Gitara angielska w polskiej kulturze muzycznej przełomu XVIII I XIX wieku
The English Guitar in Polish Musical Culture around the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the surviving Polish sources containing music for the English guitar, a plucked chordophone popular in the second half of the eighteenth century, mainly in the British Isles. Eighteen such sources have been preserved in Poland, scored for English guitar in G major (whereas a C major tuning prevailed in the West). Using these sources, as well as numerous verbal accounts from the period, the author attempts to show the place this instrument held in the Polish audiosphere of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. A large proportion of the surviving sources are related to the activity of Józef Elsner, who observed the popularity of the English guitar in the salons of the Polish gentry and bourgeoisie. Elsner’s Warsaw prints appeared in 1803 (arrangements of fve arias from an opera by Peter Winter, one of the first music publications in nineteenth-century Warsaw) and 1805 (settings of selections from operas popular in the city, published in the series “Wybór pięknych dzieł muzycznych i pieśni polskich” [A selection of beautiful musical works and Polish songs]). These are the only printed sources of music for this instrument in Poland. Other Elsner-related materials include an English guitar part in his opera “Leszek Biały” [Leszek the White] and a manuscript kept at the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków containing a setting of the vaudeville from Elsner’s opera “Siedem razy jeden” [Seven times one]. Nine other handwritten sources can be found at the same library, including a concise handbook of English guitar technique, a set of variations by Carlamotti, numerous solo miniatures, and settings of selections from then popular operas. The two latest sources, compiled in the 1810s and now kept at the Diocesan Library in Sandomierz, reflect the changes in the instrument’s construction taking place in western Slavic countries. Those changes were related to the introduction of the G major tuning characteristic of the Polish literature for English guitar and to the early history of another instrument – the Russian guitar.

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