In the beginning of the 19th century many composers wrote short pieces in a contradance or country dance spirit which were called Scottish Dances or Ecossaises (this French name was much more widely used). Many of these dances were “Scottish” only in name, having a French origin as dances, and stylistically belonging to the Viennese short classical pieces of a divertimento character. The Italian virtuoso guitarist and composer Mauro Giuliani, living in Vienna at the time, also composed his twelve Scottish dances following this classical tradition of stylized dances rather than an original Scottish tradition. Under this spirit these twelve dances are excellently entertaining intermediate material for the classical guitar, having the indisputable high quality stump of a composer with a very high melodic fleur and a very solid sense of harmony. Giuliani has designed his opus 33 as a whole from the beginning, and this is obvious in his tonal scheme. The pieces are alternating between A major and A minor while the major tonality is combined with a binary (A-B) structure and higher fretboard positions and the minor one with a ternary A-B-A) structure modulating to the relative major (C major), and utilising only the first position of the fretboard. This scheme is followed faithfully until piece no. 11, which is divided between the two main tonalities involved, ending in A minor and this clearly happens also by design because Giuliani wants to finish this work in the Major key. Dance no. 12 follows indeed in A major and concludes the work.