Granata, Giovanni Battista (b Turin, 1620/21; d 1687). Italian guitarist and composer. He moved to Bologna some time before 1646 and remained there for the rest of his life. From 1651 to 1653 he is listed as a liutista sopranumerario in the Concerto Palatino at Bologna. By 1659 he had become a licensed barber-surgeon, and records indicate that he ran a bottega di barbitonsore from 1661 to 1668. He appears to have maintained his career as a guitar teacher and composer throughout his life; in his op.6 he even invited those interested in his music to come to Bologna for personal instruction. Granata was the most prolific guitarist of the 17th century, with seven published books. Five were issued by Giacomo Monti, the only printer of the period to use movable type instead of engraving for the battute and pizzicate (strummed and plucked) styles, and Granata's Capricci armonici was the first large-scale work to use this process. The complexity of the notation led to numerous typographical errors, but, after a reversion to engraving for the Nuove suonate and the Nuova scielta di capricci, Granata's final four tablatures were all printed with movable type, often with handwritten corrections made at the print shop. Granata's style changed and evolved a great deal between 1646 and 1684; his earliest works are closely related to those of Foscarini and are noticeably French in their organization of dance suites (allemande, courante and saraband), while his last four books are his most ambitious and complex, with pieces for one or two violins, guitar and continuo, as well as some of the most virtuoso guitar music published up to that time. Op.4, with 168 pages, is one of the longest guitar tablatures of the period and also one of the most varied: it includes pieces for five different scordaturas, a sonata for violin, guitar and continuo, pieces for chitarra attiorbata (a guitar with extended bass strings) and a continuo treatise. Granata's later style, from op.5 onwards, includes extensive use of campanelas, the upper registers of the instrument, violinistic figuration and complex rhythms. He composed in the standard dance genres of the day, but also showed an unusually keen interest in toccatas, preludes, chaconnes and other genres. WORKS opp.1–5 and surviving parts of opp.6–7 transcribed in Boye (1995)
Capricci armonici sopra la chittarriglia spagnuola, [op.1] (Bologna, 1646/R), 6 ed. in MSD, xxxv Nuove suonate di chitarriglia spagnuola, [op.2] (n.p., n.d.) Nuova scielta di capricci armonici e suonate musicali in vari tuoni, gui, bc, op.3 (Bologna, 1651), 7 ed. in MSD, xxxv Soavi concenti di sonate musicali, gui, vn, bc, op.4 (Bologna, 1659/R) [with cont treatise], 8 ed. in MSD, xxxv Novi capricci armonici musicali in vari toni, gui, vn, bc, … et altre sonate per la chitarra sola, op.5 (Bologna, 1674/R)
Nuovi soavi concenti di sonate musicali, gui, et altre sonate concertate, 2 vn, b viol, op.6 (Bologna, 1680), 4 ed. in MSD, xxxv Armoniosi toni di varie suonate musicali, gui, et altre suonate concertate, 2 vn, b viol, op.7 (Bologna, 1684) BIBLIOGRAPHY W. Kirkendale: L'Aria di Fiorenza, id est Il Ballo del Gran Duca (Florence, 1972) R.T. Pinnell: ‘The Theorboed Guitar: its Repertoire in the Guitar Books of Granata and Gallot’, EMc, vii (1979), 323–9 M. Dell'Ara: ‘Giovanni Battista Granata: chitarrista, compositore, e barbiere chirurgico’, Il ‘Fronimo’, no.26 (1979), 6–15 A. Blardone: ‘Giovanni Battista Granata: una figura da riscoprire’, Il ‘Fronimo’, no.61 (1987), 41–7 O. Gambassi: Il Concerto Palatino della signoria di Bologna (Florence, 1989), 233–7 passim G.R. Boye: Giovanni Battista Granata and the Development of Printed Guitar Music in Seventeenth-Century Italy (diss., Duke U., 1995) G.R. Boye: ‘Performing Seventeenth-Century Italian Guitar Music: the Question of an Appropriate Stringing’, Performance on Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela: Historical Practice and Modern Interpretation, ed. V.A. Coelho (Cambridge, 1997), 189–94 GARY R. BOYE
