A Colloquium of the Consortium was held from Friday 12 April to Monday 15 April 2024 in the magnificent and medieval surroundings of Magdalene College, Cambridge.
New Book by Dr. James Westbrook
We are delighted to announce the publication of a new book by our member and current Vice-President Dr. James Westbrook, Guitar Making in Nineteenth-Century London: Louis Panormo and his Contemporaries (ASG Music Ltd., Halesowen, 2023). This encylopedic work contains three chapters on the Panormo family, one on Madame Pratten and her guitars, a comprehensive directory of makers and dealers, and information about the Mirecourt luthiers working in London, for example, the Roudhloffs (whole chapter), Boullangier (large section), Gerard (large section), the Guiots, Pons, and Lacote guitars imported into London. This is a luxury A4 size hard-back publication of 514 pages, containing 370 colour images and some 170,000 words. It may be soon ordered from the website of the Classical Guitar Centre Ltd.
Winner of the Andrew Britton Fellowship
We are delighted to announce that Yseult Martinez has been elected to the Andrew Britton Fellowship for 2023-4. Yseult earned a Ph.D. in early modern history from Sorbonne University, with the dissertation ‘De la puissance des femmes: réflexion sur cinq personnages d’opéra créés par G. F. Handel pour Londres entre 1730 et 1737’, a research that was awarded with the Prix Philippe Lescat in 2023. She is especially interested in Italian opera librettos, particularly in tracing and analysing their evolution from the first version to later adaptations in order to better understand the choices made by the composer and librettist and, consequently, the expectations of the audience. Yseult is currently preparing the publication of her thesis with Classiques Garnier (forthcoming). Since September 2022 she has been working at the University of Angers as a postdoctoral researcher on the program ‘CastrAlter: Castrati. Discourses and experiences of otherness in the Europe of the Enlightenment’. After initial training in piano, she now studies the lute, theorbo and opera singing. She is now starting a new research project on the French guitarist and theorist François Campion.
New Book by Damián Martín-Gil
We are delighted to announce the new book edited by our member Damián Martín-Gil:
Damián Martín-Gil (ed.), The Classical Guitar in Spain, Portugal, Italy & Germany. A General Approach to Its History (Madrid: INAEM, 2023), 293 p. ISBN: 978-84-9041-483-5
It can be download directly by clicking here.
Cambridge Cohort for Guitar Research
A very successful virtual meeting was held on 4 November 2023. For details see the Cohort page.
Andrew Britton Fellowship 2023-24
The Consortium is pleased to announce that applications for the Andrew Britton Fellowship 2023-24 are now open.
Two Doctorates Awarded
We are delighted to announce that two members of the Consortium have just been awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy: Jelma van Amersfoort for her thesis Guitars, Music, and Culture in the Netherlands, 1750-1810 (University of Southampton) and Samantha Muir for New Works for Classical Ukulele (University of Surrey). It is hoped that both will be available online in due course.
News 2023
There is a great deal of news with which to start the New Year, beginning with our slight change of name that makes the famous old university town where we meet more prominent. We are now The Cambridge Consortium for Guitar Research. Details of our last conference can now be found on the colloquia page.
Congratulations to our benefactor, Jeffrey Wells, who has been elected an Honorary member. We encourage you to visit his website www.austinmarieguitars.com where you will find luxurious photographs of the guitars, from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, in the Austin-Marie collection.
We are delighted to announce that The Great Vogue for the Guitar in Western Europe1800-1840, edited by Christopher Page, Paul Sparks and James Westbrook, and in almost every respect a Consortium book, will be published by Boydell and Brewer within the next few weeks.
For details and pre-ordering, visit:
The Contents are as follows:
Foreword – Richard Savino
Introduction – Christopher Page, Paul Sparks and James Westbrook
Eighteenth-century precedents: the role of Paris – Damián Martín Gil and Erik Stenstadvold
The Great Vogue for the guitar: an overview – Christopher Page
The instrument and its makers – James Westbrook
Printing and publishing music for the guitar with Appendix: Matteo Carcassi – Erik Stenstadvold
Amateurs and professionals – Christopher Page
Teaching and learning the guitar – Erik Stenstadvold
Early-nineteenth-century guitars in the saleroom, private hands and public collections – James Westbrook
Music for early-nineteenth-century guitars in the saleroom, private hands and public collections – Kenneth Sparr
Accompanied song – Jelma van Amersfoort
Chamber music for the guitar – Jukka Savijoki
Ferdinando Carulli (1770-1841) – Mario Torta
Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829) – Gerhard Penn
Fernando Sor (1778-1839) – Erik Stenstadvold
Dionisio Aguado (1784-1849) – Luis Briso de Montiano
Emilia Giuliani (1813-1850) – Nicoletta Confalone
Giulio Regondi (1822/23-1872) and Catharina Pratten née Pelzer (1824-1895) – Sarah Clarke
Appendix: A note on string-making – Jenny Nex
Bibliography
Our members have been busy recently in other ways:
Luis Briso de Montiano has contributed a twenty-three-page catalogue of a Spanish collection of manuscripts for solo guitar solo. See his ‘Catálogo del Fondo Manuela Vazquez-Barros de la Biblioteca Lázaro Galdiano’, in Jesús Saiz Huedo (ed.), Los Manuscritos del Fondo Manuela Vazquez-Barros de la Biblioteca Lázaro Galdiano (Madrid, 2022), pp. 137-159.
https://guitarra.artepulsado.com/foros/showthread.php?25414
Luis also has as article in press for Roseta: ‘Dionisio Aguado – Testamento y Memoria’.
Paul Sparks has just published ‘Una breve storia del mandolino napoletano in Europa nel XVIII secolo’, which appears in Anna Rita Addessi, et al., eds., Il mandolino a Napoli nel Settecento (Naples, Edizioni Turchini, 2021).
James Westbrook gave a paper on ‘The Early American Guitar’’at the San Anselmo Inn, California, on 26 January 2023. Since James was a contributor to the book Inventing the American Guitar (Milwaukee, Hal Leonard Books, 2013), and has had a life-long interest in guitars by C. F. Martin, he welcomed the challenge to deliver a paper on the American guitar to an American audience. The room was full, with a real mix of people. Most owned a guitar, and everybody knew of the Martin guitar company. There were American guitar dealers, restorers, and people who interest had been inspired by the inheritance of a Martin guitar. Seven of the finest rare American guitars were available to be shown, thanks to the generosity of Jeffrey Wells and the Austin-Marie Guitar Collection. The paper focused on the importation and use of the Spanish guitar prior to Martin’s arrival in America in 1833 and considered the question of whether there were already established makers in America at that time. James then went on to present some of the Martin models and partnerships, and work by other American makers, such as Scherr and Ashborn. The talk was was rounded off with a little local history concerning the Californian dealers and players, a word on the type of strings used and the process of evolution which created the American flat-top guitar of today.
Christopher Page has just published a two-part article in Soundboard Scholar, “An Attractive and Varied Repertoire’: The guitar revival of 1860-1900 and Victorian Song’. The article surveys and presents the data for over a thousand guitar-accompanied performances by amateur singers.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/sbs/vol8/iss1/3/ https://digitalcommons.du.edu/sbs/vol8/iss1/4/
Cohort news. Congratulations to Luis Mantovani, who writes ‘I wanted to share with you that the Austrian Society for Musicology has selected my article “Fine-tuning Ferdinand Rebay’s Second Sonata in E major for Guitar” for the Best Paper Award 2022. The official result will be announced at their annual meeting by mid-October and the article will be published on MusAu – Musicologica Austriaca by the end of the year.
GFA Online Event
Consortium member Gerhard Penn will be speaking about his research on the Viennese guitarist Leonard Schulz (1813–1860) for the Guitar Foundation of America on June 26 at 12 noon, US Eastern Time. The event is online and includes five presenters and topics. Registration is required; all the details of the event, including schedule, abstracts, and biographies of the presenters are here.
Recent Publications by Damián Martín-Gil and Luis Briso de Montiano
Two new articles by members of the Consortium published in the Spanish Journal Roseta.
Briso de Montiano, Luis, ‘Dionisio Aguado – Los escritos a Santiago de Masarnau’, Roseta 16 (2021-22), 6-41
Martín-Gil, Damián, ‘El certificado de matrimonio de Fernando Sor (Granada, 1812)’, Roseta 16 (2021-22), 42-55
Download here:
http://www.sociedadespañoladelaguitarra.com/index.php/roseta/numeros-de-la-revista/97-roseta-16 ‘
The Cambridge Consortium for Guitar Research 