"Honnêtes gens," Amateur Musicianship, and the "East Air" in France: The Case of Francesco Corbetta's Royal Guitars

This essay argues that seventeenth-century French guitarists calibrated their compositions to the requirements of "honnêtes gens," amateur musicians who wished to appear at ease during musical performance. The guitarists' stylistic development, traced in this essay, tended toward the production of easy arrangements of fashionable music. Francesco Corbetta, who published two collections of guitar music in Paris, both titled "La guitarre royalle," also participated in this development. The first "Guitarre royalle," published in 1671, contains music of greater technical difficulty than the second, published in 1674. The blunted technical demands of the second publication reflect Corbetta's accommodation of "honnêtes gens."