Soundboard Scholar

Manuel de Falla’s Homenaje pour “Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy” presents a complex identity knot that reflects Debussyan Alhambrism back onto its inspiration, drawing from both classical and folk traditions. This is the first research project to approach that knot from the perspective of historically inspired performance. It identifies a fascinating counterpart to its complexity in the stylistically hybrid guitar practices that were common at the time Falla composed his miniature masterpiece. The authors therefore propose that a historically inspired performer of Homenaje can act as a stylistic free agent, traversing the continuum of styles that gave birth to Falla’s vignette in search of a coherent collage of historically informed puzzle pieces. To help define this agent’s field of play, they examine a set of interpretational issues through the lenses of both classical and An­da­lu­sian folk practices. They do this by cross-referencing early twentieth-century scores, recordings, and methods, and by experimenting on a gut-strung period instrument. In this way, the project provides concrete possibilities to the historically inspired guitarist who wants to understand what Homenaje’s complex stylistic history might mean in practice.

The five-course guitar was a fundamental resource for the Verney family from 1643 to 1653 as they sheltered in France, avoiding their creditors and escaping the state of civil war at home in England. Their papers from that period, comprising many thousands of letters and financial accounts, show them hiring a guitar-master, ordering new guitars in Paris and debating the relative benefits of lessons for their eldest son on the guitar as opposed to the lute. This article reproduces the key documents and considers the music that the Verneys may have played. The papers particularly show how an instrument often played by women during the seventeenth century was also considered a means to train the first-born son, heir to the family estate, in habits of diligence and obedience. The Verneys considered the guitar an essential “exercise” for their offspring, and an important contributor to the “breeding” that young people of their social class, the higher gentry, needed to acquire. “Breeding” meant more than education; it encompassed each person's understanding of the role they were destined by their birth to perform, and their ability to sense the importance of family honor. Even when funds were tight—as they often were—the Verneys continued to value the guitar, for there is scarcely an allusion to guitars in the Verney papers that does not also name a sum of money or envisage a broader purpose of this sorely tried family of exiles.

A review of The Guitar in Victorian England: A Social and Musical History, by Christopher Page (Cambridge University Press, 2025)

Following the publication of her new biography of the Elizabethan lutenist John Dowland, K. Dawn Grapes details her research journey in conversation with Katharyn Benessa. They discuss both the history of Dowland research, including the legacy of Diana Poulton, and the gaps that still remain. Grapes offers new context for understanding Dowland’s music and considers how his travels and experiences may have shaped his life and work.

Born in Arequipa, Peru, Pedro Ximénez Abrill y Tirado was a virtuoso cellist and guitarist who composed over forty symphonies, forty masses, dozens of chamber pieces with interesting instrumentations, and over three hundred solo pieces for the guitar. He moved to Lima for a period and later became Maestro di Capilla at the Sucre Cathedral in Bolivia. At the time Sucre was one of the wealthiest cities in South America, if not the wealthiest. Abrill's renown was such that he was published in Paris by Richault and was written about in Hugh Bonelli's published travel diary (London, 1854). His music is well composed, and he employs techniques that would not reappear in the classical guitar canon until the mid-twentieth century. This article presents updated biographical material on Abrill together with a detailed examination of his single-movement First Sonata in D, a remarkable work from both a compositional and technical perspective. A facsimile of the composer's manuscript of the Sonata is included.

A review of Luigi Legnani: Catalogo tematico delle edizioni a stampa per e con chitarra [Thematic Catalogue of Printed Editions for and with Guitar], by Marco Mustardino (Rome: Aracne, 2023).

A review of Guitar Making in Nineteenth-Century London: Louis Panormo and His Contemporaries, by James Westbrook (Halesowen, UK: ASG Music, 2023) classicalguitar.co.uk/shop/guitar-making-in-nineteenth-century-london

The six-course guitar is still a little-known instrument. One need only look at books on the history of music to verify that claim: there is hardly any mention of it, nor are its composers or repertoire often cited. In fact, researchers have given far more attention to other plucked-string instruments than to the six-course guitar—whether for reasons of tradition or ideology—leading to a major gap in the literature. The repertoire of the Spanish Golden Age, to take one example, has been thoroughly explored, in the domains of both vocal and instrumental music (as in the vihuela). Similarly, there is quite a lot of research on the five-course Baroque guitar (as exemplified by Gaspar Sanz and Francisco Guerau): witness the several commercial and critical editions available. And there are plenty of studies of composers such as Fernando Sor and Dionisio Aguado—who are, moreover, already known to people outside our specialized field of the history of the guitar. Perhaps the lack of documents, printed scores, or manuscripts associated with the six-course guitar has hindered research into the instrument. Some documents held in public libraries are available online; others, such as those in the private archive of Navascués, can be accessed only with great difficulty. It is therefore not surprising that today we are familiar with names such as Luis de Narváez or Gaspar Sanz, while composers such as Juan de Arizpacochaga, Isidro Laporta, or José Avellana are completely unknown. The purpose of this text, therefore, is to present the six-course guitar, its particularities, and its function in a society that could be characterized as bourgeois.

A review of Guitar Music from Late Victorian England: Collected Works, by Ernest Shand, edited by Stanley Yates (Classical Guitar Study Editions, 2022), publisher's website.

In the story of music-making, blind musicians have played an intrinsic role, helping to drive the development not only of musical styles but also of instruments, instruction, and aesthetics. Many musical practices were cultivated first within blind communities and adopted only later by sighted musicians, often with a gradual erasure of their original context. The history of the Spanish guitar offers a compelling case study of this progression, demonstrating how the contribution of blind musicians could be both wide-reaching and yet, over time, forgotten. The history of this contribution is challenging to recover, for in Spain as elsewhere, blind musicians left almost no direct historical evidence of their activities; and yet, once reconstructed, it offers a vital new perspective, one that challenges standard approaches to guitar historiography, with its traditional emphasis on repertoire and celebrated individuals. Rather than belonging to the margins of guitar history, the work of blind Spanish guitarists has direct implications for its central narrative. It is essential for understanding the emergence of the Spanish classical guitar in the 19th century and for situating pivotal figures—such as Francisco Tárrega, Antonio de Torres, and even Andrés Segovia and Agustín Barrios—within a broader cultural context in which blind musicians played a vital role. Furthermore, this perspective may offer valuable insights into the study of Spanish musical pedagogy and aesthetics, particularly the concept of duende—as well as into the organological development of the guitar.