Dr. Gideon Brettler completed his PhD in Musicology at Tel Aviv University in 2024. His dissertation examined printed guitar music in seventeenth-century Italy, tracing connections between musical, textual, and typographic features of guitar books and broader social and cultural developments in early modern urban centers. The interdisciplinary study combined quantitative analysis of the Italian music-printing industry with close readings of primary sources, revealing reciprocal interactions between oral and literate traditions and between elite and popular culture, shaped by trends such as Musical collectibles and the professionalization of musical performance.
In his postdoctoral research, Brettler explores guitar music as a site of cultural exchange across social classes, geographic regions, and at times between Europe and the New World. His project focuses on two aspects: the role of guitar music in transmitting musical knowledge between oral and literate practices, and its symbolic association with ethnic, social, or colonial “otherness.” He also examines guitar books as forms of popular pedagogy reflecting shifts in educational ideals and visual strategies for representing musical knowledge. Brettler is expanding the database he created during his doctoral research (DSCIMP) to include additional European centers, enabling comparative analysis of music book production and circulation. His research integrates approaches from musicology, early modern social and cultural history, book history, and digital humanities.