Work 24: The Guida armonica (1756)
Rudolf Rasch
The Thirty-One Works of Francesco Geminiani
Work 24: The Guida Armonica (1756)
The Guida armonica is certainly Geminiani’s most remarkable and at the same time least accessible music treatise. The main title occurs in its various sources in one of two different wordings, corresponding to ‘Harmonical Guide’ or ‘Harmonical Dictionary’, in several different language (English, French, Italian and Latin). The work is about how to construct a musical composition as a figured bass consisting of a sequence of short passages. Each passage may be supposed to be an entry in the ‘Harmonical Dictionary’ and how to go from one passage to another is the ‘Harmonical Guide’. The main part of the treatise consist of more than two thousand short figured-bass passages, with two to five notes each. This series is preceded by a preface and an explanation of how to use the work.
The publication history of the Guida armonica is as exceptional as are its contents. The First, Dutch Issue was published in 1756 as Dictionaire harmonique, but the first version of the work was written much earlier. Subscription for a publication called The Harmonical Guide was possible in Dublin in 1740. But no publication followed. Geminiani tried his luck again in Paris in 1741, but again in vain. The publication in Amsterdam was followed, later in 1756, by a Second, English Issue published in London as Guida armonica.
Read and see more in:
The Guida Armonica 1756 Tables
The Guida Armonica 1756 Plates