Guitar & Notices
written for the English guitar consists of simple
short songs and dances, but its repertoire also
includes complex and substantial works by
Johann Christian Bach, Felice de Giardini, and
Francesco Geminiani. So popular was this
type of guitar (especially amongst women)
that between 1750 and 1800 it largely
eclipsed all other forms, and when the single
word ‘guitar’ is found in British newspapers
and literature from this period, the writer was
usually referring to the English guitar.
However, the five-course gut-strung guitar
was occasionally encountered in Britain
during this period (the word ‘Spanish’
being used to distinguish it from the
more popular English guitar). In 1766,
Merchi visited London and gave a
performance in Hickford’s Rooms
‘on the Spanish guitar’, the English
luthier John Preston made five-course
Spanish guitars throughout the 1780s
and an Italian guitarist named Felice
Chabran settled in London, advertising
in 1795 as a teacher ‘of the Spanish guitar’. Although he
initially played and taught the five-course instrument,
he later published the first British method for six-singlestring Spanish guitar in 1813. By now the English guitar
was falling out of favour, and the modern six-string guitar
became firmly established in Britain when Sor came to live
in London in 1815 (remaining in Britain for almost a decade)
and demonstrated to the public the full potential of the new
instrument.
GERMANY AND VIENNA. Until recently, many books on
the history of the guitar credited invention of the six-singlestring guitar to Jacob Augustus Otto, a violin maker from
Weimar. Otto does indeed seem to have built a guitar of this
type at some point after 1788, but we have already seen
that six-string guitars were being made in Naples during
mid-1780s, and the German maker was clearly copying
one of these new Italian instruments. As in Britain the old
five-course guitar had fallen into some neglect in Germanspeaking territories during mid-eighteenth century, but the
new six-string instrument quickly became popular there,
from 1790s onward. As far as I am aware, the first music
ever published for six-string guitar appeared in Bonn in
1795 (Sei ariette italiane by Giuseppe Millico), and in Vienna
a German civil servant named Simon Molitor composed
dozens of sonatas, duos and trios for six-string guitar in the
years around 1800. But it was the arrival in Vienna in 1806
of Italian virtuoso Mauro Giuliani that established the new
six-string guitar as an important concert instrument in the
city, as Molitor noted in 1811: Then Herr Mauro Giuliani, a
Neapolitan, came to us – a man who had been led early in
the right direction through a correct sense of harmony, and
who, as an accomplished virtuoso, combined with the most
correct performance the greatest perfection of technique and
of taste… Through his teaching and the competition he has
aroused among teachers and lovers of the instrument, he
has formed for us so many outstanding amateurs that there
could scarcely be another place where authentic guitarplaying is so widely practised as here in our Vienna.
The full results of my research were published as Part
III of ‘The Guitar and its Music: from the Renaissance to
the Classical Era’ by James Tyler and Paul Sparks (Oxford
University Press, 2002). Since then, I have become a founder
member of the Consortium for Guitar Research at Sidney
Sussex College, Cambridge, where I and my colleagues
continue to explore the history of the guitar, particularly
during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Published
results of our ongoing research demonstrate, I believe, that
the once-neglected 1750-1810 period in the guitar’s history
should now be seen as just as vibrant as any periods that
preceded and succeeded it.
Link to the Consortium for Guitar Research at Sidney Sussex
College, Cambridge:
http://guitarconsortium.worldpress.com
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The Dunlea-Garcia Duo
Music for two Guitars
+++++ PRES
S RELEASE ++
+++
The Dunlea-Garcia Du
o (Lu
formed in 1987. They pe ke Dunlea and Roberto Garcia)
rfo
achieved recognition as rmed in the UK and Europe and
one of the foremost cla
duos of the time, with the
ssical guitar
ir virtuosic displays and
repertoire for two guita
eclectic mix of
rs. Th
recording a unique and ey disbanded in 1990 but not before
stunning album tha
the quality of their music t was a testament to
making.
On the 25th anniversary
of the original 1989 cass
ette
the album Music for Tw
o Guitars has now been recording,
re-released
digitally.
Included on the album
are the first recordings
of five guitar duets
by Gilbert Biberian and
seve
by L.Dunlea. The album n pieces by Stravinsky arranged
also includes works by
Samuell and
Machado.
The album can be down
loaded from iTunes (ty
pe DunleaGarcia into the ‘search
store’ box).
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