Rodrigo De La Guitarra
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Rodrigo de la Guitarra ("Rodrigo of the gittern") was a Spanish
lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck (music), neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lu ...
nist and gittern player, active primarily in the first half of the fifteenth century. Rodrigo was in the service of the House of Trastámara, and was a court composer for Ferdinand I of Aragon when he received the
Crown of Aragon The Crown of Aragon (, ) ;, ; ; . was a composite monarchy ruled by one king, originated by the dynastic union of the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona (later Principality of Catalonia) and ended as a consequence of the War of the Sp ...
in 1412. At Ferdinand's death in 1416, Alfonso V was crowned King of Aragon, and Rodrigo remained in his service under the title ''ministril de camara''. He was sent to visit the Count of Foix and the courts of
Navarre Navarre ( ; ; ), officially the Chartered Community of Navarre, is a landlocked foral autonomous community and province in northern Spain, bordering the Basque Autonomous Community, La Rioja, and Aragon in Spain and New Aquitaine in France. ...
and Castile, accompanied by Diego, a singer who also served the Aragonese royalty."Rodrigo de la Guitarra". ''
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and t ...
''. 2nd edition, Oxford, 2001.
Rodrigo accompanied Alfonso on a visit to
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in 1421; while he was away the following year, his wife, Ines Gonzalez, was kidnapped in
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, and his house was robbed. The abductors were caught in
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and punished.M.C. Gómez, "Some Precursors of the Spanish Lute School". ''Early Music'' 20 (1992), pp. 583-593. By late 1423 he had returned to Spain, and is recorded as being in
Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...
; he remains in Aragonese records until 1427. He then disappears from the historical record until 1458, when he was one of several instrumentalists who accompanied the Feast of the Assumption in Toledo that year. No surviving works have definitively been attributed to Rodrigo, though it has been suggested that he is the author of ''Angelorum psalat'', a ballade from the Chantilly Codex. In the manuscript, the piece is listed under the name '' S Uciredor'', or ''Rodericus'' spelled backwards, and Rodrigo de la Guitarra is the only known musician of the era with that name. Gilbert Reaney, "The Manuscript Chantilly, Musee Conde 1047". '' Musica Disciplina'' 8 (1954), pp. 78-79.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rodrigo De La Guitarra 15th-century musicians 15th-century deaths 14th-century births