(Sp.; It. battuto; Fr. batterie).
Term used to describe the technique of strumming the strings of the guitar in a downward or upward direction with the thumb, or other fingers of the right hand. The term rasgueado was used most commonly from the late 19th century, while, historically, the Italian term battuto or the Spanish golpeado was used in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Strumming has been an important component of guitar playing from at least the 16th century, when Juan Bermudo (Declaración de instrumentos musicales, Osuna, 1555, f.28v) mentioned, in reference to the four-course guitar, that música golpeada (‘struck music’) was old-fashioned. The exact nature of this 16th-century strumming technique is uncertain. However, by the beginning of the 17th century guitarists began to devise ways of notating it: the direction in which full five-course chords were to be strummed was shown by small vertical lines extending either above or below a single horizontal line – a downward line indicating a strum in a downward direction, and an upward line indicating an upward strum. Notes indicating exact rhythmic values of the strums were often added above the horizontal line. After the middle of the 17th century, when guitarists adopted a five-line staff for the notation of their works, strokes were indicated in two different ways depending on the type of tablature used: in Italian tablature, by small vertical lines extending either above or below the lowest line of the staff; in French tablature, by a note written within the staff, of which the value and direction of the stem indicated respectively the time-value and direction of the strum.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, strumming could be performed in a variety of ways. Upward strokes were generally executed by the index finger alone, although the use of several fingers in succession (beginning with the index) was possible on longer chords. Downward strokes were performed mainly with the backs of the nails of all or some of the fingers. A strum could be executed with all of the fingers striking the strings almost simultaneously, or in a spread or arpeggiated manner, depending upon artistic choice. The thumb was sometimes included in the strum; some composers even notated the special effect of a downstroke for the thumb alone, which produced a different tone-colour from the main type of downstroke. Descriptions of various ways of strumming may be found in the works of Pico (Nuova scelta di sonate, 1608), Milioni (1627), Foscarini (1640), Ruiz de Ribayaz (Luz y norte musical para caminar por las cifras de la guitarra española, 1677), Visée (1682, 1686) and Corbetta (1671). During the 19th century this technique became virtually obsolete in art music for guitar, surviving only in accompaniments of a popular nature. However, it has been used in many 20th-century works for classical guitar, owing to its colouristic and evocative qualities, and it has also remained an integral part of flamenco guitar technique.
J. Weidlich: ‘Battuto Performance Practice in Early Italian Guitar Music’, JLSA, xi (1978), 63–86
J. Tyler: The Early Guitar (London, 1980)
J. Tyler: A Brief Tutor for the Baroque Guitar (Helsinki, 1984)
P. Sparks: ‘Guitar Performance in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, Performance Practice Review, x (1997), 71–9
J. Tyler: ‘The Guitar and its Performance from the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, Performance Practice Review, x (1997), 61–70
ROBERT STRIZICH/JAMES TYLER