, pp. 30-34, Thomas Heck (ed.), 2017. Click HERE to visit the publisher's website.

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• "La  chitarra  in  Spagna  e,  in  particolare,  a Madrid  durante  la  seconda  metà  del  secolo XVIII  e  gli  inizi  del  secolo  XIX. Parte seconda: La chitarra e il teatro". In: il Fronimo, nº 179, July/September 2017, pp. 5-18. Click HERE to visit the publisher's website.

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• Book La guitarra en Madrid (1750-1808): Con un catálogo de la música de ese periodo conservada en las bibliotecas madrileñas

 

Abstract:

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The late 18th and early 19th-centuries witnessed a revitalization of the guitar in Madrid —and by extension across Spain. While folk traditions were the driving force for this resurgence, the concept of the guitar as the Spanish national instrument only makes sense if the guitar is considered in the context of its wider social and musical versatility. That is, we must recognize the guitar’s capacity to adapt and to be located easily in any stratum and musical scope of the society. The guitar occupied a prominent place in Madrid’s popular culture, documented in many references to the well-known barbers, blind and majo guitarists as well as the testimony of foreign travelers, popular iconography and the theater. At the same time, the instrument had a strong relationship with academic music-making through guitarists, composers and treatise writers who distanced themselves from the popular culture. The guitar’s role in the academic musical world determined the character of a period that included significant organological developments, especially the emergence of the six-course guitar and the six-string guitar. Lastly, the importance of the guitar in Spain’s 18th-century musical culture can only be fully appreciated by recognizing its role at court where distinguished aficionados such as queens, princes and aristocrats employed it. Through a consideration of the guitar’s place in these three social/cultural realms coupled with a detailed examination of surviving guitar music in Madrid’s libraries, this book demonstrates how the guitar became a cultural and musical symbol of 18th-century Spain.

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Table of Contents and Indexes (in Spanish)

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• "La  chitarra  in  Spagna  e,  in  particolare,  a Madrid  durante  la  seconda  metà  del  secolo XVIII  e  gli  inizi  del  secolo  XIX: Gli Spagnoli e la chitarra visti dai viaggiatori". In: il Fronimo, nº 178, April 2017, pp. 22-34. Click HERE to visit the publisher's website.

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• “Il fondo di musica per chitarra della Biblioteca del Senato di Madrid: la Canción patriótica de la alianza e il suo peculiare sistema di notazione"”. In: il Fronimo, nº 173, January 2016, pp. 32-40. Click HERE to visit the publisher's website.

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• 2015 Musicology Award. Spanish Musicological Society (SEdeM); Jury's Minute; Review (guitarra.artepulsado.com)

 

 

• La guitarra en Madrid (1750-ca.1808): fuentes y difusión (Doctoral Dissertation, 2015). Abstract / Published

 

"Ricardo Jorge de Sousa Aleixo has produced an outstanding doctoral thesis, which makes a sustained and highly original contribution to the study of the guitar in the second half of the 18th century. The focus on Madrid is exemplary, and has led the candidate to produce a nuanced and yet comprehensive and rigorously documented account of the guitar in the musical life of the Spanish capital. The different approaches to the study of the guitar in Chapters 1-6 present fascinating perspectives on the instrument, its contexts, performance styles and music. The methodology is appropriate to the study undertaken. The thesis is lucidly written, clearly structured, methodologically sound and represents a major contribution to the scholarship on music-making in 18th-century Spain. The conclusions bear witness to the rich outcome of this multi-faceted research project. I sincerely hope that the thesis is published in the near future (in both Spanish and English) as it is of international significance." (*) - Michael Christoforidis (Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, The University of Melbourne)

                                                                                                     

 

 

"This dissertation exposes what the guitar was in Madrid during the years 1750-1808 with a new and fresh clarity that forces a review of the general histories of the instrument and its music. It is a multifaceted work that covers the social history of the instrument during a half century in which the modern instrument assumes its emblematic identity. The social study contemplates the internal evidence –press and local chronicles– and is complemented with the testimony of foreign travelers whose vision balances the local opinions. This study of the social context serves to understand the musical production of the instrument and the instrument itself. The author reveals a series of musical, iconographic and textual documents that allow contextualizing this relationship as never before, systematically and orderly, providing undeniable truth to what until now had been mainly an associative allusion.  […] Undoubtedly,   this work is a contribution of great significance in the history of the guitar and a dissertation that shows that the candidate deserves to receive the doctorate level." (Translated from a Spanish text) - John Griffiths (Monash Unitersity)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

 

 

"The dissertation reported here constitutes a relevant contribution to the knowledge of the guitar and its repertoire in the second half of the 18th Century and a valuable contribution to the knowledge of one of the least studied periods in the history of music. It is an original work, well outlined, correct in its methodology and honest, that discovers important documentation and makes a correct interpretation of the documents and the sources used." (Translated from a Spanish text) - Javier Suárez-Pajares (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

                                                                                                                                                       

 

 

(*) This review and those shown below were extracted from reports written by three expert doctors before the dissertation defense.

   

 

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• “An Uncatalogued Piece by Fernando Sor?”. In: Soundboard Scholar, nº 1, Thomas Heck (ed.), 2015. Click HERE to visit the publisher's website.

 

 

• “Una canción patriótica de los años de la Guerra de la Independencia Española (1808-1814) en el fondo de música para guitarra de la Biblioteca del Senado de Madrid”. In: Clásica2, Revista de Ópera y Música Clásica (online), Manuel López-Benito (ed.), 2014. Click HERE to visit the publisher's website.

 

 

• “La guitarra en España en los libros de viaje de la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII: elemento de identidad nacional”. In: Musicología global, musicología local (DVD), Javier Marín López, Germán Gan Quesada, Elena Torres Clemente, Pilar Ramos López (eds.), Sociedad Española de Musicología, 2013, pp. 2313-2329. Click HERE to visit the publisher's website.

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• “Un pezzo non catalogato di Fernando Sor”. In: il Fronimo, nº 163, July 2013, pp. 50-56. Click HERE to visit the publisher's website.