The Emergence of the Rasgueado Style

Before 1600, the guitar was not always used for strumming. When Juan Bermudo published his Declaración de instrumentos musicales in 1555, there were two different tunings of the four-course guitar: the old (temple viejo) and the new (temple nuevo) tuning. According to Bermudo, the old tuning was adequate for “romances viejos” and “musica golpeada”—simple homophonic music. The fourth course was tuned a fifth below the third, instead of the usual fourth, and was probably used to produce the continuous fifth of a bourdon or drone, but there are no examples left of such a repertoire for the four-course guitar. The new tuning, in which the first four courses were tuned like those of the later five-course guitar, was used in complex polyphonic fantasías by Alonso Mudarra and Miguel de Fuenllana; the change of the tuning of the fourth course may have prompted them to compose for the guitar. At about the same time in France, several composers began to write for the instrument. Bermudo described the various tunings of the vihuela and also that of the five-course guitar (with the intervals fourth–fourth– major third–fourth). A tuning with the same intervallic structure was used in Fuenllana's Orphenica lyra (1554), in music for the vihuela de cinco ordenes, a five-course vihuela. According to Bermudo, however, there was not much difference between the two instruments, apart from the size and (presumably) the pitch at which they were tuned.

Early in the sixteenth century, a tendency developed toward a more homophonic style of writing, in genres like chanson and romance, which were very popular in Spain. This is reflected in the vihuela works (in dances and homorhythmic song accompaniments) of composers such as Luis Milan and Esteban Daza. A gradual move away from polyphony toward a more vertical, harmonic style becomes apparent.

At some point in the second half of the sixteenth century (or perhaps even earlier), guitarists from Spain began to accompany vocal music, making use of the rasgueado (battuto) technique. In the performance of music from an oral tradition especially, there is a need for an effective style of accompaniment that can be realized without too much consideration of theoretical principles.