Giuliani’s 120 Arpeggios

The 120 right-hand arpeggio exercises from Mauro Giuliani’s (1781–1829) Op. 1, with sheet music and tab to download.

The 120 arpeggio exercises are the first part of Op. 1 by Mauro Giuliani (1781–1829), Studio per la chitarra, published in Vienna around 1812. They all share the simplest possible harmonic scheme: one bar over a C major chord, another over G with a seventh (with the B in the bass), a repeat and a final C chord. What changes from one exercise to the next is the combination of right-hand fingers (p, i, m, a) and the order in which the strings are plucked, so the left hand hardly moves and the attention stays on the right. Each exercise keeps the number it has in the book.

The notes and rhythms come from the transcription by Marieh (2020), published on IMSLP and dedicated to the public domain (Creative Commons Zero 1.0).

The tablature was generated by algorithms. Although we review it by hand, you may find a mistake. It may differ from Marieh’s fingering. We keep the left-hand fingers (numbers) and right-hand fingers (p i m a) from that edition, which writes them only in the first bar of each exercise. The edition does not print the numbers of the irregular note groups: here the eighth-note triplets (3) and sixteenth-note sextuplets (6) that fill the 4/4 bar are shown. All exercises carry the pending-review mark: they have not yet been checked against the book (116 to 119, the most complex, are the ones that most need it).