SOUNDBOARD

SCHOLAR
A Peer-Reviewed Journal of Guitar Studies

NO. 1 | 2015
 SOUNDBOARD
SCHOLAR
A Peer-Reviewed Journal of Guitar Studies

GFA Board of Trustees

Brian Head, Chair Nicholas Goluses Richard Long General Editor: Thomas Heck
Mary Akerman Julian Gray Stephen Mattingly SbS@guitarfoundation.org
Stephen Aron Pamela Kimmel John Olson Reviews Editor: Richard Long
William Bay Petar Kodzas Helene Rottenberg SbSreviews@guitarfoundation.org
Sean Beavers Frank Koonce David Tanenbaum Publications Art Director: Kim Kanoy
Joanne Castellani Robert Lane Marc Teicholz kkanoy@guitarfoundation.org
Mark Delpriora
Peer Review Committee:
GFA Executive Committee Walter Clark Peter Danner
Martha Masters, President Anthony Glise William Krause
Brian Head, Artistic Director Richard Long Robert Trent
Jeff Cogan, Vice President Other reviewers may participate based on their areas of expertise.
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Cover illustration: The three guitars were reproduced from La chitarra: quattro secoli di capolavori / The Guitar: Four Centuries of Masterpieces
(Edizioni il Salabue, 2008), with the kind permission of Giovanni Accornero. The instruments were made (L to R) by Magno Graill (Rome, c.1620),
Antonio Vinaccia (Naples, 1787), and Ignacio Fleta (Barcelona, 1961).
 Letter from the Editor
By Thomas Heck
I am honored to have been asked to serve as the inaugural
General Editor of Soundboard Scholar, the new peer-reviewed
journal of guitar studies sponsored by the Guitar Foundation of
America. Those of us with academic connections in particular will
appreciate the need for this kind of vetted publication.
The goal of Soundboard Scholar is to encourage, recognize,
and publish research of the highest caliber related to the guitar.
Submission guidelines are posted on the GFA website. Publication
frequency is expected to be annual, with free distribution to all GFA
members and online sales as well.
As the General Editor, I see my job as primarily steering a con-
structive course among four players:
• our prospective contributors
• the unnamed referees assigned to give submitted articles careful
blind-review
• the requirements of the journal’s production staff
• and most importantly, our readership
Complications always arise when English is not the mother
tongue of an author. The preparation of such a submitted article for
substantive (not just stylistic) peer-review can involve many hours of
preliminary work on the part of the “acquisitions editor,” whether
myself or another colleague. (In this regard, let me thank my trans-
lator/proofreader wife, Anne Goodrich Heck, for her meticulous
editorial eye.)
While the current official roster of referees is listed on the mast-
head, other appropriate readers (who shall remain anonymous) have
already kindly agreed, when asked, to participate in the vetting pro-
cess, based on their areas of expertise. We all hope that the quality of
the results will be worth the collective effort and apparent to all.
What more does this journal need to fulfill our readers’ desires?
No doubt we should have scholarly reviews; I hope we will have
them beginning with our next issue. As the first issue (2015) goes to
press, it is a pleasure to welcome a new Reviews Editor and an old
friend—Richard Long—to the staff of Soundboard Scholar. Publish-
ers and authors are invited to send review copies of their scholarly
publications related to the guitar directly to him.
As to the question of feedback (i.e. “Letters to the Editor”),
we may all want to think in terms of an online forum for the sake
of timeliness. Co-publishing on the GFA website could meet some
other anticipated needs, as well, especially those related to space in
the printed edition of Soundboard Scholar.
Our parent magazine, Soundboard, will continue, as it has in
the past, to welcome review copies of a broad range of guitar-related
publications. Please refer to the Soundboard page on the GFA web-
site for the names and addresses of its current Review Editors.
2 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org
Left: Thomas Heck,
Soundboard Scholar
General Editor.
About Soundboard Scholar no. 1
Let me offer some introductory comments about the articles
in this inaugural issue. I have learned a great deal about the use of
guitars and derivative or related instruments in outdoor settings in
the earlier 19th century, thanks to my editorial interactions with
Greek-born scholar Panagiotis Poulopoulos (whom his friends
simply call “Panos” for obvious reasons). In his well-illustrated article
he has unearthed, among other things, a whole new (to me) meaning
of the term “harp guitar.” The period illustrations add much to our
appreciation of the topic’s cultural relevance. And of course, the
guitar in a hat awaits further exploration too!
If you are like me, you probably have felt that after the thorough
scholarship of Brian Jeffery on Fernando Sor’s life and works, little
more could be added. But such are the joys of scholarship: there
is always more to say, and there are always nuances waiting to be
discovered and discussed. Erik Stenstadvold has given us a perfect
example of how to do this in his essay on Sor in transition in the
earlier 1820s. It seems there may even have been a previously over-
looked tryst between Sor and an unnamed Englishwoman of high
estate—with unintended “consequences” influencing that decision.
Read on!
Coming forward to the latter twentieth century: for over a
decade, GFA past President John Schneider has been exploring the
legacy of Harry Partch (1901-1974), an amazingly original if uncon-
ventional American composer. Guitars attracted Partch apparently
because of the ease with which one could modify and reconfigure
their frets for desired compositional effects. The Schneider essay is
an insider’s look at Partch’s guitars and other microtonal instruments
(and their notations) by a guitarist-scholar adventurous enough to
do more than just talk the talk.
The bibliographic coda in this issue, by Ricardo Aleixo,
describes a small page of manuscript music (not autograph) hold-
ing three pieces for guitar, two of them attributed to Sor. They hint
at how popular Sor was in his day. Copyists and publishers would
liberally reissue anything that might bear Sor’s name, often with vari-
ant readings when compared to the known printed editions.
Robert Ferguson has kindly contributed, as a “Return With
Us Now” historic featured facsimile, an interesting duet by Emil
Heerbrugger from the 1830s: Grand Grecian Military March.
No. 1, 2015

Guitar Foundation of America

SOUNDBOARD
SCHOLAR
A Peer-Reviewed Journal of Guitar Studies

2 Letter from the Editor | by Thomas Heck

ARTICLES
4 The Guitar as an “Open-Air” Instrument in the Romantic Era | by Panagiotis Poulopoulos

16 Fernando Sor on the Move in the Early 1820s | by Erik Stenstadvold

26 The Microtonal Guitars of Harry Partch | by John Schneider

38 BIBLIOGRAPHICA
An Uncataloged Piece by Fernando Sor? | by Ricardo Aleixo

43 RETURN WITH US NOW …

Emil Heerbrugger’s Grand Grecian Military March in Facsimile | by Robert Ferguson

46 EDITORIAL: Guitar Research Resources – An Update | by Thomas Heck

48 Soundboard Scholar – Contributors

Back Cover Guitar Foundation of America Donor Acknowledgment

guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 3

 The Guitar as an “Open-air” Instrument in the Early Romantic Era
By Panagiotis Poulopoulos

The guitar, currently the favorite instrument of the ladies, rightly instruments were significantly altered and new portable instruments
earns the respect which is paid to her by her admirers. […] Already were developed.4 Arguably one of the most fashionable among them
the ability to carry it everywhere comfortably contributes to the would be the emerging six-string guitar.
increase of social pleasures, both in the room as well as in the garden
and in the countryside.1 The transformation of the guitar around 1800
Johann Gottlob Thielemann, Ueber die Guitarre (Berlin 1810) Although the guitar had been used to some extent in social
circles throughout the eighteenth century, around 1800 the
Come where the Aspens quiver, instrument enjoyed a new popularity. In comparison to its Baroque
Down by the flowing river; predecessors, the guitar was now mostly strung with six single strings
Bring your guitar, bring your guitar, instead of the usual five courses. Moreover, by the beginning of the
Sing me the songs I love. nineteenth century the guitar typically had fixed frets and a pegged
Song lyric by Alexander Lee (London 1830)2 bridge, a thinner and narrower body, and overall a more attractive
and comfortable form. New ways of bracing along with lighter
Introduction3 decoration and an emphasis on functionality improved its sound
A largely neglected but quite fascinating aspect of the guitar’s considerably (Figure 1).
history involves its use outdoors—al fresco—during the early nine-
teenth century. For decades academic studies have mostly focused
on the presence of the guitar either in domestic settings or in public
concerts, while relatively little has been written about the instru-
ment’s frequent presence in music-making events outside the home,
or concert hall, and even beyond the confines of the city.
Playing the guitar outdoors was not a new phenomenon around
1800. One need only recall the Baroque instrument’s frequent ap-
pearance in Watteau’s Fêtes galantes paintings of ca. 1717–21. How-
ever the vogue of music-making in the open air reached a peak in
bourgeois society during the first decades of the nineteenth century.
What lay behind this movement was the Romantic ideal of coming
closer to nature, whose allure played a significant role in contem-
porary literature, poetry, art, philosophy, pedagogy, and of course
music.
This tendency was largely the result of important cultural
changes which occurred in the western world by the end of the eigh-
teenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Influenced by
the American and French Revolutions in the political, economic and
social spheres, as well as the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revo-
lution in the theoretical and technical spheres, a new class of citizens
emerged. They now had more money, time, and curiosity for leisure
activities. Especially after the long Napoleonic wars (1799–1815),
there was an opportunity for thousands of people to live in relative
peace and quiet. In such an environment, the fine arts and music
could flourish anew.
Pictorial and verbal evidence suggests that large numbers of pas-
sionate dilettantes started taking pleasure in outdoor music-making:
while sitting in the garden or the park, during a walk with friends
in the forest, while resting after hiking in the countryside, or when
Figure 1. Guitar with case by Johann Georg Stauffer, Vienna, ca. 1810.
travelling on a weekend excursion. In order to satisfy the increasing Deutsches Museum, Munich (Accession No.: 80/473, 1–2) (© Deutsches Museum).
demand of the wider public for music to “take with,” several existing

4 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org

 The guitar was additionally changed through the use of metal
components. Firstly, the application of tuning machines with metal
gears made the tuning of the instrument easier and more reliable.
Secondly, the use of metal frets on a raised fingerboard improved the
instrument’s intonation and playability. Thirdly, the use of silk bass
strings overwound with silver or copper wire made the sound of the
guitar’s lower register stronger and better defined.5 After such crucial
technical developments, the guitar became established as a favorite
instrument for the drawing room and the salon. However, the guitar
also had several practical advantages for use outdoors, especially in
comparison to other popular instruments such as the pianoforte or
the harp.
Firstly, the guitar was pennies-on-the-pound cheaper than a
pianoforte or a harp. Newspaper ads show that in European capi-
tals such as Vienna, Paris, London or St. Petersburg, but sometimes
also in smaller cities, one could always buy a variety of inexpensive
guitars. In 1797 the author of the article “Scale for the guitar”
(“Tonleiter zur Gitarre”) in the Journal des Luxus und der Moden, an
early and highly influential German fashion magazine, remarked that
“there are numerous types of guitars, as this instrument is known in
almost every country in a different form and is played everywhere in
a different way. There are English, French, Spanish guitars etc.” They
were offered for the “lovers of this instrument, which is so highly
recommended for the accompaniment of singing in the open air and
because of its relative convenience.”6
In addition, the guitar was reckoned as easy to learn, since with
only limited training a beginner could immediately play a few chords
or an uncomplicated melody on the instrument. Furthermore, any
amateur musician could quickly tune the six strings of the guitar,
whereas for the tuning of most keyboard instruments or the harp
one needed a specialist. The influential guitarist Francesco Molino
(1768–1847), in his Nouvelle Méthode Complètte pour la Guitare ou
Lyre (Paris, 1817), mentioned among other things “the ease of learn-
ing, the speed with which the instrument can be tuned, and the
graceful pose,”7 as key merits of the guitar.
However, the biggest advantage of the guitar was its porta-
bility. In comparison to cumbersome keyboard instruments or the
unwieldy harp, the guitar was compact and light and thus easy to
transport. Already in 1801 the guitar was presented in the Journal
des Luxus und der Moden as an elegant, fashionable and, above all, a
convenient accessory for ladies:
THE GUITAR, A NEW FASHION ITEM. The guitar, since it
has been able to ingratiate itself to our beauties by its charming tone,
by its attractiv shape, by the charm which her handling gives to the
player, by its never-burdensome companionship, whether sitting,
standing, or walking, and by the ease with which one becomes familiar
with it—certainly deserves a leading position among the most
popular fashion items.8
The author reported that one could even carry the guitar,
“attractively enlaced with a colored strap according to the fashion.”9
Two years later in the same magazine the guitar was proposed as an
instrument particularly suitable for accompanying outdoor singing:
“The guitar is a lovely embellishment for the trained singer [...] Its
melodic sound surrounds his pure voice, and he is pleased to have
with him an accompaniment instrument requiring so little space in
his room, on rural outings, or in social circles [...].”10
Besides, in 1806 the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung maintained
that the guitar had won many fans owing to “its elegant, pleas-
ing form, its easy portability, its novelty, which is fashionable, the
ease of learning something on it, the low cost of the instrument.”11
For young ladies, the guitar was “a quite graceful instrument as an
accompanist of song” and “also students readily sang their songs to
the guitar and went with it from house to house.”12 Natasha, the
young heroine in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, was so amazed when she
heard “Uncle’s” singing, accompanied on the guitar, in his country
house that “[S]he resolved to give up learning the harp, and to play
only the guitar.”13
Many musical instrument makers and dealers, music teachers,
and composers were of the same opinion, most likely to enhance
their businesses. In his article “Ueber die Guitarre” (Berlin 1810),
Johann Gottlob Thielemann (1766–1821), an important manufac-
turer of guitars in Berlin (see Figure 2), wrote:
The guitar, currently the favorite instrument of the ladies, rightly
earns the respect which is paid to her by her admirers. It cannot be
denied that compared to a harp or pianoforte, it remains an imperfect
instrument; but once one is happy to accompany natural singing
with full chords, and tries to avoid all artificial tinkling, then its
advantage becomes obvious. Already the ability to carry it everywhere
comfortably contributes to the increase of social pleasures, both in
the room as well as in the garden and in the countryside, and even
its most strident critics must fall silent when on a warm summer
evening, from the dark bower, a simple song is heard from a beautiful
voice, accompanied by melancholic chords on the guitar.14
Figure 2.
Lyre guitar by Johann Gottlob Thielemann,
Berlin, 1811 (Accession No.: 64021)
(© Deutsches Museum).
guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 5
 The Guitar as an “Open-air” Instrument … (cont.)
According to Ferdinando Carulli (1770–1841), the guitar
allowed song accompaniment while walking, as he commented in
his Première suite à la méthode de guitare ou lyre ou méthode pour
apprendre à accompagner le chant, Op. 61 (Paris, 1813): “The guitar
has the advantage over the piano and the harp that it is easy to trans-
port. One can even sing and accompany oneself while strolling.”15
For the aforementioned Francesco Molino “the ease of trans-
porting it”16 was an important feature of the guitar. Around 1823
Molino invented a new guitar, clearly influenced by the construc-
tion of bowed instruments, intended to have a louder volume and
a somehow lighter weight.17 In 1824 the writer of an essay on the
guitar similarly noted that “the guitar has many recommendations.
It is easily learned, easily played, easily transported from place to
place.” He added that “one of the best qualifications of the guitar Figure 4. Die Ausfahrt [The departure]. The lithographs in Figures 4–7 are from
is its portable nature, and thus (as is so often the case) in travelling the series Die Landpartie auf den Leopoldsberg (1825) by Moritz von Schwind. The
any national air, romance, or chanson may be immediately fixed on gentleman with the mortarboard hat has an indispensable guitar strapped to his
shoulder.
the memory, or committed to paper.”18 By the mid-1820s the guitar
was already seen everywhere, as its popularity among musicians had
reached its zenith.

Nature-loving artists, idyllic countrysides, and the guitar

The rising guitar craze, humorously dubbed the “guitar-
mania” (guitaromanie) by Charles de Marescot in France around 1825,
evidently began a bit earlier in central Europe than elsewhere.
Throughout the Biedermeier19 period the instrument was “integrat-
ed into everyday life” and it “was heard on boat trips and walks.”20
The Viennese artists who belonged to the circle of the promi-
nent composer Franz Peter Schubert (1797–1828) apparently were
entertained musically with a guitar more than once during their out-
ings. In images such as the painting Ballspiel in Atzenbrugg (ca. 1823)
(Figure 3),21 or in four lithographs from the series Die Landpartie
Figure 5. Der Leopoldsberg [The arrival at Leopoldsberg]. The guitar is almost
auf den Leopoldsberg (1825) by von Schwind,22 a guitar is depicted
invisible under the arm of the gentleman with the mortarboard.
in the hands of one or another of Schubert’s friends, most likely
Johann Michael Vogl (1768-1848) or Johann Umlauff (1796–1861)
(Figures 4, 5, 6 and 7).23

Figure 3. Ballspiel in Atzenbrugg [Ball game in Atzenbrugg] (ca. 1823) by Figure 6. Das Mittagsmahl [The noon meal]. The guitarist seems to be reaching for
Franz von Schober, Ludwig Mohn, and Moritz von Schwind. his guitar after a meal.

6 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org


Figure 7. Die Nachmittagsruhe [The siesta]. Here the guitarist serenades the group
at nap-time.
The Schubert-confidant and poet Karl Theodor Körner (1791–
1813), of Dresden, frequently traveled with a guitar. He wrote,
“I always take my guitar and ramble through the neighboring
villages … the guitar … occupies me in moments when I’m
resting.”24 But also female artists, such as the court actress and singer
Corona Schröter of Weimar, who reportedly sat and sang “wearing a
flesh-colored jersey, a guitar in her arms, at one of the loveliest points
of the park,”25 employed the instrument at picturesque locations.
Evidently it was a way to enhance and make memorable their public
images.
The guitar had a similar role in other places. In Bristol,
England, a group of artists amused themselves regularly during their
summer picnics in Nightingale Valley at Leigh Woods with sketch-
ing, reciting poetry and playing the guitar. John Eagles (1783–1855),
a contemporary observer who belonged to this group, asserted that
“the guitar was, as usual, in frequent use”26 on such occasions.
Eagles wrote these florid thoughts in the beginning of the 1830s:
“The sound of the guitar … stole upon the ear with great tenderness.
[…] For here the very rocks seem to arch themselves to hear it; the
air in stillness to receive it; the waters to glide in more gently, and
fall to its cadence; it brought out the stars.”27 The tone of the guitar
was for him “so peculiarly vibrating and adapted to the open air,”28
while for later commentators the instrument was “a truly appropri-
ate accessory to the Cottage Concert, the Pic-nic, or the Fête ‘under
the Greenwood Tree.’”29 This is also documented iconographical-
ly, since depictions of guitars are found in the aquarelle A sketching
party in Leigh Woods (ca. 1830) by Samuel Jackson (1794-1869),
as well as in the half-finished sketch of the same name (1828) by
Edward Villie (1789-1859)—both members of the so-called Bristol
School of Artists.30
That the guitar should be an indispensable part of the picnic,
which was initially referred to as the “gypsy party,” was also advo-
cated in the Giulianiad (1833), the first of many guitar magazines:
In a gipsy [sic] party, also—where there must be a sprinkling of
romance, and an oblivion of the dull cares of the world … what
instrument can be listened to with so much reverence and buoyant
pleasure? … In all such situations of festive mirth and convivial
recreation, the guitar is the instrument of joy and gladness.31
The guitar was similarly used during voyages on water. In his
satirical story The Steam Excursion, originally published in 1834,
Charles Dickens describes a pleasure cruise on the Thames during
which three sisters, the “Misses Briggs,” perform, after several
comical incidents, a new Spanish composition for three voices and
three guitars for the amusement of their fellow passengers.32 A
water-borne guitar shows up a little later in Edward Lear’s
Victorian-era poem “The Owl and the Pussycat” (1871), where the
protagonists aptly float in their “beautiful pea-green boat.” The Owl
“looked up to the stars above, and sang to a small guitar ... .”
Being practical to carry around, the guitar became a con-
stant companion for many a wandering artist. Contrary to most
itinerant musicians who played for money, it seems that the more
affluent used it purely for recreation. In 1831 the renowned French
composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) took a guitar along on his
trip to Italy and played it frequently outdoors. In his own words:
I need to be on my own again. […] I take a bad guitar with me, a
double-barrelled gun, albums to make notes and a few books; such
modest baggage cannot tempt brigands, though in truth I would be
delighted to meet them.33
I am going back to mine at Subiaco. There is nothing I like more
than this life of wandering among woods and rocks, with all these
good-natured peasants, sleeping during the day beside a torrent,
and in the evening dancing the saltarello with the men and women
who frequent our inn. I entertain them with my guitar; before I came
they would only dance to the sound of the tambourine, so they are
delighted with this tuneful instrument.34
I am here, by the great waterfall; I am writing to you from the
interior of a little temple of Vesta three-quarters of which are
preserved; it is next to the inn; there is a table in the middle, perhaps
on the spot where in antiquity the sacred fire was kept. It is right on
the edge of the abyss into which the water plunges. I have just had tea
and my guitar brought to me.35
There were four or five of us sitting by moonlight around the
fountain on the little staircase which leads to the gardens; lots were
drawn for someone to fetch my guitar [...].36
Travelers like Berlioz might have been inspired by the very titles
of earlier printed guitar music, like the series Le Troubadour Ambu-
lant–Journal de Guitare (first published in 1817), in which some-
times illustrations of travelling guitarists could be found.37 These
popular publications both captured and contributed to the image of
the guitar as an apt traveling companion.
But there are also countless stylized portraits of respectable
ladies and gentlemen depicted with guitars in gardens or parks.
Perhaps the best-known is the painting by Joseph Willibrord Mähler
(1778–1860), dated 1804–1805, of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–
1827), sitting in nature holding a lyre guitar. It has also been stated
that “there are many extant paintings from the time, showing scenes
in drawing rooms, gardens, and even on boats on the river in which
guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 7
 The Guitar as an “Open-air” Instrument … (cont.)
gorgeous young women are holding equally gorgeous lyre-guitars.”38
This trend was soon exported to North America, as the paintings The
Picnic (1846) by Thomas Cole (1801–1848) or An Afternoon Concert
and Picnic on the Hudson by James McDougal Hart (1828–1901)
demonstrate. Such pictures clearly suggest that the sound of the
instrument was welcomed both indoors and outdoors.39
Guitars “on the go”– the harp guitar and the “hat” guitar
As discussed earlier, the guitar found a privileged place as an
“open air” instrument mainly due to its easy transport. But there
were also variants or hybrids of the guitar, such as the small, trian-
gular “harp guitar” developed around 1800 in London by Edward
Light (Figure 8). Being often decorated on the soundboard and
head with neoclassical floral motives evoking nature, harp guitars
were usually advertised as light and portable instruments in Regency
England.40
Figure 8. Harp guitar by Phipps & Co,
London, ca. 1800. Musical Instrument Mu-
seums Edinburgh (MIMEd) (Accession No.:
1072). The instrument, which is signed “Phipps
& Compy˙ / London” on the front of the
headstock, combines a triangular harp-inspired
body with the bridge, neck and head of a guitar.
(© MIMEd).
According to Light, harp guitars
were quite suitable for fashionable
travelers as well as for members of the
polite society seeking to continue their
musical activities at “watering places” or at “the country, garden, the
fire-side, &c.,” as evidenced in the following announcements:
MUSIC–THE NEW HARP-GUITAR, &C. The Harp-Guitar, a
most commodious, pleasant little Instrument, and now almost the
only one of the Guitar kind, used in the fashionable circles; it so
nearly resembles the real Harp, that heard, unseen, it can scarcely be
distinguished from it. The Harp-guitar […] is admirably well
calculated for travelling, or to take to watering places, &c. They are to
be had only of Mr. Light (sole-inventor), and teacher of it, at his
Musical Academy, No.9, Duke-street, Portland-place, where Ladies
and Gentlemen may receive the necessary instruction, or be attended
41
at home to any part of London, or in the Country, reasonable.
MUSIC. HARP-GUITAR, AND OTHER INSTRUMENTS […]
TO BE SOLD […] the new and much admired Harp-Guitars,
which are recommended above all others—as first, they posses the
sweet and almost perfect tone of the Harp, are very portable, the
8 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org
purchase but a small price, easy to learn […] are a most charming
accompaniment and help to the voice, &c. for convenience in
travelling, to take into the country, garden, the fire-side, &c. […].42
NEW INVENTED HARP-GUITAR, &C. MUSIC. Mr. Light thus
informs Lovers of Music, he has now a choice of his little elegant,
fashionable, and much admired Harp-Guitars […] They are
very light and portable, and of different sizes, to suit grown persons
and children, or for travelling, as a small size one of them, with a desk,
music, &c. will go within a coach seat or portmanteau.43
Light’s claims—and to a certain extent his industrious mar-
keting—are also confirmed by pictures in surviving tutors showing
ladies playing harp guitars in scenic rural landscapes (Figure 9).
Figure 9. Early nineteenth-century print showing an elegantly dressed lady playing
the harp guitar in an idyllic landscape (reproduced in Armstrong, 27).
The same image would be inconceivable, for instance, with a
double action harp by Sebastien Erard. Although reportedly 3500
harps of the “Grecian” model were sold by Erard between 1811 and
1820,44 due to its size and weight the instrument was rarely used out-
side the four walls of a Regency house, as verified in contemporary
literature and portraiture.
Some creative individuals pushed the idea of a portable
guitar even further. For instance, a small “hat” guitar is described in
the notebooks dating from 1829 (Figure 10) of Karl Wirth (1800–
1882) of Augsburg, who became a successful musical instrument
manufacturer in St. Petersburg:
GUITAR TO BE CARRIED IN A HAT. The body is a round
box as large as can fit in a hat and quite deep. The neck is attached on
the top with a setting pin and on the bottom with a screw. The tuning
pegs are inserted from the side in the headstock in which each peg
passes through a square hole from the top whereby the string is
wound on the peg. The pegs can be made of thick brass wire or ebony
and have a tuning key. On the bridge the strings can be fastened in
the usual way with endpins.45

Figure 10. The drawing and description of the “guitar to be carried in a hat”
(“Guittarre, in Hute zu tragen”) in Karl Wirth’s notebooks. Deutsches Museum,
Munich (Accession No: DMA HS7868 IV. Theil 10) (© Deutsches Museum).
That no example of Wirth’s “Guitar to be carried in a hat” is
known to have survived may suggest that his idea remained only
on paper and was never put into practice.46 Indeed one wonders if
a guitar body made to fit in a cylindrical top-hat, fashionable for
men at that time, could have provided an effective resonator, let
alone a strong and straight joint for the detachable neck. Interest-
ingly, Wirth’s notebooks also include a drawing and description of a
detachable hammer mechanism for a seven-string guitar.47 This
may indicate Wirth’s source of inspiration for his “hat” guitar, since
guitars with seven strings tuned in open G, which were typical in
Russia, often had adjustable—hence detachable—necks.48
On the other hand, almost forty years later the guitar maker
George Lewis Panormo (1815–1877), together with the celebrat-
ed guitar teacher Catharina Josepha Pratten or “Madame Pratten”
(1821–1895), developed a travel guitar with a conventional shape,
which on account of its small dimensions was called “Bambina.”49 It
is no wonder that Madame Pratten was involved in such a project,
since allegedly she “invariably took her guitar” during her visits to
Brighton, where she occasionally enjoyed practicing at the seafront.50
Regardless of their limited commercial success, such efforts in
one way or another influenced the design and manufacture of the
guitar and similar plucked and bowed instruments. From a techni-
cal perspective, more durable materials, such as metal alloys, were
now implemented for sound-sensitive parts such as bridges, frets and
tuners. Moreover, detachable parts (necks in particular) began to be
used on guitars, enabling their more effective packing and storage;
they also allowed speedy adjustments, replacements or repairs after
neck-to-body-joint damage that sometimes occurred while trans-
porting the instruments. This is evident, for example, in the remov-
able and adjustable necks used on guitars by J. G. Stauffer and other
Viennese makers, in the majority of seven-string guitars manufac-
tured in Russia in the nineteenth century, and even in some large
bowed instruments, such as cellos and double basses.51
Connections with woodwind instruments: the case of the csakan
Apart from its low cost, ease of learning and portability, the
guitar was also musically quite flexible despite its rather weak
volume. In addition to its great potential for solo music and song
accompaniment, the guitar was well suited to small ensembles. For
instance, the guitar could easily be played together with relatively
quiet, soft-sounding instruments, especially those of fixed tempera-
ment, like woodwinds or free reeds, by tuning down or “capo-ing”
up.
The musical pairing of plucked instruments with woodwinds is
quite old. Nevertheless, the “marriage” of the guitar with the csakan,
a Hungarian type of recorder often built in the form of a walk-
ing stick (Figure 11), which took place ca. 1810, made especially
good sense in a world growing ever fonder of nature and the out-
doors. The csakan—basically an oversize tenor recorder (lowest note
usually Ab), first mentioned in print in 1807—was one among
several instruments such as the violin, flute, clarinet, oboe, even
trumpet, which in the beginning of the nineteenth century were
commonly built in the form of a walking stick, or could be length-
ened with extensions to serve that purpose. The csakan was, like the
guitar, fashionable, cheap and easily portable. The dual functional-
ity that some models possessed—as a walking stick and a musical
instrument—made it an ideal device for Sunday excursions. It has
been claimed that even Beethoven used the csakan, at least to sup-
port his walking, if not to play while on the move.52
Figure 11. Csakan by Augustin Rorarius (1788-1848), Vienna, ca. 1815. Deutsches
Museum, Munich (Accession No.: 25963) (© Deutsches Museum).
The fact that the csakan was tuned in Ab was a disadvantage if
one wanted to play it with pianoforte or harp.53 However, the guitar
offered an ideal accompaniment to the csakan because, when the
guitarist tuned all the strings down a semitone,54 he or she could
easily play along using familiar chords in the left hand, particular-
ly for compositions in Eb, Ab or Db. Alternatively a musician could
simulate playing in a flat-friendly key by using a capotasto on a
normally tuned guitar’s fourth fret. The three bass strings would then
sound (ascending): Ab-Db-Bb.
From 1810 onwards, published duets for csakan and guitar
became ever more common. They were offered for sale in the larger
cities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, such as Vienna, Ofen (Pest),
and Pressburg, and in other German-speaking regions as well. For
example, already in 1813 the Variations sur l’Air “Gestern Abend war
Vetter Michel da,” by C. Scheindienst, for csakan with guitar accom-
paniment, was published in Leipzig.55 Additionally, some music
teachers offered lessons for both instruments, as shown in the follow-
ing newspaper advertisement by Johann Bauernhuber from 1825:
guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 9
 The Guitar as an “Open-air” Instrument … (cont.)
Those highly respected friends of music who want to get convenient
instruction on the guitar, flute or the csakan, should kindly leave their
addresses at the home of the undersigned (Grosse Bruckgasse no. 642
on the 2nd floor in Pest).56
There is also a technological/metallurgical link between the
csakan and the guitar. Evidence has come to light that the same alloy
of copper, zinc and nickel (known by its Chinese name, packfong)
that was used for the construction of the keys on the csakan,57 also
was found to be ideal for the manufacture of guitar frets. In 1822 the
pioneering Viennese guitar and violin maker Johann Georg Stauffer
(1778–1853) claimed the exclusive legal “privilege” to use it in that
manner.58
The successful connection of the guitar with the csakan was
strengthened when the latter became integrated in the concert life of
the Biedermeier era and caught the attention of the public. In 1810
and 1811 Anton Heberle (flourished 1806–1816), who is widely
regarded as the inventor of the csakan, together with the
guitarist and cellist Vincenz Schuster,59 gave numerous concerts in
Vienna, but also in Marburg, Ragusa (today’s Dubrovnik), Trieste and
Venice. Ernest Krähmer (1795–1837), one of the best-known
exponents of the csakan, composed the Introduction und Variationen
über ein Original-Thema für den Csakan mit Begleitung des Pianoforte
oder der Guitare,60 and possibly the Sonata tradetta per Csakan e
Chitarra da Ernest Krähma.61 Krähmer’s association with the guitar
was not coincidental, since in 1823 he had performed together with
the young guitarist Leonard Schulz (1814–1860) at a concert in
Vienna.62
Several other guitar composers and teachers, such as Franz
(Francesco) Bathioli (?-ca. 1832), Conradin Kreutzer (1780–1849),
and Wenzel Matiegka (1773–1830), wrote pieces for guitar and
csakan.63 Wilhelm Klingenbrunner (1782–1850) also played guitar
and csakan and composed works for both instruments,64 such as the
Serenade pour la Guitarre et Csákan, Op. 33 (1812).65 The enterpris-
ing Viennese publisher Anton Diabelli (1781–1858) broadened the
common repertoire of these two instruments with a wide variety of
works.66
Influences on keyboard instrument design: the case of the orphica
In view of its portability, the guitar also seems to have had an
influence on keyboard instrument design—as much as it was influ-
enced by it. The main problem with keyboard instruments, such as
the harpsichord or the pianoforte, was that they were large and quite
heavy. Already in the late eighteenth-century musical instrument
manufacturers in England and Germany had tried to equip plucked
instruments, such as the wire-strung guittar (“English guittar”)67
and the gut-strung guitar (“Spanish” or “French” guitar), with small
keyboards in an attempt to develop hybrid plucked-keyboard instru-
ments. In London the German Christian Claus (flourished 1783–
1799) patented in 1783 a “pianoforte guittar” and his idea was soon
followed by other British instrument makers.68 Similarly, in Berlin
10 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org
Figure 12. Orphica by unknown maker, possibly Vienna, around 1810. Deutsches
Museum, Munich (Accession No.: 18651) (© Deutsches Museum).
Anton Bachmann (1716–1800) introduced in 1799 a keyed guitar,69
which was “one of many similar experiments (e.g. orphica, harp-
piano) to apply the hammer mechanism of the piano to stringed
instruments.”70 The culmination of these endeavors can be seen in
the orphica, a small keyboard instrument which was invented in
Vienna in 1795 (Figure 12).
According to its inventor, Carl Leopold Röllig, the orphica was
an improved alternative to existing plucked instruments, such as the
lute or guitar, which he found problematic in many ways: “In this
way an instrument was created, whose construction is quite different
from that of the theorbo, lute, the English and Spanish zither (guitar),
and which surpasses all of them in beauty of tone and variety of
modulation.”71
Röllig maintained that the orphica could be played “sitting on
the sofa, the chair, or on the grass; on the lap, it can be held firmly
with a strap.”72 Interestingly, in Röllig’s 1795 brochure as well as in
an engraving in the Journal des Luxus und der Moden, the male and
female players of the orphica are portrayed in a natural setting.73 This
supports the notion that the instrument was designed primarily for
music in the open air. It is thus no coincidence that in England the
orphica became known as the “weekend piano.”74
Röllig named his instrument the orphica because it resembled
the form of Orpheus’s lyre. Nevertheless, it is possible that the out-
line of the orphica was equally inspired by the form of the lyre guitar
which was in fashion around 1800.75 August Harder (1775–1813),
in his Neue vollständige theoretische und praktische Guitarre-Schule
(Berlin ca. 1820),76 remarked that during this time guitars were
frequently built in the form of a lyre77 or a lute—two instruments
that Röllig evidently hoped his orphica would replace. For instance,
the orphica in Röllig’s brochure is described and drawn with a kind
of “capotasto” (transposing) mechanism, typically used on the necks
of plucked instruments. It also appears that certain strings on the
orphica were sometimes retuned to favor certain keys, as on the lute
or guitar.78 He also highlighted that “the orphica in relation to the
choice of instruments stands as an intermediate species between the
lute and the fortepiano.”79 Röllig was certainly familiar with the
plucked instruments he mentioned in his brochure and presumably
played some of them himself, since a lute was listed in his will.80
Röllig’s idea of combining a portable string instrument with
some kind of keyboard mechanism was subsequently imitated by
other inventors,81 although their efforts seemed destined more for
an interior environment—a drawing room or salon—than for the
rugged outdoors. In France in 1806, Joseph-Anne-Adolphe le
D’Huy, from Coucy-le-Château in Aisne, devised a “lyre organ-
isée.”82 This instrument was essentially a large lyre guitar with three
necks and six key-levers fixed on the bass side of the soundboard,
intended for the hammering of the strings of the middle neck.
Even as late as 1839, when the fashion of the lyre guitar had
waned, Frédéric Fischer, an ivory turner in Paris, experimented with
the same principle on his “Piano-lyre.”83 Despite its name, this was
neither a piano nor a lyre-like instrument, but a conventional guitar
with a keyboard mounted externally on its soundboard. All these
initiatives to convert the guitar or similar plucked instruments into
portable keyboard instruments by means of internal or external
mechanisms, proved to be less than successful from an aesthetic,
functional or commercial viewpoint.
The orphica had the same fate. Later versions of the instrument
were so heavy that carrying them around with a shoulder strap, as
illustrated in contemporary images, must have been quite a strain.84
Hence the orphica gradually disappeared. The merits of her voice
aside, she now rests peacefully in the world of museums.85
Conclusions
The turn of the nineteenth century witnessed not only the
Europe-wide acceptance of a standard or typical six-string guitar—
the instrument of Sor, Giuliani and their contemporaries, but also
some novel experiments aimed at making the instrument more prac-
tical, more versatile, or more fashionable in public places. The guitar,
like other “open-air” instruments that were developed around 1800,
was affordable, elegant, comfortable to hold and play, relatively easy
to learn and, above all, portable. In addition, through its use in out-
door music-making the guitar became associated with “nature” in
the Romantic sense, signifying both the pastoral and the idyllic.86
Thus, although frequently criticized in the press for its weak volume,
the guitar and its variants clearly remained desirable in the eyes of
enthusiastic amateurs and professional musicians alike, who often
used such instruments to recapture outdoors the musical experiences
that they enjoyed at home or in the concert hall.
This largely explains the introduction in London of the small,
triangular harp guitar as a substitute for the harp among travelling
music lovers. The same factors led to the invention in Vienna of
the orphica, a string instrument-cum-keyboard offered as a portable
alternative to the piano.
Many experiments, from Wirth’s “guitar to be carried in a hat”
in St. Petersburg to Fischer’s “piano-lyre” in Paris, were responses to
a demand for new musical instruments in small, compact forms.
In the early (pre-1820) Biedermeier period, both the fashion-
able csakan and the equally popular guitar attracted enthusiastic
audiences, probably because of their playability coupled with the
availability of easy Spielmusik (including duets) in handsome
editions. Later, both instruments were taken up by virtuosi and
acquired whole new musical identities.87
From the 1830s forward, several portable free-reed instruments,
such as aeolinas, accordions, harmonicas, concertinas, harmoniums,
or the guitar-like mélophone,88 proved themselves to be capable sub-
stitutes for the piano or organ. Iconographic evidence suggests that
such handy “squeeze-boxes” were sometimes used outdoors along
with a guitar for song accompaniment.89
The guitar in its various travel-friendly guises, along with such
unique inventions of the early Romantic era as the csakan and the
orphica, clearly indicate important crosscurrents among musical in-
struments in one of the most fascinating periods of music history.
After two centuries in relative silence, it is now time to re-create their
enchanting sounds—preferably on a warm summer evening under
blue skies.

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12 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org

ENDNOTES
1 Cited in Hurttig 133. Original German in note 14, infra. For the reader’s convenience, the contemporary quotations which follow have been included in their original
language as footnotes, and translated freely in the main text. In all quotations the original spelling and punctuation has been retained, while the use of italics for emphasis is
the author’s. The author is grateful to Petra, Lea and Gerhard Fixl for their help with translations of historical sources used in this article. The author would also like to thank
Thomas Heck for his careful editorial work and for his useful suggestions during the preparation of this article.
2 The quotation is the first verse of Come where the Aspens quiver / a Ballad/ sung by / Mrs. Waylett / at the / Theatre Royal Drury Lane / composed for her by / Alexander
Lee / Arranged for the / GUITAR / by / B. Sperati. The song was composed about 1830; the guitar version dates from ca. 1843; a modern edition appears in English
Romantic Songs & Ballads of the Early 19th Century with Guitar Accompaniments of the Period, ed. Brian Jeffery (Tecla Editions, 1983).
3 An earlier and shorter version of this article was recently published in German. See Poulopoulos, “Das Musizieren im Freien.”
4 For an overview of these instruments see Meer, 259–272.
5 For the development of the guitar around 1800 see Schlegel and Lüdtke, 322–330; Hofmann, Mougin, and Hackl, 44-95; and Focht, 17–29. For various examples of
guitars built during the early nineteenth century (ca. 1800–1830) see Wedemeier, 24–55.
6 “Es giebt bekanntlich mehrere Arten von Guitarren, da dies Instrument fast in jedem Lande auf eine andere Weise einheimisch ist, und überall anders gespielt wird. Es gibt
englische, französische, spanische Guitarren u.s.w. [...] Liebhaberinnen und Liebhabern dieses für die Begleitung des Gesanges im Freyen und wegen seiner passenden
Füglichkeit so empfehlungswürdigen Instruments.” Anonymous, “Tonleiter zur Guitarre,” 24–25.
7 “la facilité de l’apprendre, la vitesse avec laquelle on peut le mettre d’accord, et la pose gracieuse.” Molino, Nouvelle Méthode Complètte, 14.
8 “Die Guitarre, ein neuer Modeartikel. Die Guitarre, seitdem sie bei unsern Schönen durch ihren bezaubernden Ton, durch ihre niedliche Form, durch den Reiz, den ihre
Handhabung der Spielerin giebt, durch ihrer weder beim Sitzen noch beim Stehen oder Gehen je lästige Gesellschaft und durch die Leichtigkeit mit ihr vertraut zu werden,
sich einzuschmeicheln gewußt hat - verdient gewiß unter den beliebtesten Modeartikeln eine vorzügliche Stelle.” Anonymous, “Die Guitarre, ein neuer Modeartikel,” 623.
9 “mit seinem nach der Mode gefärbten Trageband niedlich umschlungen.” Anonymous, “Die Guitarre, ein neuer Modeartikel,” 623–624.
10 “Die Ghitarre ist eine liebliche Auszierung für den gebildeten Sänger [...] Ihr melodischer Ton ründet sich um seine reine Stimme, und er freut sich, ein so wenig Raum
erforderndes Begleitungsinstrumnet in seinem Zimmer, auf ländlichen Partien, oder im geselligen Zirkel bei sich zu haben [...].” Anonymous, “Ein Wort zu seiner Zeit über
das Modeinstrument der Ghitarre,” 432.
11 “seine geschmackvolle, gefällige Form, seine leichte Transportabilität, seine Neuheit, welche durch die Mode unterstützt wird, die Leichtigkeit, etwas Weniges darauf zu
erlernen, die Wohlfeilheit des Instruments.” Cited in Michel, 36.
12 “ein durchaus anmutiges Instrument als Begleiterin des Gesanges [...] Auch Studenten sangen ihre Lieder gern zur Gitarre und zogen mit ihr von Haus zu Haus.”
Hermann, 120.
13 Tolstoy, 549.
14 “Die Guitarre, gegenwärtig das Lieblings-Instrument der Damen, verdient mit Recht die Achtung, welche ihr von ihren Verehrern gezollt wird. Zu läugnen ist es nicht,
daß sie gegen eine Harfe oder Fortepiano verglichen, ein unvollkommenes Instrument bleibt; sobald man aber zufrieden ist, kunstlosen Gesang mit vollen Akkorden zu
begleiten, und alle künstliche Klimpereien darauf zu vermeiden sucht, so springt ihr Vorzug von selbst in die Augen. Schon die Möglichkeit, sie aller Orten bequem
transportieren zu können, trägt zur Erhöhung gesellschaftlicher Freuden, im Zimmer sowohl auch im Garten und auf dem Lande außerordentlich viel bei, und selbst ihre
ärgsten Gegner müssen verstummen, wenn an einem warmen Sommerabende, ein einfaches Lied aus schönem Munde, begleitet von melankolischen Akkorden der Guitarre,

aus den dunkeln Laube tönt.” Cited in Hurttig, 133.
15 Cited in Amersfoort, 609-610.
16 “la commodité de le transporter.” Molino, Grande Méthode Complète, 1.
17 For more details see Poulopoulos, “A Pioneering Guitar Design by Francesco Molino.”
18 Cited in Page, 57–58.
19 The Biedermeier is commonly defined as the historic period from 1815 (Congress of Vienna) until 1848 (beginning of the European Revolutions). The term Biedermeier
additionally refers to a predominantly domestic culture that developed due to restrictive state policies in German-speaking regions during this time. Its distinctive style was
mostly expressed in the visual arts, interior design, literature and music. The author is thankful to his colleagues Silke Berdux and Sonja Neumann from the Department of
Musical Instruments of the Deutsches Museum for their useful remarks about musical life during the Biedermeier.
20 “in den Alltag integriert [...] erklang bei Kahnpartien und Spazierfahrten.” Hoffmann, 157.
21 The Ballspiel drawing (Figure 3) is attributed to Franz von Schober (1796–1882), with figures by Moritz von Schwind (1804–1871). Its etching is attributed to Ludwig
Mohn (1797–1857). See Weigmann XIX; see also Baldassarre 41, figure 2. A color reproduction is viewable in Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki
File:Ballspiel_in_Atzenbrugg.jpg.
23 Weigmann 41–42; see also Hofmann, Mougin, and Hackl, 251 and 253, figures 107 and 108.
23 The public domain source for Figures 3–7 is Schwind: Des Meisters Werke in 1265 Abbildungen, ed. Otto Weigmann (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1906).
Thanks to the University of Michigan for the provision of jpegs. Figure 3 is on p. xix, Figures 4 & 5 on p. 41, and Figures 6 & 7 on p. 42.
24 Cited in Mattingly, 17.
25 “in fleischfarbenen Tricot gekleidet, eine Gitarre im Arm, an einem der lieblichsten Punkte des Parkes.” Cited in Hoffmann, 155.
26 Cited in Britton, 591.
27 Cited in Britton, 592.
28 Cited in Britton, 591.
29 Cited in Britton, 591.

guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 13

 30 See Britton, 592 and 593, Figures 4 and 5.
31 Cited in Page, “The Guitar, the Steamship and the Picnic,” 5.
32 See Page, “The Guitar, the Steamship and the Picnic,” 6–7.
33 This and the following quotations by Berlioz can be found in The Hector Berlioz Website (www.hberlioz.com), searching the keyword “guitar.” Accessed December 8, 2014.
The author is grateful to Jelma van Amersfoort for pointing out Berlioz’s connections to the guitar.
34 The Hector Berlioz Website, http://www.hberlioz.com.
35The Hector Berlioz Website.
36 The Hector Berlioz Website.
37 See Amersfoort, 608, Figure 2.
38 Ophee, “The Story of the Lyre-Guitar,” 240. For instance, a lady holding a lyre guitar is depicted in the painting The Coppenrath family on a boating party (“Die Familie
Coppenrath bei einer Kahnpartie”) (1807) by Johann Christoph Rincklake (1764–1813), in the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster
(Accession No.: 3817).
39 See Wells Sarudy, “19C American picnics.”
40 For more details about the harp guitar and other instruments developed by Light see Reichenbach, 71–80, and Poulopoulos, “‘A complete Accompanyment to the Female
Voice,’” 112–113. In the last few years Hayato Sugimoto has done extensive research on the history and development of these heretofore ignored instruments and has recently
submitted a PhD thesis on this subject at the University of Edinburgh. It should be understood that the term “harp guitar” at this early date had nothing to do with the “harp
guitar” of more recent times, with its wealth of extra bass strings, as illustrated on the website of Gregg Miner, http://www.harpguitars.net, accessed February 16, 2015.
41 Morning Post and Gazetteer (London, England), 14 June 1800. The author is thankful to Hayato Sugimoto for drawing his attention to this and the following quotations
relating to the harp guitar.
42 Morning Post and Gazetteer (London, England), 15 August 1800.
43 Morning Post and Gazetteer (London, England), 19 March 1801.
44 See Griffiths, 715.
45 “Guittarre, in Hute zu tragen. Der Korpus ist einer runden Schachtel gleich so groß als es der Hut leidet und zimlich tief der Hals ist forne mit einem Stellstiften und hinten
mit einer Schraube darauf zu befestigen. Die Wirbel gehen von der Seite in das Wirbelbret in welchem von oben beÿ jedem Wirbel ein 4-eckichtes Loch durch geht worin die
Saite auf dem Wirbel gewickelt ist. Die Wirbel können von dickem Messingdrath oder auch von Ebenholz seÿn und einen Stimmschlüssel haben. Im Steege können die

Saiten auf gewöhnliche Weise mit Stifen eingesteckt werdn.” See Wirth’s “Akustik. IV Theil 1829,” as cited in Lomtev, Vol. 1, 58 and Vol. 2, 55. Next to the drawing of the
instrument it is written “better [leave] the soundboard complete and [add] holes in the back” (“besser der Resonanz [boden] ganz und in bode[n] Öffnungen”).
46 Tony Bingham, a London dealer of historic musical instruments, currently owns a curious small guitar with a removable and adjustable neck, which is not so far from Wirth’s
concept. However, the body of this instrument, which was probably built around 1800, resembles the form of a pochette (a small violin with a thin narrow body), while the
headstock is furnished with six metal dulcimer-style pins fixed vertically for the attachment of the strings. The author is grateful to Tony Bingham for providing details of this

instrument.
47 See Lomtev, Vol. 1, 63, and Vol. 2, 17.
48 For details on the historical and technical features of the seven-string Russian guitar see Timofeyev, 229–246.
49 Westbrook, “Louis Panormo,” 584, footnote 38.
50 Westbrook, “The Century that shaped the Guitar,” 7.
51 For more details on the advantages of removable and adjustable necks on guitars see Bieber, 38–45. There are also several extant “folding” theorbo lutes and bass viols, dating
from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which were made with removable necks to enable their easier transport, showing that this idea is quite old.
52 For more details on Beethoven’s connection to the csakan and for his arrangements for csakan and guitar see Tarasov, “Neues von Beethoven, 2. Teil: Csakan-Recherchen beim
großen Wiener Klassiker,” 6–9 and Tarasov, “Neues von Beethoven, 1. Teil: Csakan-Recherchen in Beethovens Konversationsheften,” 6–10.
53 See Betz, 111.
54 In Hofmann, Mougin, and Hackl, 262, it has been rather erroneously suggested that the guitar had to be tuned a third down.
55 “pour le Czakan (oder Flute douce) avec accomp. de Guitarre.” Anonymous, “Neue musikalische Werke,” 470. See also Betz, 140. About a decade later, the enterprising
Viennese publisher Diabelli & Co. brought out several duo editions, such as the Abend-Unterhaltungen für Csakan und Gitarre. A copy is at Duke University Library.
WorldCat (www.worldcat.org) references more than a hundred catalogued scores for csakan, solo and in various combinations. Accessed February 5, 2015.
56 “Diejenigen pl.t. Musik Freunde, welche auf der Guitarre, Flöte oder dem Csákán leichtfaßlichen Unterricht zu erhalten wünschen, belieben ihre Adressen in der Wohnun
des ergebenst Gefertigten (große Bruckgasse Nro 642 im 2ten Stock in Pesth) gefälligst abgeben zu lassen.” Announced in the Vereinigte Ofner und Pester Zeitung, Nr. 52
(30 June 1825), 876, as cited in Betz, 96.
57 See Betz, 79.
58 See Hofmann, Mougin, and Hackl, 58.
59 See Betz, 175. Schuster also played a kind of bowed guitar, which today is commonly known as arpeggione, and in 1825 published the Anleitung zur Erlernung des von
Herrn Georg Staufer neu erfundenen Guitarre-Violoncells. See Hofmann, Mougin, and Hackl, 60–61.
60 See, for instance, the list for Csakanmusik in the Intelligenz-Blatt of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, Vol. 35 (1833), 881.
61 Betz, 112.
62 See Stenstadvold, “‘The Worst Drunkard in London,’” 10.

14 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org

63 Bathioli composed for guitar or csakan, but no work exists by him for both instruments. On the other hand, there are two trios for guitar, viola and csakan by Kreutzer and
Matiegka respectively. See Betz, 112.
64 See Mattingly, 29.
65 Betz, 136.
66 See, for example, the list in Betz, 238.
67 The guittar, commonly known as “English guittar,” is a small plucked instrument of the cittern family which typically had ten wire strings, arranged in two single and four
double courses, tuned in open C. In most contemporary sources the instrument, which became popular in the British Isles during the second half of the eighteenth century,
is usually referred to as “guittar” (and more rarely as “guitar”); it was only by the end of the eighteenth century that it adopted its present name “English guittar.” For more
details on the history of the guittar see Poulopoulos “The Guittar in the British Isles,” 78–186.
68 For more details on the invention and further development of the “pianoforte guittar” see Poulopoulos, “The Guittar in the British Isles,” 439–549, and “The Influence of
Germans,” 68 and 74–75.
69 See Lomtev, Vol. 2, 17, footnote 40.
70 “eines von vielen ähnlichen Experimenten (z. B. Orphika, Klavierharfe) den Hammermechanismus des Pianoforte auf Zupfinstrumente anzuwenden.” See Elste 12. A keyed
guitar in the Museum für Musikinstrumente der Universität, Leipzig (Accession No.: 605), which was probably made by Anton Bachmann’s son, Carl Ludwig (1748–1809),
was unfortunately lost during WWII. See Kinsky, 170, and 172–173. Another extant keyed guitar in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Accession No.: 89.4.3145)
has an unusual body outline and is equipped with six keys on the bass side of the body. This instrument was presumably built in the early nineteenth century by Mathias
Sprenger in Karlsruhe, most likely following the design of Franz Fiala, who in 1819 received a four-year privilege to manufacture the “so-called keyed guitars invented by
him” (“auf vier Jahre, vom 1ten Jenner 1820. an, gegen die Nachfertigung und den Verkauf der von ihm erfundenen sogenannten Tasten-Guitarre”). For further details see
Michel, “Tastengitarre (Pianoforte-Guitarre).”
71 “Auf solche Weise entstand ein Instrument, das, seinem Baue nach, von der Theorbe, der Laute, der Englischen und Spanischen Zither (Cithara) ganz verschieden ist, und sie
alle an Lieblichkeit des Tones und Mannigfaltigkeit der Modulation auch weit übertrifft.” Röllig, 4.
72 “auf dem Sopha, dem Stuhle, oder im Grase sitzend, auf den Schooss, worauf sie vemittelst eines Bandes fest gehalten.” Röllig, 14.
73 See Röllig, figures 14 and 16 and Müller, table 69. These figures have also been reproduced in Vogel, 25, figure 3, and 204, figure 2; and in Birsak, 1 and 2, figure 2–4.
74 Cited in Vogel, 24–25.
75 It is important to note that by the end of the sixteenth century the orpharion, a plucked instrument with wire strings, appeared in England. The name of this instrument,
whose performance practice was similar to the lute, derived from Orpheus and Arion, both poets and musicians of the Greek mythology. For more details about the
orpharion see Gill, 14–25 Wells, 427–440.
76 Harder, 9. Harder’s Guitarre-Schule was published around 1819–1820, although it was certainly written before 1813. See Stenstadvold, Guitar Methods, 1760–1860, 108.
77 Around 1800 the word “lyre” was often used as a synonym for the guitar or similar plucked instruments. See Poulopoulos, “‘Wha sweetly tune the Scottish lyre,’” 160–161.
78 Vogel, 29–30.
79 “Die Orphica in Beziehung auf die Wahl ihrer Tonstücke, stehet als Mittelgattung zwischen der Laute und dem Fortepiano.” Röllig, 17.
80 Vogel, 23.
81 Wirth, the designer of the “hat” guitar mentioned earlier, included in his notebooks a short description and a drawing of the orphica. See Lomtev, Vol. 1, 24, and Vol. 2,
16–17.
82 See the patent number 1BA373 by Joseph-Anne-Adolphe le D’Huy (1806) in the website of the Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle (http://bases-brevets19e.inpi.
fr); search the keyword “lyre.” Accessed December 4, 2014. Some sources suggest an alternate spelling of the creator: Adolphe Ledhuy.
83 See the patent number 1BA7309 by Frédéric Fischer (1839) in the website of the Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle (http://bases-brevets19e.inpi.fr); search the
keyword “lyre.” Accessed December 4, 2014.
84 It has been claimed that a surviving orphica in the Salzburger Museum Carolineo Augusteum, Salzburg (Accession No.: B 15/24) weighed 8.80 kilos (“8,80 Kilo schwer”)
while a contemporary guitar (“Biedermeiergitarre”) weighed only about 800 grams (“nur etwa 80 Deka”). See Birsak, 3.
85 However, it is worth noting that among the surviving works for orphica there are two pieces written ca. 1796–98 by Beethoven (WoO 51). See Kopitz, 25–30.
86 The author is thankful to Silvan Wagner for his interesting remarks regarding the multifaceted character of the guitar and other plucked instruments.
87 In contrast to the original, simple (“einfacher”) csakan, which had only one key, the later advanced (“complicirter”) csakan had several metal keys and a tuning slide to

increase its compass and musical capabilities. See Betz, 17–24. Improvements in the construction and sound of the early Romantic guitar were aimed at obtaining similar
results.
88 See Bran-Ricci, 52–54.
89 See, for instance, the engraving A pleasant Viennese Sunday outing (“Ein gemütlicher Wiener Sonntagausflug”) by Vinzenz Katzler (1823-1882), Vienna, c.1875, presented in
Hofmann, Mougin, and Hackl, 17, which depicts music-making in the countryside with guitar and accordion.

guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 15

 Fernando Sor on the Move in the Early 1820s
By Erik Stenstadvold
The life and music of Fernando Sor (1778–1839) are well known
to most guitarists, thanks mainly to Brian Jeffery’s groundbreaking
work.1 In summary, Sor spent the first half of his life in Spain, but,
due to the Napoleonic turmoil, he emigrated to France in 1813 at
the age of thirty-five. It was only from this date forward that he
pursued a purely musical career. After two years in Paris, Sor moved
to London where he stayed for several years. Then, in 1823, circum-
stances led him to Russia after a brief interlude back in Paris. Finally,
in late 1826 or early 1827, he once again returned to Paris, this time
for good.
Scholars have wondered about the details of his final months in
England in 1822 and his subsequent Paris sojourn. It is well known
that Sor became romantically involved with a young ballerina at
about that time. But was she the main (indeed the only) reason he
left London, relocating first to Paris and then to Moscow? What
other factors might have influenced his travels during those pivotal
years? The purpose of this article is to throw new light on these ques-
tions and to add to our knowledge of Sor’s activities in a brief but
defining period of his career.
It is easy to forget that Sor was more than just a guitarist and
guitar composer. It may perhaps be somewhat fanciful to call him “a
reluctant guitarist,” as Wolf Moser has done,2 but it is quite clear that
in certain periods of his career, guitar-related activities were only a
part, sometimes even a minor part, of his total musical undertakings.
This was particularly apparent during his London years.3
Some eight guitar works by Sor were published in England,
while his publications of piano and vocal music far outnumbered
them. Much of this music was widely acknowledged: the various sets
of Italian Arietts for voice and piano received the most enthusiastic
reviews in Ackermann’s Repository of Arts and elsewhere. Sor’s status
in London’s musical life was notable. He was an Associate of the
Philharmonic Society and had played in the third concert of their
1817 season at the Argyll Rooms; he had also become an honorary
member of the Royal Academy of Music at its foundation in 1822.
Furthermore, two one-act ballets for which he provided the music
had been staged at the King’s Theatre in the 1821 season.
His success as a ballet composer was crowned with the three-act
grand ballet Cendrillon, which was premiered at the King’s Theatre
on 26 March 1822. It was based on the popular Cinderella tale and
choreographed by the French dancer and ballet-master, Mr. Albert
(François Decombe), who also danced a leading role as Prince Rainir.
Sor’s involvement is duly recorded, but little has been known of the
actual reception of the ballet and of the music in particular.4 Yet it
had good coverage in the press. The Morning Post published a review
the very next day:
16 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org
Every person must be well acquainted with the popular story of
Cinderella; and as the plot of this Ballet does not at all vary from the
original from whence it is taken, we shall not enter into any
particlars concerning it. The Music, part of which only is original, is
composed and arranged by Mr. Sor. The Overture of Pandore5 was
substituted for the one intended for this Ballet, in consequence of
its not being quite finished, but we understand it is to be forth-
coming on Saturday next; such of the airs as are original are very
good, and do Mr. Sor much credit: a great deal of the music is
selected from other Ballets, some from the Opera of Il Nozze de
Figaro [sic]. The scenery and decorations are entirely new, and no
expence has been spared to make this a superb spectacle, as well as
an interesting ballet. Too much praise cannot indeed be bestowed on
Mr. Albert and the Managers for the exertions they have made in
getting up so complete an entertainment.
Not all the reviews were as complimentary regarding Sor’s com-
positional merits. The Morning Chronicle (28 March 1822) wrote
that the music “is by M. Sor, a composer who generally manifests so
much genius and ability, that we were, perhaps, unreasonably, rather
disappointed by his present production.” The Examiner (31 March)
was far more laudatory:
Having been accustomed of late to much light and trifling music
in the dances, the compositions of Sor were received with double
relish. The constant succession of pleasing and original airs, with the
skillful construction of the accompaniments, mark the work of a man
of science and fine taste, and the beautiful solos for the wind instru-
ments dispersed throughout it, admirably performed as they were,
gave great variety to the general effect.
These enthusiastic reviews were topped by the voice of the
New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal (vol. 6, May 1822):
[The] music is excellent—the best, perhaps, of any Ballet-
composition that has appeared at this theatre. Some of the move-
ments are so beautiful, that, Goths as we are, we almost felt a regret at
hearing them in a ballet. The author of this music, a few selections
excepted, is Mr. Sor, a Spanish gentleman, whose arietts have, for
some years past, eclipsed every other vocal composition in this
country. Mr. Sor is the man to compose an opera for the King’s
theatre.
“Mr. Sor is the man to compose an opera for the King’s
theatre”—a flattering suggestion indeed! This, of course, never
happened. Nonetheless, Sor was involved in another operatic pro-
duction in this final year of his stay in England: Gil Blas, staged at
the English Opera House, Strand. This circumstance has attracted
but little attention in the Sor literature.6
Gil Blas—an English opera by Sor?
Gil Blas was an “Operatic Drama” with spoken dialogue, loosely
based on Alain-René Lesage’s picaresque novel of the same name.
After several delays, the opera was premiered on 15 August 1822.
Of almost Wagnerian proportions—five acts, lasting nearly five
hours—it was heavily criticized for its unbearable length, both by
the audience and the critics; for the second presentation it was cut
by an hour and a half but still considered too long. The text was a
co-production of John Hamilton Reynolds (1794–1852) and the
young Thomas Hood (1799–1845), and the music was by Sor and
a certain Matthew Moss. Unfortunately, the score is lost—quite
possibly it vanished in the fire destroying the theatre in 1830—so
we shall probably never know how much music the drama actually
contained, or how much of it was by Sor. However, a review in the
Morning Chronicle (16 Aug.) makes clear that the play had a “mix-
ture of music and dialogue,” implying that there must have been a
substantial amount of music.
Some of it has nevertheless survived. Soon after the premiere,
the overture and six songs were published in arrangements with
piano; two of them were by Sor.7 Yet there is good reason to believe
that his contribution went well beyond those two songs. An advance
notice in the Morning Post on 27 July 1822 declares that a “report
speaks favorably of the Music, some of which is in the true old
Spanish style, composed by Mr. F. Sor, the celebrated performer on the
Guitar.” Another notice on that same day in the London Literary
Gazette, stated that a “new five act Opera, … the music by Mr. Moss
and Mr. Sor, is in rehearsal at the English Opera House.” It seems
unlikely that Sor’s name would have been given such a prominent
place in the advance publicity if his role in the five-hour operatic
drama had been confined to merely two songs.
The critics were quite severe in their verdict upon the produc-
tion, partly because of its length and partly due to lack of dramatic
development, but also because the plot of the two last acts had little
or nothing to do with the original Gil Blas story. But the individual
performers mostly fared well, and the music, whoever composed it
(only two reviews mention the composer(s) by name), was positively
received by the majority of the critics. The Morning Chronicle (16
Aug.) wrote that the music “possessed a good deal of merit” and the
Examiner (18 Aug.) that it was often “feeling and elegant.” Similar
brief and general characterizations appeared in some other news-
papers and periodicals.8 Only the London Literary Gazette (17 Aug.)
was negative, stating, without mentioning Sor, that “the music by
Mr. Moss is very mediocre.”
By 8 September, there had been eighteen performances, and
the Examiner reported that future representations of Gil Blas would
be confined to the two first acts. At the premiere, these acts, which
were the ones modeled most closely on Lesage’s novel, had been best
received by the critics. Here the popular actress-singer Miss
Fanny Kelly (1790-1882) played the role of young Gil Blas at age
seventeen; incidentally, she is also reported to have learnt the guitar
under Sor.9 On 21 September, the Morning Chronicle wrote that The
Youthful Days of Gil Blas (a name now applying to the new two-
act version), “even after twenty-seven representations, goes off with
as much applause as ever.” The last performance was on 5 October
1822, when the theatre closed for the season.
With two major scenic productions in one season, Cendrillon
and Gil Blas, Sor’s future in London looked bright indeed. So why,
at the height of his fame, did he suddenly leave?
Departure from London—ballets and ballerinas
The Sor article in Ledhuy’s Encyclopédie Pittoresque of 1835,
considered to be partly autobiographical, provides no explanation
for the sudden departure.10 Here it briefly says that “Sor left London
to go to Russia” and that “on his way he found Cendrillon in rehears-
al at the grand Opéra, and could enjoy the success of his work before
continuing the journey.”11 However, Sor’s involvement with ballet
extended beyond writing music: around this time he became roman-
tically involved with the ballerina Félicité Hullin, who was invited
to Moscow as prima ballerina. Brian Jeffery suggested that she was
the reason for his departure from London and subsequent journey to
Russia.12
Félicité Hullin was a budding young dancer, still in her late
teens when Sor, in his mid-forties, began courting her; in fact, she
was only seventeen if her reported day of birth, 9 March 1805, is cor-
rect. She was the second of three dancer daughters of Jean-Baptiste
Hullin, a French dancer and ballet-master who had been engaged
for both the 1819 and 1820 seasons at the King’s Theatre.13 Félicité
was also on the roster of the King’s Theatre dancers, and the young
girl had become the darling of the audience in a Russian-style pas de
deux, La Cosaque.14 The Hullins appear regularly in announcements
of ballets in London in the first half of 1822, but disappear from the
newspapers after July. We may thus conclude that the father took
his family back to Paris, where Félicité was to prepare for her official
début at the Opéra.15 Jeffery mentions her two preliminary examina-
tions there in September and November.16
On 5 February 1823, she had the first of a series of five début
presentations under the auspices of Albert (the other presentations
were on 19 and 26 February, and 5 and 10 March). The response
after her first appearance, in which she danced a pas de deux with
Albert, was mixed. The review in the Journal de Paris (10 Feb.)
was fairly positive, whereas that of Le Miroir des spectacles (7 Feb.)
was more disapproving, stating that her dancing lacked suppleness
and harmony, and that “she jumps and does not dance.” Le Réveil
(7 Feb.) was similarly negative and remarked that one cannot dance
at the Opéra as one does at the common theatres. Anyhow, this does
not necessarily indicate that Félicité Hullin was a mediocre dancer.
The negative reviews may well have arisen as a result of the chang-
ing aesthetic in dancing: a new style with emphasis on difficult
technical feats was rapidly developing at the expense of the old
qualities of grace, ease and elegance.17 Not all critics welcomed this
development.
At some stage during this period, she presumably received
an invitation to join the Moscow Ballet. Sor and Félicité set out
guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 17
 Fernando Sor on the Move … (cont.)
together, leaving Paris during the late spring of 1823 and arriving
in Moscow in November.18 But was she in fact the reason Sor left
London?
There is no doubt that they departed England at about the same
time—Sor perhaps a month or two later—but that may have been
coincidental. There is no evidence that their romantic relationship
had commenced by this time; it may just as well have evolved later
while they were both in Paris for several months. As we shall see
shortly, Sor had his own reasons to go there.
It is not known when or in what manner Félicité received her
presumed invitation to Moscow, but it is rather unlikely that it
would have come while she was still a juvenile dancer in London.
The Russian envoys would surely have gone to Paris, the world’s
ballet metropolis, to find a new prima ballerina for their next
season.19 Thus an invitation must have come as a result of her pres-
ence there, most certainly after her official début. If so, then there
would have been no causal connection between her leaving London
and her journey to Moscow. Nor would there have been any such
connection for Sor, even if the first flowering of their relationship
had occurred in London.20
I would like to propose another, more likely explanation. When
Sor left London, he was not heading for Russia—that decision came
later—but for Paris, and the reason was the forthcoming production
of Cendrillon there. That Cendrillon was to be staged at the grand
opera must have been a special attraction for him; for the first time
his music would extend to a wide audience in Paris. It is quite un-
derstandable that he wanted to be present for that. When Sor first
arrived in Paris in 1813, he had aspired—sans succès—to become
an opera composer, as the article in Ledhuy’s Encyclopédie vividly
reports.21 So now, ten years later, he finally had the opportunity to
show Paris what he was good for with respect to music for the stage.
Certainly writing music for ballet was less significant than being an
opera composer, but a successful result would surely be noticed and
could thus prepare the ground for something more ambitious. With
London’s favorable reviews fresh in his mind, he had reason to be
optimistic.
The preparations for Cendrillon in Paris
The Ledhuy article reveals nothing about the length of Sor’s
Paris sojourn, only that he arrived during the rehearsal period of
Cendrillon. The impression one receives is that this was just a brief
interlude on the road to Moscow (an interpretation Jeffery adheres
to in his Sor monograph). It may therefore come as a surprise that
Sor was back in France already by early October 1822, five months
before the premiere, and that the preparations for the staging in Paris
were already in progress.
Cendrillon’s success in London had been noted in Paris. Shortly
after the London premiere, Le Miroir des spectacles (9 April 1822)
published a notice referring to the Morning Post review cited at the
beginning of this article. Here we also read that “Albert represents
the prince wonderfully, and this talented dancer, whom we will be
18 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org
delighted to see again in Paris, will be greatly missed in London.”
Albert, in fact, had his last appearance in London on 23 April before
he returned to France.22 And with him came Cendrillon.
There were moves to have the new ballet staged at the Opéra.
Already on 5 June 1822, another notice in Le Miroir reported that
it would not be long before Cendrillon would appear in Paris, the
selection board at the Opéra had just pronounced in favor of it.
Undoubtedly, Albert’s reputation had occasioned this. In contrast,
Sor was far less known; he had not appeared in Paris for about
seven years and, although some may still have remembered his guitar
playing from that time, none of his orchestral music had ever been
performed there.
On 4 October, Le Réveil cited a notice in the Courrier des Spec-
tacles of the previous day announcing that Sor has come from
London, where he lives, to Paris, here attending the production of
a work “for which he composed the music”23 Sor was indeed back
in France already. On 4 October he played in a soirée musicale at
Manuel García’s Paris residence. During the next six months, there
are reports of a number of concerts in which he played. We shall
return to that.
Sor’s presence during the rehearsal period of Cendrillon
was of great importance. Albert, who had produced the ballet in
London, was also the ballet-master of the Paris staging, in addition to
dancing a leading role. In this period the ballet-master not only
choreographed the dances, but was also responsible for adapting the
story for the ballet scenario in addition to being the producer of the
stage action; he was literally the compositeur of the ballet. The com-
poser of the music had a lesser role. As ballet-master, Albert would
surely have needed modifications and adjustments to the music as the
requirements of the new production arose; according to Sandra
Noll Hammond, many changes were made in the choreography and
score for the Paris performance.24 Sor’s presence secured his musical
control and made possible the implementation of necessary changes
and additions in close collaboration with Albert.
The ballet of Sor’s time was very different from the later
Romantic ballet with which we are familiar today.25 The ballet-
pantomime genre, to which Cendrillon belonged, was a mute
drama where the narrative was unfolded mainly through mimed
scenes with little or no dancing. The actual dance scenes often
comprised only about half of a ballet. The structure of most pas
followed a strict formula, and this made it challenging for a com-
poser to create music with sufficient variety and dramatic develop-
ment to prevent monotony. Sor did not avoid that criticism, as we
shall see.
The music was often an amalgam of music composed for the
occasion and re-arrangements of familiar musical material by other
admired composers. The London production of Cendrillon had con-
tained a fair amount of borrowings (including extracts from Mozart’s
Le Nozze di Figaro) as the Morning Post review indicated; the Paris
production was similar in that respect. This practice was encour-
aged by many critics; the rationale was that well-known music could
serve useful programmatic ends. In a long discourse on ballet music
from 1822, the influential critic Castil-Blaze argued that a recog-
nizable opera air, even shorn of its words, preserves a memorable
expression that could help to clarify the enigmatic language of the
mime. However, to Castil-Blaze, there was an additional, purely
musical dimension: most composers were not able to write ballet
music of sufficient quality to sustain the musical attention through-
out a whole spectacle. The inclusion of familiar music would thus
also raise the musical appeal of a ballet.26 There was nonetheless a
growing tendency through the 1820s and early 1830s to produce
ballet scores with fewer borrowings and more originally composed
music, although this was a hotly debated issue.27 Sor was, in fact,
criticized for not incorporating more borrowed material.
On 25 November 1822, the Journal de Paris reported that Cen-
drillon would be performed immediately after Sapho, a new opera
by Anton Reicha. The premiere was scheduled for early January.
However, on 6 January 1823, the Journal de Paris announced that
the ballet would not be put on until the beginning of February.
But there were further delays. On 3 February, Le Réveil gave notice
that Cendrillon was to be staged in the course of that month. That
did not happen either, as the premiere finally took place first on 3
March. The set designer, Monsieur Cicéri, was answerable for the
postponements, at least partially; he was criticized for having taken
two months to create his sumptuous scenery, thereby delaying the
production.28
Concerts in Paris
Sor appeared in a number of concerts in the French capital
during this long production period. Jeffery includes one reference to
a concert in February 1823, originally reported in the Harmonicon.29
Furthermore, Luis Briso de Montiano has recently shown that Sor
participated in some private concerts at the Paris residence of the
celebrated Spanish tenor Manuel García at the end of 1822.30 I have
found further details of these events, along with references to several
other concerts; thus we now know of some eleven or twelve occa-
sions between October 1822 and April 1823 when Sor performed
in Paris.
It appears that Manuel García took Sor under his wing during
the first months; the majority of the concerts in 1822 occurred
either at García’s residence or at the premises of the Cercle harmo-
nique, an exclusive concert series and venue run by him.31 García
and Sor would have known each other from London where they had
performed in the same concert on at least one occasion.32
Several of the concerts were reviewed, indicating that the key
performers were prominent members of the Paris musical scene.
Sor’s guitar playing was considered extraordinary despite the fre-
quent disparaging comments about the instrument per se.33 He was
unanimously praised for his performances, in some cases even hailed
as the highpoint of the evening. This notwithstanding, only one of
his own two benefit concerts occasioned a faint echo in the press.
Relatively few reports of Sor’s actual performances have yet
come to light; the Sor-related parts of the reviews are therefore pre-
sented here in their entirety.34 (The original French text of all the
quotations are in the Appendix. For easy cross-reference, they are
provided with identification numbers.)
1822
4 October. A soirée musicale at Manuel García’s residence:
Mr. Sor gained all the applause with his guitar: it is impossible to give
greater charm to such an unrewarding instrument. The guitar can be
taken no further. – Journal de Paris, 8 Oct. (A1)
9 October. A second soirée musicale at García’s residence:
Mr. Sor, the Amphion of the guitar. – Journal de Paris, 14 Oct. (A2)
27 November. Inauguration of the Cercle harmonique:35
… a guitar solo performed by Mr. Sor, who has brought this
instrument to the highest degree of perfection.
– Le Miroir des spectacles, 1 Dec. (A3)
The review mentions that other instrumentalists included the
violinist Francesco Vaccari (Francisco Vacari) and the young pianist
Henry Herz, in addition to some singers. Le Miroir claimed that
the audience numbered more than six hundred, the Journal de Paris
(2 Dec.) that it was nearly four hundred.
13 December. Sor gave a concert at the premises of the Cercle
harmonique.36 No proper review has come to light, but there is a
brief mention in connection with an announcement of a new Vaccari
concert:
The concert given by Mr. Sor, the guitarist, in the beautiful premises
of Mr. Garcia, attracted a large and very brilliant audience.
This virtuoso received much applause, and deserved it.
– Le Miroir des spectacles, 19 Dec. (A4)
Sor’s concert had been announced in Journal de Paris (13 Dec.),
according to which many unnamed French and foreign artists par-
ticipated. Sor probably performed his Cinquième Fantaisie, Op. 16,
which was published in early 1823 (see below).
15 December. Concert of the young pianist, Mlle. Elisa Berlot. Two
reviews are known:
The third concert of Miss Berlot the day before yesterday attracted
a large and brilliant gathering … but the repeated bravos, testimonies
of the most vivid and unanimous satisfaction, were bestowed on
Miss Berlot … and Mr. Sor, who was heard three times on the guitar.
This amateur has charmed the audience with the perfection, the
lightness and the method he demonstrated in the performance of
various pieces that he played. Under the fingers of Mr. Sor, the guitar
is no longer an instrument limited in its resources, cold in its
guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 19
 Fernando Sor on the Move … (cont.)
expression, soundless and tedious; it is a harp, a dazzling clavier, a
harmonious viol. As a performer, Mr. Sor has without question no
equal; as a composer for the guitar, he has few rivals. – Le Miroir des
spectacles, 17 Dec. (A5)
... but the honors of the evening were for Mr. Sor, who drew forth
the most ravishing sounds from his guitar. – Le Réveil, 18 Dec. (A6)
24 December. Concert of Vaccari at García’s residence (or, more
probably, the premises of the Cercle); unclear if Sor also partici-
pated.37 (Announced in Le Miroir des spectacles, 17 Dec.)
1823
16 January. Concert of the violinist Chevalier Michel Ange
Lagoanère at the salons of M. Dietz. A great number of contributing
performers, including Sor. (Announced in Le Miroir des spectacles,
9 Jan.)
2 February. Concert of Joseph Guillou, first flute at the Opéra and
professor at the Conservatoire.38 Other performers included the
famous violinist Pierre Baillot. According to an announcement in
the Journal des Débats (2 Feb.), Sor played an unspecified Air varié.
Two reviews are known:
Mr. Baillot was heard with amazement rather than pleasure ... Mr.
Soor [sic], in contrast, charmed everyone with the graceful harmonies
he drew from his guitar. Under the fingers of this amateur, the guitar
is no longer that thankless clavier from which barely a few sounds
escaped before he questioned it; now it is an instrument whose vocab-
ulary is established. It expresses what it could only hint at before;
[now] it speaks, formerly it stuttered. Who knows if Mr. Soor will not
one day be called the Racine of the guitar? – Le Miroir des spectacles,
3 Feb. (A7)
The guitar is an instrument whose resources are quite limited, and
which up to now has only served to accompany romances and light
songs. In the hands of Mr. Soor, it becomes the faithful and expressive
interpreter of the most varied inspirations, and what he can draw
from it is truly prodigious. Whoever has not heard Mr. Soor play
the guitar can never conceive that this praise still falls short of the
truth. – Journal de Paris, 3. Feb. (A8)
6 March. Sor, “le célèbre guitarriste,” gave a soirée musicale at the
salons of M. Dietz. No further details known. (Announced in Le
Miroir des spectacles, 5 March.)
8 March. Concert of the pianist Henry Herz at the salons of M.
Pape. Other contributors included Gustave Vogt, celebrated oboist
and professor at the Conservatoire. Sor played an unspecified Air
varié according to an announcement in the Journal des Débats (8
March).
20 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org
Mr. Vogt and Mr. Soor each achieved on his own instrument the
success to which they have long been accustomed. Everyone knows
how the former makes the oboe speak; the latter succeeded in making
the guitar do the same, which is more difficult. Carcassi is the only
guitarist who can be compared to Mr. Soor. —Le Miroir des spectacles,
11 March. (A9)
19 March. Another concert of the pianist Elisa Berlot. Sor played an
unspecified solo as announced in Le Réveil (18 March).
13 April. Another concert of Lagoanère. The young harpist
Théodore Labarre, Guillou (flute) and Sor were among the
participating instrumentalists. (Announced in the Journal de Paris,
12 April.)
The reception of Cendrillon in Paris
Cendrillon was finally premiered on 3 March 1823. It was a
great success, not least due to Cicéri’s lavish stage settings. It was per-
formed over a hundred times, and staged anew in Paris several times
during the next decades.39 Previous writers have generally agreed
that the performance also was a great triumph for Sor the compos-
er. Nonetheless, few contemporary reviews have been known; the
conclusion seems mainly to be founded on the success of the ballet
as a whole.40 Cendrillon was, however, duly reviewed in the press
although, as was the norm with ballets, the music was in most cases
treated only summarily at the end.
The reviews disclose a wide range of opinions, from quite
complimentary to highly critical, no doubt reflecting differences in
musical taste and perhaps expertise. The Journal de Paris (8 March)
carried a brief but generally encouraging comment:
The music of this ballet, which we owe to Mr. Sor, already known
as an excellent guitarist, has shown us once more that he is a pleasing
composer. One might wish for more new ideas in it, but it has grace
and vivacity. (A10)
Le Moniteur Universel (12 March) was less convinced, but not
all negative:
Mr. Sor, who performs wonders on the guitar, has not done so in
composition; but the music is pleasing, light, and there are some
[borrowed] masterpieces that he has adapted skillfully. (A11)
Le Miroir des spectacles published a brief notice on Cendrillon
the day after the premiere and remarked that the music was “lively
and graceful” (A12). However, in a comprehensive report appearing
after the third performance, on 10 March, the reviewer had changed
his opinion; the music had faded upon repeated hearing: “I am
almost tempted to retract the praises I have given to the music of
Cendrillon. If one makes an exception for the overture, it is uniform
and mediocre” (A13).
 The most extensive but also most disapproving reviews of the
music appeared in the Journal des Débats and the Gazette de France
(both on 10 March). In the former, Castil-Blaze wrote:41
The music of Mr. Sor, one has to admit, is far from according with
what one has the right to require from an artist in the creation of a
work as important as a ballet in three acts and in a theatre such as
that of the Academie royale de musique; he had to struggle, moreover,
against fearsome competition from the excessively light but very
inventive Nicolo [Isouard], and from the composer [Gioachino
Rossini] who, today, receives the plaudits of Europe.42 Too proud to
make useful borrowings from them, too weak to carry out the equiv-
alent, he has had to suffer by comparison. One is hard put to explain
how a performing artist, who has earned for himself a well-deserved
reputation as a guitarist, could suddenly have raised himself from the
niceties proper to that instrument to the vast and sublime concep-
tions of a grand dramatic action, interesting and impassioned; for it is
precisely from this angle that M. Albert has envisaged his subject.
However, the weakness of the music has not at all limited the success
of the work; the ears were indulgent because the eyes were fully
satisfied. (A14)
The anonymous reviewer of the Gazette de France followed in
the same footsteps:
Albert should boast all the more justifiably of success … The scene A similarly divided attitude cannot be seen in the London reports.
-maker and the scene-shifter will have still more reasons to share
it than the composer of the music. After an excessively noisy overture,
there follows a crowd of little airs of an extreme thinness and pallor,
one after the other; still, their greatest fault is not this weakness: it is
that they portray nothing, call nothing to mind and that, in a word,
they speak no more to the soul than to the ear. It is said that Mr. Sor
is the premier man in the world for the guitar; Cendrillon will
probably not bring him the same reputation as a composer of
imitative and danceable music. (A15)
Sor was not left much honor by these two critics; his music
seemed to lack originality and dramatic strength, qualities neces-
sary to carry the weight of a full-length three-act scenic production.
These are harsh judgments on someone who hoped to become an
opera composer. After the generally encouraging response in Lon-
don, such diatribes must have been disappointing. Yet they must
be seen in the broader context of the changing aesthetics of ballet
music at the time, and the fact that many writers opposed the shift
toward greater use of original (rather than borrowed) music in the
scores. It should also be remembered that this was right at the begin-
ning of a Rossini craze in Paris. Since, in the opinion of Castil-Blaze,
Sor’s music could not compare in quality with the scores of the two
most renowned composers of operas about Cinderella, Rossini and
Isouard, he ought to have borrowed from their works in order to
raise the musical standard of Cendrillon.
In the eyes of the critic of the Gazette de France, the greatest
fault of Sor’s airs was not their “extreme thinness and pallor” (in itself
a calamitous characterization), it was that they depicted nothing—
that is, they lacked the necessary qualities for describing musically
the story of the ballet. However, the writer alludes to music’s de-
scriptive or imitative function in broader terms. By the reference to
imitative music, musique imitative (a term which in this context has
nothing to do with imitative counterpoint), he adhered to a notion
dominating much discourse on music in France at the time, and
which had done so since Rousseau and the encyclopedists: instru-
mental music, in order to have any sense or meaning, should imitate
or evoke human sentiments or natural phenomena.
Despite such biting reviews, the sheer number of performances
of Cendrillon shows that the general public were enthusiastic—per-
haps because “the ears were indulgent because the eyes were fully
satisfied,” but perhaps also because Sor’s musical style may have
resonated better with the taste of ordinary audiences. Le Miroir des
spectacles suggested this by remarking after the premiere that “Mr.
Sor, composer of the music, Mr. Cicéri creator of the sets, and Mr.
Albert, composer of the ballet, were vigorously called for.” (A12)
As we have seen, there was a striking contrast in the Paris recep-
tion of Sor as guitarist and composer for that instrument, and of him
as composer of “real” music. A certain derogatory tone is evident in
the two final Cendrillon reviews: it is impossible for a guitar player,
even the best, to rise “from the niceties proper to that instrument.”
But there Sor had been able to build his reputation through several
years of activity and networking. It is interesting to note that, when
Cendrillon was restaged in London in 1834, the review in the Morn-
ing Post was quite different from that of the same paper twelve years
earlier, cited at the beginning of this article. This may, of course,
reflect a significant change in musical taste in general and in relation
to ballet music in particular, but it may likewise reflect the fact that
Sor’s name was now apparently unknown to the reviewer:
The music, composed by a Monsieur Sor, possesses very little that
requires notice. It is exactly that sort of monotonous trifling which
would never take away the admiration of the audience from the
proceedings on the stage. (The Morning Post, 7 May 1834)
Guitar compositions and publications
During the half year Sor stayed in France, or just after, several
of his guitar works were published by Meissonnier, his regular Paris
publisher. They would have been opp. 16-20, the arrangement of
the Marche from Cendrillon, and perhaps also Op. 15a. Of these,
the Cinquième Fantaisie, Op. 16, was advertised in Le Miroir des
spectacles on 25 February 1823, with the note “performed with
success by the composer at his concert.” This refers most certainly to
the concert of 13 December 1822.43
Sor had appeared together with the violinist Francesco
Vaccari on at least one occasion in the final months of 1822. This
casts new light on the origin of op. 21, Les Adieux, which was pub-
lished in 1824 and dedicated to him. Previously it was only known
that the two musicians met in London in 1815/16, and it has thus
guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 21
 Fernando Sor on the Move … (cont.)
been assumed that the work somehow originated at that time.44
However, their reunion in Paris in 1822 makes this the most proba-
ble time of the origin.
The work exists in two distinct early editions. One was pub-
lished by Meissonnier in Paris in the fall (before November) of 1824,
and titled Les Adieux. The other had the Spanish title La Despedida
(with the same literal meaning), and was published in Madrid by
Bartolomé Wirmbs at his Establecimiento de Grabado y Estampa-
do; it was advertised in the Gaceta de Madrid on 29 April 1824.
It is reasonable to assume that, in Paris, Sor had given a copy of
his manuscript to Vaccari, who arranged with Wirmbs to have it
published when he was back in Spain for a brief period in the fall of
1823.45 However, I disagree with Brian Jeffery that this makes the
Wirmbs edition a better or more reliable source than the Meisson-
nier edition.46 The Meissonnier edition is almost certainly not based
on that of Wirmbs, as Jeffery claims; the divergences—although
mostly minor—are too abundant and of a kind strongly suggesting
that the two printed versions were prepared independently of each
other, from different manuscripts. I agree with Kenneth Hartdegen
that the Spanish edition has many notational details suggesting that
it was edited by a violinist, doubtless Vaccari himself.47 Thus this is
not a more reliable source (in the sense that it reflects purely Sor’s
original text) than the edition of Meissonnier, to whom Sor would
have given another copy of the music before leaving Paris. In fact, it
may be less reliable.48
Leaving Paris again
Within a month or two after the premiere of Cendrillon, Sor
left Paris. The most apparent reason was Félicité Hullin and her al-
leged invitation to Moscow. However, there was in fact a more ur-
gent cause: He was forced to leave. As observed by James Radomski,
a shift in the political winds made Spanish liberals personae non
gratae in France in 1823.49 A civil war had broken out in Spain; King
Fernando VII appealed to France for help to quell the struggle of
the liberal constitutionalists. A French royalist army under the Duc
d’Angoulême entered Spain in the spring of 1823.
The position of Spanish liberals in Paris became more and more
delicate, and in March they were formally expelled. On 13 March,
the Journal des Débats announced that “the Spaniards who are in
Paris have received the order to leave at once,” and on 27 March
it reported that “the Spaniards who are in Paris are preparing to
depart.”50 Manuel García headed towards London, probably in
late March;51 Francesco Vaccari had crossed the Channel already in
February.52
The departure to Russia should be seen in this light. Having
commenced a romantic relationship with Félicité Hullin, and real-
izing that he could not remain in Paris in any case, Sor probably felt
that casting his lot with Hullin and heading east with her were good
options. The last report of a concert in which he played in Paris was
in mid-April. Likewise, there are no further notices in the press of
Félicité after that time either,53 so they probably left soon after.
22 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org
Was Sor invited to Russia?
Sor may in fact have played a more decisive role in this new move
than normally assumed. A newspaper notice from Warsaw, where the
party halted for a week or two in October 1823, states that Sor was
on his way to Moscow, “where he has been summoned to arrange
and compose ballet music.”54 This indicates that he went to Russia in
his own right, not merely as Félicité’s consort, and that he had been
invited there by virtue of his proficiency as a ballet composer.55
Were Sor and Félicité married? We do not know with certainty;
there was nothing unusual in ballerinas having affairs with older,
wealthy men—“liaisons sweeten almost every ballerina biography,”
as Lynn Garafola has succinctly remarked.56 The backstage of the
Opéra was a privileged venue of flirtation and dalliance, often an
opening for a kind of “prostitution légère.”57 On the other hand,
in contemporary Russian sources and later ballet literature, Félicité
Hullin is regularly named Hullin-Sor. And after their split in 1826,
when Sor returned to Paris, she remained single in the sense that
she did not marry until as late as 1838 or 1839 (sources differ).
This seems to indicate that they indeed had been married and, if
they received the Catholic sacrament of marriage, they remained so
when they parted. Sor died in 1839, making it only then possible for
Félicité to remarry.
Postscript
As this article was about to be printed, Gerhard Penn informed
me of a most interesting notice in a Viennese journal of early 1834,
there reprinted from a Berlin newspaper of about the same time:
Fernand [sic] Sor, who earlier had caused a sensation in London
... and soon had become a favorite of the ladies, found himself
compelled to leave London and England all of a sudden and to hurry
over to the beckoning coasts of France because of an amorous
adventure involving one of the leading families, which was of
consequence.58
An amorous affair “of consequence” almost certainly alludes to
Sor having fathered an illegitimate child. This, of course, may have
been just a baseless rumor. However, Sor stayed for some time in
Berlin on the way to Russia in 1823, and it is quite possible that this
story, recounted years later by the writer of the Berliner Figaro, had
become generally known at that time.
If Sor were involved in such a scandal, he may well have been
ordered to leave England. For a woman of high society to bear a
child outside marriage was, at that time in Britain, an utter disgrace.
Under such circumstances, a person of influence could easily have
pulled the strings to get Sor banished from British soil.
For the time being, we have no further information that can
verify or refute this titillating tale. If there is some truth to it, the
forthcoming opening of Cendrillon in Paris would have come to
Sor as manna from heaven. It also supports my assumption that his
romantic relationship with young Félicité Hullin would have com-
menced after he had left London—unless, of course, he had been
riding two horses at the same time.
Appendix
French source documents.
Concert reviews Reviews of Cendrillon
A1: Journal de Paris, 8 Oct. 1822. A10: Journal de Paris, 8 March 1823.
M. Sor enleva tous les suffrages sur la guitare : il est impossible de donner plus de La musique de ce ballet, due à M. Sor, déjà connu comme un excellente guitariste,
charme à un instrument aussi ingrat, c’est le nec plus ultrà de la guitare. nous a de plus montré en lui un compositeur agréable. On pourrait y désirer plus
d’idées neuves, mais elle a de la grâce et de la vivacité.
A2: Journal de Paris, 14 Oct. 1822. M. Sor, l’Amphion de la guitare.
A11: Le Moniteur Universel, 12 March 1823.
A3: Le Miroir des spectacles, 1 Dec. 1822.
M. Sor, qui fait des prodiges sur la guittarre, n’en a pas fait un en composition ;
… un solo de guitare exécuté par M. Sor qui a porté cet instrument au plus haut
mais elle est agréable, facile, et il y a des morceaux de maître habilement adaptés.
degré de perfection.
A12: Le Miroir des spectacles, 4 March 1823.
A4: Le Miroir des spectacles, 19 Dec. 1822.
Une musique vive et gracieuse… M. Sor, auteur de la musique, M. Cicéri des
Le concert donné … par M. Sor, le guitariste, dans le beau local de M. Garcia,
décorations, et M. Albert, auteur du ballet, ont été vivement demandés …
avait attiré une nombreuse et très-brillante compagnie. Ce virtuose a reçu beaucoup
d’applaudissemens, et les a mérités. A13: Le Miroir des spectacles, 10 March 1823.
Je serais presque tenté de rétracter les éloges que j’avais accordés à la musique du
A5: Le Miroir des spectacles, 17 Dec. 1822.
ballet de Cendrillon. Si j’en excepte l’ouverture, elle est uniforme et médiocre.
Le troisième concert de Mlle Berlot avait attiré avant-hier une assemblée nombreuse
et brillante. La clarinette de M. Frédéric Duvernoy, la flute de M. Nermel, le violon A14: Journal des Débats, 10 March 1823.
de M. Nargeot, et la voix agréable de M. Romagnési ont été vivement applaudis La musique de M. Soor, il faut l’avouer, est loin de répondre à ce qu’on avoit droit
; mais les bravos réitérés, les témoignages de la satisfaction la plus vive et la plus d’exiger d’un artiste qui se produit dans un ouvrage aussi important qu’un ballet
unanime ont été prodigués à Mlle Berlot … et à M. Sor qui s’est fait entendre trois en trois actes et sur un théâtre tel que celui de l’Académie royale de musique : il
fois sur la guitare. Cet amateur a séduit tout l’auditoire par le fini, la légèreté et la avoit d’ailleurs à lutter contre une concurrence redoutable, avec le trop facile mais
méthode qu’il a déployés dans l’exécution des morceaux différens qu’il a joués. Sous très ingénieux Nicolo, et avec le compositeur qui enlève aujourd’hui les suffrages
les doigts de M. Sor, la guitare n’est plus un instrument borné dans ses ressources, de l’Europe : trop fier pour leur faire d’utiles emprunts, trop foible pour soutenir le
froid dans son expression, insonore et fastidieux ; c’est une harpe, un clavier brillant, parallèle, il a dû souffrir de la comparaison. On a de la peine à s’expliquer comment
une viole harmonieuse. Comme exécutant, M. Sor n’a sans doute point d’égal ; un artiste exécutant qui s’est fait sur la guitare une juste réputation, auroit pu s’élever
comme compositeur de guitare, il compte peu de rivaux. tout à coup du genre d’agrémens qui sont propre à cet instrument, aux vastes et
sublimes conceptions d’une action dramatique grande, intéressante et passionnée ;
A6: Le Réveil, 18 Dec. 1822.
car c’est uniquement sous ce point de vue que M. Albert a envisagé son sujet.
…mais les honneurs de cette soirée ont été pour M. Sor, qui a tiré les sons les plus
Cependant la foiblesse de la musique n’a point nui au succès de l’ouvrage ; les
ravissans de sa guitare.
oreilles ont été indulgentes, parce que les yeux étoient pleinement satisfaits.
En nous rappelant l’impression générale que le talent prodigieux de cet artiste a
produite, nous ne doutons plus du succès merveilleux qu’obtiendrait le conseil que A15: Gazette de France, 10 March 1823.
nous avons donné plus haut aux espagnols royalistes, si leurs guitares vibraient de Albert doit se glorifier d’autant plus légitimement du succès… Le décorateur et
sons aussi touchans que ceux de l’instrument de M. Sor. le machiniste auraient plus de droits encore à le partager que le compositeur de la
musique. Après une ouverture excessivement bruyante, arrivent à la suite les uns des
A7: Le Miroir des spectacles, 3 Feb. 1823.
autres une foule de petits airs d’une maigreur et d’une pâleur extrêmes ; leur plus
M. Baillot a été entendu plutôt avec étonnement qu’avec plaisir… M. Soor [sic],
grand défaut n’est pas encore dans cette faiblesse ; c’est qu’ils ne peignent rien, ne
au contraire, a séduit tout le monde par les gracieux accords qu’il a tiré de sa guitare.
rappellent rien, et qu’en un mot, ils ne parlent pas plus à l’esprit qu’à l’oreille. On
Sous les doigts de cet amateur, la guitare n’est plus cet ingrat clavier dont quelques
dit que M. Sor est le premier homme du monde sur la guitare : Cendrillon ne lui
sons sortaient à peine avant qu’il l’eût interrogé ; c’est maintenant un instrument
acquerra probablement pas la même réputation comme compositeur de musique
dont le vocabulaire est établi. Il exprime ce qu’il ne pouvait qu’indiquer autrefois ;
imitative et dansante.
il parle, il bégayait jadis. Qui sait si M. Soor ne sera pas appellé un jour le Racine
de la guitare. A note on newspaper research
A great number of British and French newspapers and periodicals are cited above.
A8: Journal de Paris, 3 Feb. 1823.
They were mostly accessed via electronic databases. The British digitized sources
La guitare est un instrument dont les moyens sont bien restreints, et qui jusqu’à
are from the British Newspaper Archive, under the auspices of the British Library
présent ne servait qu’à accompagner des romances et des chansons légères. Dans les
(Examiner, Morning Chronicle, Morning Post) and the Hathi Trust Digital Library
mains de M. Soor [sic], il devient l’interprète fidèle et expressif des inspirations les
(London Literary Gazette, London Magazine, New Monthly Magazine and Literary
plus variées, et le parti qu’il sait en tirer tient vraiment du prodige. Celui qui n’a pas
Journal). The French sources can all be accessed via the Gallica Digital Library,
entendu M. Soor jouer de la guitare ne pourra jamais concevoir que cet éloge soit
under the auspices of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, with the exception of
encore au-dessous de la vérité.
Le Miroir des spectacles (July-Dec. 1822) and the Journal de Paris, which have not
yet been digitized. They were examined through microfilms at the Bibliothèque
A9: Le Miroir des spectacles, 11 March 1823.
nationale in Paris.
MM. Vogt et Soor ont obtenu, chacun sur son instrument, le succès auquel ils sont
accoutumés depuis longtems. Tout le monde sait comment le premier fait parler
le hautbois ; l’autre est venu à bout de faire parler la guittarre [sic], ce qui est plus
difficile. Carcassi est le seul guittariste qui puisse être comparé à M. Soor.

guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 23

 ENDNOTES
A preliminary version of this study was read at a meeting of The Consortium for Guitar Research at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in April 2014. I am particularly grateful
to Brian Jeffery for sharing with me his notes on Gil Blas, and to Christopher Page and Thomas Heck for their many valuable suggestions and help with the translations of the
original French texts. Thanks also to Jukka Savijoki and to the two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments.

1 Brian Jeffery, Fernando Sor, Composer and Guitarist, 2d edition (London: Tecla Editions, 1994).
2 Wolf Moser, “Fernando Sor: The Life and Works of a Reluctant Guitarist,” Classical Guitar 26, no. 3 (2007): 20–24, and no. 4: 20–25. Moser here presents a very different and
thought-provoking perspective on Sor.
3 For a general study of Sor’s activity and success in England, please refer to Jeffery, Fernando Sor, Chapter 3. See also Christopher Page, “New light on the London years of
Fernando Sor, 1815–1822,” Early Music 41, no. 4 (2013): 557–569.
4 A review from The Times is quoted in Sandra Noll Hammond, “Sor and the ballet of his time,” in Estudios sobre Fernando Sor, ed. Luis Gásser (Madrid: Ediciones del
ICCMU, 2003), 195, and in Michael Christoforidis and Elizabeth Kertesz, “Cendrillon, Cinderella and Spectacle: Insights into Sor’s most Successful Work,” in Estudios sobre
Fernando Sor, 140.
5 The composer of this music was probably Franz Ignaz Beck (1734–1809), whose overture and incidental music to the melodrama Pandore were first performed in Paris in
1789.
6 It is briefly mentioned in Jeffery, Fernando Sor, 71.
7 The Sor songs are listed in Jeffery, Fernando Sor, 185. Their titles make it clear that they were from Gil Blas, as do the titles of the Moss compositions (copies in British Library
and elsewhere). The date of their entry at Stationers’ Hall, 21 Aug., shows that their publication must have been in preparation well before the premiere, which had occurred
less than a week earlier.
8 The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal (Sept. 1822, p. 397); the London Magazine (Sept. 1822, p. 280). Jeffery, Fernando Sor, 71, quotes an excerpt without the
name of the newspaper in the Endhoven Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (“tolerably pretty music by Mr. Moss and Mr. Sor”).
9 Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, vol. 30, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kelly,_Frances_Maria_(DNB00).
10 It is generally assumed that the Sor article in Ledhuy’s Encyclopédie to a large extent was written by Sor himself; see Jeffery, Fernando Sor, 106. See also the detailed discussion
in Kenneth Angus Hartdegen, “Fernando Sor’s Theory of Harmony Applied to the Guitar: History, Bibliography and Context,” PhD diss (University of Auckland, 2011), 27
32, https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/11142.html.
11 “Sor partit de Londres pour aller en Russie. A son passage il trouva Cendrillon en répétition au grand opéra, et avant de continuer son voyage il put jouir du succès de sa pièce.”
L
edhuy, Encyclopédie, 166.
12 Jeffery, Fernando Sor, 71.
13 Hammond, “Sor and the ballet,” 192.
14 Artists were normally identified by their family name only and it is not always clear if “Mlle Hullin” refers to Félicité or her elder sister, Virginie. However, in some cases, as in
the list of dancers engaged for the 1819 season, announced in the Morning Post and the Morning Chronicle on 18 Jan. 1819, she is identified as “Mademoiselle F. Hullin.” Her
appearance in La Cosaque or the Pas Russe is reported in the press at various times in 1819 and 1820.
15 Various newspaper reports show that, by May 1823, Jean-Baptiste Hullin was back in London where he was put in charge of the juvenile ballet company at the Vauxhall
Gardens, a position he held until 1829.
16 Jeffery, Fernando Sor, 66–7, 71.
17 For more on this, see John Chapman, “XXX and the Changing Ballet Aesthetic; 1828-32,” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society of Dance Research 2, no. 1 (1984):
35–47, in particular 37. See also Hammond, “Sor and the ballet,” 193–4.
18 In Russia Félicité Hullin became a leading choreographer and dance teacher; she had a seminal influence on the development of Russian ballet.
19 John Ebers, the manager of the King’s Theatre at the time Cendrillon was staged there, also made trips to Paris to hire dancers for his theatre. In his memoirs, Seven Years of the
King’s Theatre (London 1828), he stated that “the perfection acquired at these [Paris] schools is immense, and evidently un-attainable in any [other] country” (quoted in
Hammond, Sor and the Ballet, 190).
20 Kenneth Hartdegen, “Fernando Sor’s Theory,” 99 and 212–13, has suggested another possible reason for Sor’s sudden departure: that of heavy debt. As a founding member of

the cooperative publishing enterprise, the Regent’s (later Royal) Harmonic Institution, Sor could have been involved in the disastrous building venture to renovate the Argyll
Rooms in 1819, which ultimately ended with failure and great loss. Intriguing as this hypothesis may seem, it can nevertheless most probably be dismissed. Sor was not among
the twenty-three active members of the Harmonic Institution listed in the February 1819 issue of the short-lived music periodical, the English Musical Gazette. See Leanne
Langley, “A Place for Music: John Nash, Regent Street and the Philharmonic Society of London,” The Electronic British Library Journal, 2013 [ebljarticle122013], 28–9,
http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2013articles/article12.html.
21 Ledhuy, Encyclopédie, 165.
22 Morning Post, 23 April 1822. Another French dancer, Monsieur Paul, took his role in the remaining London performances of Cendrillon that season.
23 “M. Sor, qu’on peut regarder comme le premier des guitaristes de l’époque, et duquel l’éminence du talent en ce genre fait presque oublier qu’il est aussi un compositeur
distingué, est arrivé de Londres, qu’il habite, à Paris où l’on assure qu’il vient d’assister à la mise en scène d’un ouvrage dont il a composé la musique.” The awkwardness of the
French in this passage suggests that its author was not a native speaker (the italics are original, introduced by Le Réveil to highlight the grammatical errors of the source
quoted). Might it have been Sor himself? Although the text actually says that “he [Sor] has just attended the production of a work” (“il vient d’assister”), this can hardly have
been the case. I suspect that the writer’s intention was to express that Sor had come to Paris in order to assist in a forthcoming production. Unfortunately, no copy of the

Courrier des Spectacles of 3 Oct. 1822 is known to exist.
24 Hammond, “Sor and the ballet,” 184.

24 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org

25 Valuable background information and details about Cendrillon and the ballet art form in general are found in Hammond, “Sor and the ballet,” and in Christoforidis and
Kertesz, “Cendrillon, Cinderella and Spectacle.”
26 This illuminating essay from Journal des Débats, 28 Sept. 1822, is quoted in Ivor Guest, The Romantic Ballet in Paris (Hampshire: Dance Books, 2008), 18–20, and
Chapman, “XXX and the Changing Ballet Aesthetic,” 39–41.
27 Marian Smith, “About the House,” in Reading Critics Reading: Opera and Ballet Criticism in France from the Revolution to 1848, ed. Roger Parker and Mary Ann Smart
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 227–31.
28 Le Réveil, 10 March 1823.
29 Jeffery, Fernando Sor, 76.
30 Luis Briso de Montiano, “Fernando Sor en París camino de Rusia: Concierto de Nochebuena,” last modified March 1, 2014, http://fernandosor.es/fernando-sor-en-paris-
camino-de-rusia-concierto-de-nochebuena
31 For more information on the Cercle de la rue de Richelieu, see James Radomski, Manuel García (1775-1832): Chronicle of the Life of a bel canto Tenor at the dawn of
Romanticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 154–6.
32 21 July 1816 (Jeffery, Fernando Sor, 46). There is also a possibility that they could have met in Madrid in the early summer of 1802, see Hartdegen, “Fernando Sor’s Theory,” 160.
33 For a general survey of the hostile attitude towards the guitar from leading critics in this period, see Erik Stenstadvold, ‘“We hate the guitar’: prejudice and polemic in the music
press in early nineteenth-century Europe,” Early Music 41 no. 4 (2013): 595–604.
34 Most of the concerts were also announced in one or several newspapers. These announcements are only mentioned here if they contain relevant information not found in the
reviews.
35 This is probably the concert mentioned in the notice in El Indicador on 1 Jan. 1823; see Briso, “Fernando Sor en París.”
36 This may have been the unspecified concert mentioned in the first part of the notice in El Indicador on 8 Jan. 1823; see Briso, “Fernando Sor en París.”
37 Sor is not mentioned in the announcement in Le Miroir des spectacles. However, the notice in El Indicador on 8 Jan. 1823 (Briso, “Fernando Sor en París”) gives the
impression that he participated.
38 Sor would have known Guillou from his first period in Paris; they had played together in a concert given by Guillou on 7 January 1815. The program of this concert was
detailed two days previously in Journal des Débats; Sor and Guillou played in a “new fantaisie for guitar, flute and cello [basse]” by Sor, a lost work.
39 In economic terms, Cendrillon may have been quite lucrative for Sor. Jean Mongrédien, French Music from the Enlightenment to Romanticism (Portland: Amadeus Press, 1996),
71, has shown that with opera, the composer received a royalty for each performance, shared with the librettist. If similar arrangements applied to ballet, Cendrillon must have
supplied Sor with a steady income over several years.
40 Jeffery, Fernando Sor, 67, quotes a paragraph from Ivor Guest’s book, Ballet in Paris, in which the sumptuous production is described in some detail. However, that passage
says nothing about the music. Jeffery’s only reference to a contemporary assessment is that of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, whose correspondent briefly summed up the
ballet as “Schöne Tänze, herrliche Dekorationen und eine recht angenehme Musik” – “Beautiful dances, fine decor and quite pleasant music” (in Jeffery’s translation, “extremely
pleasant music,” a slight interpretive overstatement). Among the very few who have consulted original French sources are Christoforidis and Kertesz, “Cendrillon, Cinderella
and Spectacle,” 140–41, who discuss reviews in the Journal des Débats and Le Moniteur Universel.
41 It is now generally acknowledged that Castil-Blaze was the author of the anonymous musical articles, signed “XXX,” in the Journal des Débats in this period.
42 Nicolo Isouard (1775–1818) had an enormous success at the Opéra-Comique in 1810 with the fairy-tale opera Cendrillon. The work was revived regularly over the next
decades. Rossini’s opera La Cenerentola had been staged at the Théâtre Italien less than a year before the ballet Cendrillon was premiered, and was still running.
43 For a more detailed discussion of Meissonnier’s Sor editions, see my forthcoming study, “Sor and Meissonnier.”
44 Jeffery, Fernando Sor, 41–2, 46.
45 According to Diccionario biográfico, 665, Vaccari travelled from Paris to Madrid in October 1823.
46 See Jeffery’s discussion of op. 21 in the notes to Fernando Sor: The New Complete Works for Guitar, 2d ed., edited by Brian Jeffery (London: Tecla Editions, 2004), vol. 3.
47 Hartdegen, “Fernando Sor’s Theory,” 957ff.
48 That is not to say that Vaccari’s version is without interest; on the contrary, precisely because it was edited by an experienced fellow musician, it gives us valuable insight into
how freely musicians in those days would treat the music of another composer. (Another conspicuous example is Aguado’s edition of Sor’s op. 14.)
49 Radomski, Manuel García, 157–8.
50 Radomski, Manuel García, 158.
51 Radomski, Manuel García, 158.
52 Diccionario biográfico del Trienio Liberal, ed. Alberto Gil Novales (Madrid: El Museo Universal, 1991), 665.
53 Her two sisters continued dancing at the Paris Opéra later that season; in the press advertisements they appear as “Hullin” and “Hullin 3e” (Le Réveil, 27 April).
54 Kurier Warszawski, 12 Oct. 1823. Quoted in Jeffery, Fernando Sor, 77.
55 This raises the question, Was the principal aim of the Russian envoys in Paris to secure the services of Sor the composer, rather than Hullin the dancer? If so, then who followed
whom to Russia?
56 Lynn Garafola, “The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” Dance Research Journal 17 no. 2 and 18 no. 1 (1985–86): 36.
http://academiccommons.columbia.educatalog/ac:152248.html
57 Smith, “About the House,” 217.
58 “Fernand [sic] Sor, der früher in London Furore machte, … und bald ein Liebling der Damen wurde, sah sich genöthigt, wegen eines zärtlichen Abenteuers in einem der ersten
Häuser, das von Folgen war, London und England plötzlich zu verlassen und nach Frankreichs winkenden Küsten hinüber zu eilen.” Allgemeine Theaterzeitung und
Originalblatt für Kunst, Literatur, Musik, Mode und geselliges Leben, no. 36, 19 Feb. 1834, p. 144; there it is said to be taken from a recent review of a concert of Franz Stoll in
the Berliner Figaro (I have not had a chance to check that source). I am grateful to Gerhard Penn for allowing me to be the first to publicize this tantalizing notice.

guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 25

 The Microtonal Guitars of Harry Partch
By John Schneider

I am not an instrument builder, but a philosophic music man,

seduced into carpentry. – Harry Partch

Harry Partch (1901–1974) was surely one of America’s most

colorful and original composers. Though trained as a concert
pianist, his dissatisfaction with the scales and instruments of West-
ern music inspired him to design and build an orchestra of over
two dozen hand-crafted microtonal instruments that were tuned to
what he called his monophonic scale of 43 tones per octave. He also
composed dozens of vibrantly singular musical works of all sizes, and
authored theoretical statements of lasting significance in his book
Genesis of a Music. It was published in two editions, each with its
own long subtitle: Monophony: The Relation of its Music to Historic
and Contemporary Trends … (1949), and An Account of a Creative
Work, Its Roots and Its Fulfillments (1974).
In today’s parlance, Partch is known as an American “maver-
ick”—a loner whose itinerant wanderings as a hobo and whose “rail- Figure 1: Partch with Adapted Guitar I, ca.1941.
road bum” existence during the Great Depression are the stuff of
legend. He was also a great innovator, being one of the first concert researching “histories of intonation and the spoken word in music”
composers to use overdubbing as a composition tool. He created under a Guggenheim grant. In Genesis of a Music (1949) he admits
his own “indie” label in the 1950’s, and trained his own ensemble that “The usual low, wire-type frets were not very satisfactory, and
decades before Steve Reich and Philip Glass followed suit. He is I eventually fitted high stainless steel frets into slots in a brass plate,
believed to be the first to use an electric guitar in “serious” music, which I screwed onto the neck.”
and the first to employ a fretless guitar. Between 1934 and 1952
Partch created four different so-called Adapted Guitars, using them The hazards of sharp steel frets aside, what strikes the eye in
in fifteen compositions ranging from solo song cycles to chamber Figure 1 is how few frets there actually are. For a man who created a
music, dances, and four of his five major stage works.1 scale with a dizzying 43 notes per octave, it’s quite surprising to see
After reading Herman Helmholtz’s On The Sensations of Tone,2 such a huge fretless gap in the middle of the neck. As it turns out,
Partch began his explorations in tuning by modifying existing it was a practical accommodation: those were exactly the number of
musical instruments. His first experiment was for an Adapted frets needed to perform Partch’s first guitar work, Barstow (1941)—
Viola (1930), a patchwork concoction that married a cello neck and no more, no fewer. With so many possible notes to choose from,
fingerboard to a viola body and was played between the knees like a limiting the choices lessened the chance of error and, when other
viola da gamba. His newly invented monophonic scale was indicated pieces demanded other notes, new frets could simply be added.
by a series of brads that were hammered into the fingerboard along- Another obvious adaptation of the original instrument was its
side each string as indicators for finger placement. Even the stringing stringing. There were still six strings, but they were grouped in three
was different: he tuned to the pitches G-D-A-E an octave below the courses, like the Caribbean tres, tuned in octaves. (Example 1)
violin. The instrument was used for his first song cycle, 17 Lyrics of Only three of the original strings remained, though not in
Li Po (1933), in which the composer set to music the evocative texts their original positions: [low] Eb • eb / G • g / B • b [high]
of the medieval Chinese poet, as well as in settings of two Psalms (By
The Rivers of Babylon and The Lord is My Shepherd), and in the Potion
Scene from Romeo and Juliet.
In 1934 Partch purchased a used 1927 Martin parlor guitar
(#36860) made of Koa wood, and “ … spent several years (1934–
1942) in the effort to devise effective frets in Just Intonation” (see
sidebar). The initial work was done in London between visits to the
British Museum and the South Kensington Museums, where he was
Example 1: Adapted Guitar I tuning.3

26 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org

 The third string was still the standard G, while the old B or 2nd
string moved to the first string position. The original D-string was
tuned up a half step, moved to the fifth position and then doubled
at the octave. About this instrument Partch offered the following
remark: “Partly because of this pairing of strings the instrument is
played more like a mandolin than a guitar, but its low range of pitch
and the 2/1 (octave) pairs contribute to a result that is unlike either.
If only three strings are used the bass strings are removed.”4
The open strings are justly tuned as well: the third string G
= 196Hz (with its lower 2/1 partner = 98Hz), and the Eb’s are an
exactly pure, beatless major third (5/4) below it, just as the B’s are
a pure 5/4 above. Partch also narrowed the fingerboard by ¼” on
each side to make the neck much more like his first stringed in-
strument, the mandolin, whose tremolo he often used in his own
music. This became Adapted Guitar I, and was used in two of
Partch’s early Americana song cycles—Barstow and U.S. Highball—a
series of compositions that were first presented in Carnegie Hall
in 1944. By 1941, he had created the first four instruments that
began his extraordinary life as a composer, performer and instru-
ment builder (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Kithara (1938), Adapted Viola (1930), Adapted Guitar (1934), and
The Ptolemy (1940).
Creating new musical instruments was one thing, but com-
posing and notating music for them was quite another. It became
immensely challenging, as there were so many more notes to
describe. Partch could no longer use what he referred to as the “Alice
in Wonderland mumbo-jumbo” of standard alphabetical Western
notation. For just intonation, he believed:
“The only, clear, logical, rational terms are numbers—the relation-
ships of numbers. That is, frequency ratios or the ratios of parts of
sounding bodies … The word “octave,” for example, is a palpable
imprecision … used to describe a physical distance on the modern
keyboard … the aural quantity (is described by) the correct term, the
ratio of two to one [2/1]. The terms septimal whole tone, septimal
minor third, septimal tritone sound delightfully erudite—but in fact,
the terms 8/7, 7/6 and 7/5 are far more meaningful.”5
The resulting 43-tone scale is pictured in Figure 3, below.
His guitar notation almost looks like a page of algebra, though
each ratio represents an actual pitch. Here is the opening ritor-
nello of his famous Barstow: Eight Hitchhikers’ Inscriptions (1941) for
Adapted Guitar and Baritone (Example 2).
Example 2: Barstow ritornello.
Figure 3: Partch’s “monophonic” scale.6
guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 27
 The Microtonal Guitars of Harry Partch (cont.)
A quick glance at the scale above reveals that the opening triplet
chord is really a G-minor chord, the 3/2 = “D”, O = open G-strings,
and the 6/5 = Bb on the highest course, etc., with the last three
chords representing all strings played open (Example 3).
Example 3: Transcription of Barstow ritornello.7
The representation of the pitches may be exact, but the prob-
lem with ratio notation is that there are no visual cues as to which
notes are higher or lower, though after some practice, one does begin
to translate the ratios into pitches spontaneously. The voice part,
however, is written in standard staff notation, fine tuned with ratios
(Example 4).
Example 4: “#1 - Today I am a Man,” Barstow (1941).
Why go to all the trouble of creating an arcane notation, a
difficult instrument, and an incredibly steep learning curve? Partch
was fond of saying, “Music systems are made valid and workable
by significant music: music systems that are not made valid by
significant music are so many scraps of paper in a whirlwind.” His
extraordinary efforts were all in the service of the music, always. The
results are equally extraordinary.
28 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org
Barstow, for example, is a touching song cycle consisting of
actual highway graffiti set to music. Here is the composer’s own
description:
It’s January 26. I’m freezing.
Ed Fitzgerald. Age 19. Five feet, ten inches.
Black hair, brown eyes.
Going home to Boston, Massachusetts.
It’s 4:00, and I’m hungry and broke.
I wish I was dead.
But today I am a man.
The scribbling is in pencil. It is on one of the white highway
railings just outside the Mojave Desert junction of Barstow,
California. I am walking along the highway and sit down on
the railing to rest.
Idly I notice the scratches where I happen to drop. I have
seen many hitchhikers’ writings. They are usually just names
and addresses—there are literally millions of them, or little
meaningless obscenities, on highway signs, railings, walls.
But this—why, it’s music. It’s both weak and strong, like
unedited human expressions always are. It’s eloquent in what
it fails to express in words. And it’s epic. Definitely, it is
music …8
In the seven vignettes that follow, we meet Marie Blackwell, the
19-year old female in search of a husband (#3–“Considered Pretty”),
the swaggering braggart George who is “Looking for millionaire wife
…” (#7–“You Lucky Women”), and we find out where to get an
easy handout, etc. In each, the text is first spoken to an arrhythmic
chordal accompaniment and then set melodically in an easy, tonal
style reminiscent of the folk songs of the era.
As in so many of his compositions, Partch reworked and re-
orchestrated Barstow often throughout his life, such that there were
finally five different versions, the last of which dispenses with the
guitar altogether:
Barstow: Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions
1941 – Adapted Guitar and Baritone
1942 – Two voices, Chromolodean (sic) and guitar
1943 – Adapted Guitar, Voice, Chromelodeon and Kithara
1954 – Voice Surrogate Kithara, Adapted Guitar III,
Chromelodeon, and Diamond Marimba
1968 – Chorus Voice, Rhythmic Speaking and/or Singing
Voice, Surrogate Kithara, Chromelodeon I, Diamond
Marimba, and Bamboo Marimba
 Partch next set three very diverse texts (Shakespeare, medieval
Japanese, and modern Irish) in the diminutive seven-minute trip-
tych, December 1942, for voice and Adapted Guitar:
“Come Away, Death,” the Clown’s Song from Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night, II: iv.
“The Heron,” Thirteenth-century Japanese poet Tsuryuki,
trans. A. Waley.
“The Rose,” Ella Young (1867–1956).
The most substantial work from this Americana period is
Partch’s musical chronicle of his 1941 cross-country trip from San
Francisco to Chicago, U.S. Highball. The composer had already
documented much of his Depression-era wandering in the memoir
Bitter Music (1940), which had included brief musical settings of
overheard conversations and interactions with the many characters
that he met on the road. This time practically everything is set to
music—with most of the vocals “intoned,” as in his first works for
voice and viola. The first version of this 26-minute epic was written
for Adapted Guitar and Voice, though it also grew in scope as the
composer slowly orchestrated it, adding more instruments to his
“orchestra.”
U.S. Highball
1943 – Adapted Guitar and Baritone
1943 – Adapted Guitar, Voices, Chromelodeon, and Kithara
1955 – Subjective Voice (baritone) – in a singing manner,
Objective Voice (bass) in a spoken manner, Kithara II,
Surrogate Kithara, Castor and Pollux, Chromelodeon,
Diamond Marimba, Bass Marimba, and Spoils of
War—Filmed by Madeline Tourtelot (1958)
It is an extraordinary work by any standard. The composer
called it “… the most creative piece of music I ever wrote, and in
the sense that it is less influenced by the forms and attitudes that
I had grown up with … there can be no doubt of it.” It includes
“fragments of conversations, remarks, writings on the sides of box-
cars, signs in havens for derelicts, hitchhikers’ inscriptions, names of
stations, thoughts …” that were collected during Partch’s journey.
Example 5: Excerpt from U.S. Highball (1943).
It is in three parts: “first, a long and jerky passage by drags to Little
America, Wyoming; second, a slow dishwashing movement at Little
America; third, a rhythmic allegro by a highway to Chicago.” Much
of the last nine minutes is a virtuosic percussion cadenza played on
the top of the guitar, while the voice engages in dazzling transfor-
mations of the word “Chicago,” accompanied by the pulsing chords
of the chromelodeon. The entire confabulation is meant to mimic
the constantly changing rhythms produced by traversing different
sections of uneven pavement (Example 5, below), immediately
recognizable by anyone who has ever ridden the older sections of
American highway that are now bypassed by modern freeways.
Though he had performed the guitar/voice version of High-
ball for many East Coast musical luminaries (Virgil Thomson,
Howard Hanson, Nicholas Slonimsky, Douglas Moore,
Henry Cowell, Quincy Porter, et al.), he was concerned as to
whether it would “come off the page” in its new ensemble ver-
sion. In January 1944, he recorded the entire work himself by
overdubbing all four parts (now lost)10—another first for “classical
music” and a method he was to use often for the next two decades.
It was with the quartet versions of Barstow and U.S. Highball
(plus the non-guitar San Francisco and Yankee Doodle Fantasy) that
Partch made his Carnegie Hall debut in April 1944 (Figure 4, next
page), in a concert sponsored by The League of Composers enti-
tled: “A Program of Compositions On Americana Texts.” He was
assisted by, among others, the soprano Ethel Luening (wife of com-
poser Otto Luening) and the composer Henry Brant. It met with
mixed reactions, including quite a few published reviews by none
other than Paul Bowles (Herald Tribune) and Lou Harrison (Modern
Music), to be followed by a feature in New Yorker magazine. Harrison
objected, “U.S. Highball I found several miles too long … ,” while
Bowles complained that Partch, “… not only lacked sufficient voice
to make himself heard above the accompanying strains, but was also
busy playing the guitar, which he constantly bent his head to watch.”
While composing U.S. Highball, Partch also wrote Letter from
Hobo Pablo (1943), a delightful three-minute setting of the 1935
correspondence found in Bitter Music, in which his old friend has
been cornered into a shotgun wedding upon returning home. It also
guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 29
 The Microtonal Guitars of Harry Partch (cont.)
Figure 4: Carnegie Hall, 1944: Ethel Luening, Harry Partch, and
Alex Maruchess.11
survives in several versions, best known by the title:
The Letter
1943 – Adapted Guitar, Voice, and Kithara (as Letter from
Hobo Pablo)
1950 – Voice, Adapted Guitar I, Kithara, Diamond Marimba,
and Bass Marimba
1955 – Voice, Kithara II, Pollux, Surrogate Kithara, Diamond
and Bass Marimbas
1972 – Voice, New Kithara I, Blue Rainbow, Surrogate Kithara,
Bass Marimba, Diamond Marimba, and Adapted
Guitar I
Partch had never been wholly satisfied with his fretting
system on his earlier Adapted Guitar, so in 1945 he modified
“… an electric guitar of the usual shape and size except for the
narrowed neck.” Its particularly unusual feature is the perfectly
smooth, fretless fingerboard on which stops for the Monophonic
ratios are marked with pinheads, polished down to the fingerboard
level. To assist the player in quickly identifying the various ratios
the pattern is punctuated by large white pinheads, also polished flat,
representing 4/3 and 3/2 in each 2/1, and by even larger brass rivets,
representing 1/1… Electronic amplification makes up for the lack of
resonance in the finger-stopped strings. The bridge is staggered, to
avoid the difficulty of stopping the 5/4 interval—that of the instru-
ment’s tuning… those stops which represent true 5/4’s are connected
by lines—incision, filled with colored plastic… The guitar has two
microphones, one immediately under the strings next to the bridge,
and the other under a thin piece of walnut to the right, as seen in
the photograph. This second microphone—used to amplify tapping
effects made with the right-hand fingernails—is a magnet type, and
has a thin piece of tin fitted between the magnet and the wood, to
distribute the area of pickup.”13
This was the instrument (Figure 5) with which Partch recorded
the quartet version of U.S. Highball in 1946 with Warren Gilson for
GME recordings (now on the Innova CD, Enclosure 2), surely the
first recorded example ever of an amplified, fretless guitar.

The year 1945 found Partch at the University of Wisconsin, Figure 5 (left): Fretless version of
Madison, where he lectured, created several new instruments, Adapted Guitar I (1945).
trained an ensemble, performed and recorded music, and prepared [photo: Genesis of a Music (1949)]
Genesis of a Music (1949) for the University of Wisconsin Press. He
also made improvements on his existing instruments, and in the
process created two new guitars.
As the softer plucked sounds of Partch’s guitar and Kithara were
rather easily masked by the sustained, rich voice of the Chromelo-
deon, he went about amplifying them. To boost the resonance of the
bottom octaves of the Kithara, “… its tone is electrically amplified
by means of a phonograph needle pressed into the back redwood
panel, and fastened, as usual, in a phonograph crystal pick-up. The
tone is then amplified through a 15-inch Jensen speaker.”12 For the
guitar, a completely new instrument was adapted.

30 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org

 It was also in Madison that Partch made an instrument that
dispensed with the left-hand fingering altogether.
The Adapted Guitar II (Figure 6), “… is a Hawaiian type
guitar, that is, with a high nut, which allows a “steel” or a heavy brass
rod to be pressed down on the strings to make the stops. Four strings
are added, making ten in all, and are tuned beginning with a low 4/3
… the same tone as the lowest cello string. In the rest of the tuning
there is a choice of Otonality (major) or Utonality (minor). [Ed. See
Table 1.] The change can be made in about five seconds. Tuning of
the two highest strings is varied …”14
Figure 6: Adapted Guitar II (1945). [photo: Genesis of a Music, 2nd edition]
The original instrument was a 6-string Oahu square-neck
Hawaiian slide guitar, that Partch transformed into a 10-string by
relocating the standard 3 + 3 guitar tuners and adding a row of
four mandolin tuners to the top of the custom headstock, which he
attached atop the original. Since the initial string spacing was
kept intact, the four new strings were pushed to either side of the
fingerboard. And what a fingerboard: a white ruler inscribed with
the ratios of just intonation indicates the pitches produced by the
16/9 [F] strings, while the multicolored triangles painted directly on
the fingerboard indicate the quality of particular intervals achieved
when the slide reaches the base of any particular triangle (Figure 6).
The two tunings are shown in Table 1.
Otonality (major)
C-2¢ F-4 C-2 F-4 A-18 C-2 Eb+14 F-4 F#-12 G
Utonality (minor)
C-2¢ F-4 C-2 F-4 Ab+12 C-2 D+29 F-4 F#-12 F#-+47
Table 1: Adapted Guitar II tunings.15
Figure 7 shows how Partch effectively turned staff notation into
tablature. The notation is a kind of tablature in which each string is
represented by a “note” on the clefless staff:
Figure 7: Tablature for Partch’s Adapted Guitar II (1945).16
Example 6 (next page) reproduces the opening from one of
the Three Intrusions. The ratios above the guitar notes tell the player
where to place the slide, while the ratios in parentheses reveal the
actual pitches. In fact, the entire score is a kind tablature, since the
Diamond Marimbist is only told which key to hit, while the voice
notation indicates which key on the retuned reed organ (Chrome-
lodeon) corresponds to the vocal part. But none of the parts reveal
which note is actually heard. Such departures from conventional
music notation and practice kept Partch’s music far from the main-
stream throughout his entire life. His oeuvre has resisted analysis and
reproduction until quite recently.
guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 31
 The Microtonal Guitars of Harry Partch (cont.)

Example 6: Excerpt from Three Intrusions (1949) for Diamond Marimba, Adapted Guitar II, and Voice.

Though Partch suggests that a heavy brass rod be used as a

“steel” slide on his Adapted Guitar II, by 1951 he began using a
plastic rod attached to a lead weight to stop the strings (Figure 8):

Figure 8: Adapted Guitar II with slide, ca. 1952. [photo: Fred Lyon]

This instrument first appeared in the set of miniatures called Figure 9 (left):
Intrusions, composed in1949/50, and is featured in Partch’s first Adapted Guitar III
large ensemble work, the light-hearted and harmonically adven- (1945).
[photo: Genesis of a
turous Sonata Dementia (1950), which later became “Ring Around
Music, 2nd edition]
The Moon” in the hour-long dance triptych, Plectra and Percussion
Dances (1952).
In 1950, Partch created his fourth guitar by re-adapting his first.
The new (in 1945), fretless six-string instrument shared the same
tuning as the initial Adapted Guitar: “Having transferred my
allegiance and the identical tuning to this second guitar, I called it
Guitar I. However, in 1950, I removed the high frets from the orig-
inal guitar and played it with a plastic rod (like a steel in a steel
guitar) weighted with lead so that less pressure was required. The six The new, overlaid fingerboard (Figure 10) is painted in color-coded
strings of the 1950 reconception have always been tuned to unisons stripes, while the old “mumbo jumbo” musical alphabet letters (G, Ab, A,
or 2/1’s [octaves], in pairs: 1/1—98[Hz] and 1/1—196[Hz] … It etc.) are fine-tuned with handwritten ratios in black ink:
is generally played with a pick. In order to distinguish it from the
second Guitar I (1945), it was first labeled Guitar III (Figure 9).
Now, however, it is again Guitar I, since I abandoned the second
Guitar I in 1956, believing that the Harmonic Canons were both
more musical and more versatile. This is true, but still they do not
take the place of that Guitar.”17 Figure 10: Adapted Guitar III: fingerboard. [photo: author]

32 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org

 Guitar III was first used in the final four Eleven Intrusions
(1950) entitled “Lover,” “Soldiers-War-Another War,” “Vanity,” and
“Cloud Chamber Music.” “Vanity” (Example 7, below) is scored
for all three of the guitars, the text recalling a Narcissus-like creature
gazing at its reflection in water. What better way to depict the small,
undulating waves that shatter the image than with Guitars II and III
simultaneously “glissing” at different speeds?
Even the “new Guitar I” didn’t escape further modification: be-
fore it was lost in 1956 (the composer had given it to some friends
in Northern California to hold for him), it gained a sound hole, as
seen in this wonderful photo of Partch’s workshop at Mills College
in 1952 (Figure 11), where all three guitars are hanging on the wall,
ready at a moment’s notice:
Figure 11: Partch at Mills College, ca. 1952.18
Beginning with King Oedipus (1951), Partch did not hes-
itate to use standard musical instruments when needed, playing
either just intonation or even standard equal temperament. Both
versions of Oedipus used cello, clarinet, and double bass playing just
intervals. His later opera, Revelation in the Courthouse Park (1960), is
Example 7: Excerpt from “Vanity,” Eleven Intrusions (1950).
an American gloss of the Bacchae of Euripides, wherein King Diony-
sus becomes Dion, the Hollywood king of Ishbu Kubu. Truly Amer-
ican scenes include a full brass band, four drum majorettes, eight
clog dancers, four tumblers, and two Spanish guitars. In the score
the composer warns, “Third strings are tuned to 1/1-198 G. Tune
other strings to this, after the usual procedure, and hope for the best.
Guitars of the ordinary variety are constitutionally out of tune. This
is an American Revel, and if the guitars were in tune they wouldn’t
be recognized as American, probably not even as guitars.”19
Present and Future Partch
It was long believed that once Partch died, so would his music.
After all, what better way to absolutely guarantee a music’s transience
than to compose for a single set of eccentrically unique hand-built
instruments with an opaque notation that is particular to each in-
strument, takes ages to learn, and is played with techniques that have
little or no precedence? And yet somehow, against all odds, quite the
opposite has happened: Partch’s reputation has actually grown since
his passing in 1974, achieving a status that can only be characterized
as legendary. His work is consistently listed as inspiration for ensuing
generations of musicians of all styles, from rock, to punk, to classical.
The recordings that he so carefully produced and distributed in his
own lifetime are now almost completely available once again, thanks
to the Internet’s ability to handle media (music, videos).
But what of performances….live performances? Nothing re-
places being in the room with these wonderful instruments. The
music is meant to be experienced, and not just by the ears: “In the
right room acoustically, the Marimba Eroica is felt through the feet,
against the belly, and, if one sits on the floor, it ripples through his
bottom.”20
Thankfully, the original instruments are alive and well, and still
in use. After Partch’s passing his longtime assistant, Danlee Mitchell,
kept the repertoire in performance both here and abroad until he
handed the curatorship to Dean Drummond of Newband, in 1989.
The instruments were then moved from California to the East Coast.
guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 33
 The Microtonal Guitars of Harry Partch (cont.)

As Director of the Harry Partch Institute at Montclair State French guitarist Didier Aschour created his version of the
University (New Jersey), Drummond trained a new generation of instrument for the 1997 recording of “Come Away Death,” from
performers and continued to perform, tour, and record Partch’s December 1942 (Figure 13, below left). Note his standard stringing.
music as well as his own. After Drummond’s untimely passing in A few years later, Greg Brandt and the author created a new
2013, the instruments moved again, this time to the University Adapted Guitar II (Figure 14, below left).
of Washington (Seattle), where once again they are being used to With the addition of a new Diamond Marimba (2001) and
prepare a new generation of eager Partchians under the stewardship the generous loan of Partch’s original 1938 Kithara from the Harry
of Montclair alumnus Charles Corey.21 But the initial quandary Partch Foundation [thanks to Danlee Mitchell], it was possible to
persists: there has long been only one set of fragile, rapidly aging perform and record anew Partch’s Three Intrusions (1949). The three
original instruments—until now. instruments and their performers are pictured in Figure 15.
Enthusiasm for Partch’s music has spontaneously generated
several copies of his instruments, beginning with his delightfully
idiosyncratic guitars. With the help of luthier Greg Brandt, this
writer was able to recreate Adapted Guitar I for the 1992 revival
and recording of the original 1941 version of Barstow.22 The initial
fretting was for Barstow, though more frets were added soon after
(Figure 12) for other repertoire:

Figure 12: Newly added frets for Adapted Guitar I (1992).

Figure 15: Just Strings, publicity photo (2002). [photo: Robert Hale]

Brad Blackburn’s doctoral dissertation,

“Tonal Modulation with Just Intonation;
Corporeality and Musical Gesture—in the
Music of Harry Partch” (D.M.A. Thesis,
University of Illinois, 2006), was much more
than historical research. He recreated several
of Partch’s instruments, including the Dia-
mond Marimba and the Adapted Guitar II
(Figure 16) in order to perform Three Intru-
sions (1949).

Figure 16 (left): Brad Blackburn’s Adapted Guitar II

Figure 13 (above left): Didier Aschour’s Adapted Guitar I (1997). (2006). [photo: B. Blackburn]
[photo: M. Aschour]
Figure 14 (above right): Author’s Adapted Guitar II (2000).
[photo: Robert Hale]

34 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org

 Paul West, one of the first graduates of Montclair’s Partch
Institute, created two versions of Guitar I, both fretted and unfretted
(Figures 17 & 18, below left and center).
More recently, the author converted a Weissenborn-style
Hawaiian guitar (Figure 19, below right) into an Adapted Guitar
III.
Figure 17 (left): Paul West’s fretted Adapted Guitar I (2006). [photo: author]
Figure 18 (center): Paul West’s fretless Adapted Guitar I (2006). [photo: author]
Figure 19 (right): The author’s Adapted Guitar III (2006). [photo: author]
Figure 21: musikFabrik’s Adapted Guitars II and III. [photo: author]
With the exception of the first versions of Barstow, U.S. High-
ball, and December 1942, many of the other two dozen instruments
that the composer created are required in order to perform his other
guitar repertoire. It takes all four styles of guitar to play some works,
as evidenced by a recent performance of Eleven Intrusions (1950) by
the ensemble Partch.23 Since 2001, this group of Partchians has been
building copies of the instruments in the approximate chronological
order that they were invented (Figure 20), recapitulating Partch’s
output on stage and in the recording studio.
Figure 20: Adapted Guitars, Cloud Chamber Bowls, Harmonic Canons, and Bass
Marimba (REDCAT Theatre, Los Angeles, 2009). [photo: author]
In 2011, the German new music ensemble, musikFabrik,
secured enough funding to replicate the entire Partch “instrumen-
tarium” using a consortium of European and American artisans. The
culmination of their efforts was the 2013 European premiere of the
composer’s masterwork, Delusion of the Fury (1966), followed by an
extensive European tour that included performances at the Holland
Festival and the Edinburgh Festival, with travels across the Atlantic
in 2015 for New York’s Lincoln Center Festival. It was the author’s
pleasure to create their two Adapted Guitars (Figure 21).
guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 35
 The Microtonal Guitars of Harry Partch (cont.)
But what of the music? Some scores of the larger repertoire are
available from Schott, while the smaller works have yet to find a
publisher. Aside from smaller deposits in various libraries around
the country,25 all of Partch’s music can be found at the Harry Partch
Archive, begun in 1978 by Thomas McGeary and the composer’s
longtime friend and colleague Ben Johnston. It now resides at the
University of Illinois under the title “The Music and Performing
Arts Library Harry Partch Collection.” The holdings include scores,
books, records, tapes, interviews, letters, and more—a veritable gold
mine of material for those interested in exploring the composer’s
robust legacy.
But Partch’s amazing output is not the end of the story, as
there is also new repertoire being written, either for the instru-
ments themselves or in combination with standard instruments. For
several decades, works by Dean Drummond, Anne LeBaron,
Victoria Bond, this writer, and many others have expanded the hori-
zons of the Partch instruments, and it’s not just “classical” concert
music either. Hal Willner’s 1992 Sony Release, Mingus Variations,
featured the Partch instruments. There is a Japanese “girl group”
that uses a Partch retuned reed organ—the Chromelodeon, while
the rock star Beck just released a Partch tribute, and Paul Simon
has used the instruments on one of his latest albums.26 In short, the
music and instruments of Harry Partch are alive and well worldwide.
Strangely, a man who was destined to become nothing more than a
footnote in traditional music history seems to have inspired a living,
breathing tradition, in spite of himself.
As Harry Partch once famously uttered, “The widely revered
master-disciple concept represents, on both sides, too easy an
escape into the limbo of no responsibility. I have said that if anyone
calls himself a pupil of mine, I will happily strangle him. But this is
simply the expression of an attitude, and amazingly—in its deeper
meaning—it is an expression of hope.”27
Whether found in solo song cycles, chamber music, or the large
dance or dramatic works, Partch’s guitars are an essential compo-
nent of this extraordinary American repertoire—the product of a
visionary American “maverick” who was, indeed, ahead of his time.
The available second edition of his book, Genesis of a Music, is
required reading at many colleges, while concerts of his music are
now met with sold-out crowds both here and abroad. In the past
three years, the Grammy Awards have recognized Partch’s music
with two nominations and a trophy,28 and there are new books and
articles appearing every year. Reclaiming the age-old cry that for
centuries accompanied the passing of a monarch, a new generation
in the twenty-first century has clearly proclaimed, “Partch is dead—
long live Partch!”
Repertoire with Guitar – Scores
1941 – Barstow
1942 – December 1942
1943 – U.S. Highball, Letter from Hobo Pablo, Barstow (new version)
1949 – Three Intrusions: “The Rose,” “The Crane,” “The Waterfall”
1950 – Sonata Dementia, Intrusions: “The Letter,” “Lover,” “SoldiersWar-Another
War,”“Vanity,” “Cloud Chamber Music”
36 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org
1951 – King Oedipus
1952 – Oedipus: A Dance-Drama (new version), Plectra and Percussion Dances:
“Ring Around The Moon,”“Even Wild Horses”
1954 – Barstow (new version)
1955 – The Bewitched
1960 – Revelation in the Courthouse Park
1961 – Rotate The Body in All Its Planes
1964 – And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma
1966 – Delusion of the Fury
1972 – The Dreamer That Remains
Audio Recordings
The Harry Partch Collection Vol. 1: Eleven Intrusions, Plectra and Percussion Dances.
New World Records 80621–2.
The Harry Partch Collection Vol. 3:. The Dreamer That Remains. New World Records
80621–2.
The Harry Partch Collection Vol. 4: The Bewitched. New World Records 80624–2
Enclosure 2: Barstow (‘43), U.S. Highball. Innova 401.
Enclosure 5: Come Away Death, Revelation in the Courthouse Park, King Oedipus,
The Bewitched. Innova 401.
Enclosure 6: Delusion of the Fury. Innova 406.
Just West Coast: Barstow (‘41). Bridge 9041.
Just Guitars: December 1942, Letter from Hobo Pablo, Three Intrusions. Bridge 9132.
Bitter Music: Letter from Hobo Pablo. Bridge 9349 A/C.
Plectra & Percussion Dances: Ring Around the Moon, Even Wild Horses. Bridge 9432.
Video Recordings
Enclosure 7: The Dreamer That Remains, Delusion of the Fury, The Instruments of
Harry Partch, Revelation (excerpts). Innova 407.
Enclosure 8: Rotate the Body in All Its Planes. Innova 399.
Just Intonation—The Basics.
A basic understanding of principles of pure tuning, i.e. Just Intonation, is
crucial to understanding why Partch would go to all the trouble to re-fret or de-fret
his various instruments. Simply put, just frets match the notes of a scale generated by
the harmonics or overtones of a scale’s “fundamental” or tonic note. Touching a string
lightly at its center while plucking it near the bridge allows the string to vibrate in
equal halves, producing a harmonic that is a pure “octave” above the pitch of the open
string, while touching lightly over the 7th and/or 19th fret (dividing the string into
three equal parts) produces a note that is an octave and a “perfect” fifth above the open
note. Further, touching harmonically above the 5th fret produces a double octave (the
string vibrating in four equal parts), while touching slightly behind the 4th fret creates
a double octave + major third as the string vibrates in five equal parts. This process
can be continued ad infinitum, or at least until the fingertip becomes wider than the
string division, which happens somewhere behind the first fret as the string divides
into 24ths, creating a harmonic which is five octaves and a fifth above the open string.
A comparison of the fretted notes with their similarly named harmonics quickly
reveals that all but the octaves do not match, because they are actually different notes.
Partch found these pure intervals created by the harmonics to be far more interesting
than the tempered ones produced by the standard frets spaced according to equal
temperament.
Partch used the first eleven harmonics to create the melodies and
harmonies found in his musical universe. His basic harmonic unit was not
the triad (root/third/fifth) of Western music but instead, the hexad based
on harmonic numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and11, which created a justly tuned
“dominant” seventh chord of root/3rd/5th/7th/9th/11th. Each of these notes could
then generate their own 4/5/6/7/9/11 series ad infinitum. Why did Partch stop at the
mythic number 43? It was completely arbitrary. He later called this prime number
only a “quarter part of a half truth.” Since that time, composers such as Lou Harrison,
Ben Johnston, James Tenney, Terry Riley, LaMonte Young, Larry Polansky and others
too numerous to mention have gone on to use the 13th, 17th, 19th harmonic and
far beyond, with both acoustic and electronic instruments, including guitar. Further
details are at justintonation.net and elsewhere.
ENDNOTES
1 Full citations of Genesis of a Music appear below in notes 4 and 6 respectively. Blanket permission has been granted to reproduce illustrations from this book and all other

publications administered by the Harry Partch Foundation (Examples 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, as well as Figures 1–3, 5–7, and 9), as well as Fig. 4 from Innova Records (P. Blackburn, Dir.).
2 Hermann von Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik (1863; first English edition, On the Sensations of Tone…,
1870.
3 This Example is from Richard Kassel, ed. Harry Partch: Barstow. Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California [1968 Version], Music of the
United States of America, Vol. 9 (Madison: A-R Editions, Inc., 2000), xlix. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
4 Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music: Monophony – The Relation of its Music to Historic and Contemporary Trends; its Philosophy, Concepts, and Principles; its Relation to Historic and
Proposed Intonation; and its Application to Musical Instruments (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1949), 196.
5 Harry Partch, “A Quarter-saw Section of Motivations and Intonations,” in Enclosure Two: Harry Partch (Minnesota: Innova Records 401, 1967), disc 2.
6 Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music: An Account Of a Creative Work, its Roots, and its Fulfillments, 2d. ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1974), 134.
7 This Example is from Richard Kassel, ed. Harry Partch: Barstow. Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow, California [1968 Version], Music of the
United States of America, Vol. 9 (Madison: A-R Editions, Inc., 2000), li. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
8 Harry Partch, “Barstow,” in Bitter Music: Collected Journals, Essays, Introductions and Librettos, ed. Thomas McGeary (Champaign: U. of Illinois Press, 1991), 201.
9 Harry Partch, “U.S. Highball – A Musical Account of a Transcontinental Hobo Trip,” in Bitter Music (1991), 211.
10 Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch: A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 149.
11 Harry Partch, Enclosure 3: A Partch Scrapbook, Edited by Philip Blackburn (St. Paul: American Composer’s Forum, 1997), 74. Photo courtesy of Innova Records.
12 Partch, Genesis (1949), 211.
13 Partch, Genesis (1949), 196–7.
14 Partch, Genesis (1949), 197–8.
15 Partch, Genesis (1949), 197, with standard pitch names and deviations in ¢ (1¢ = 1/100 of a semitone) added by the author.
16 Partch, Genesis (1974), 207.
17 Partch, Genesis (1974), 205.
18 Photo: Carl Mydans, originally published in Life. Reproduced by arrangement with Getty Images.
19 Partch continued to use his Adapted Guitars for the rest of his life, perhaps most iconically in his last composition, The Dreamer That Remains, also the title of the documentary
film on the composer directed by Stephen Pouliot.
20 A Glimpse into the World of Harry Partch: 27 Unique Instruments (LP, Columbia MS–20576).
21 Charles Corey’s website, www.HarryPartch.com, is generously illustrated with photographs of many of Partch’s original instruments. See also “Harry Partch Instrumentarium
takes up residency at UW” at the U.W. School of Music website, https://music.washington.edu/news/2014/11/20/harry-partch-instrumentarium-takes-residency-uw#.
Accessed March 17, 2015.
22 John Schneider, “Bringing Back Barstow,” Guitar Review #95 (Winter 1993), 1–14. A photograph of the author playing Adapted Guitar I is visible at http://www.partch.la.
Accessed March 17, 2015.
23 Reviews of “the ensemble that calls itself, simply, Partch” appear on the website http://www.partch.la/ under the “Press” tab. Accessed March 17, 2015.
24 John Schneider, “Partch - ReGenesis of a Music,” Mikrotonalität: Praxis and Utopie (Mainz: Schott, 2013), 178–193. As of this writing, we have created seventeen instruments;
more photos and history are at http://www.partch.la.
25 See Thomas McGeary, The Music of Harry Partch: A Descriptive Catalog. I.S.A.M. Monograph #31 (Brooklyn: Institute for Studies in American Music, 1991).
26 As reported in Steven Runk, “Paul Simon speaks about his career and the role of art in society,” News at Princeton (Monday, March 16, 2015). http://www.princeton.edu/ main
news/archive/S42/55/06G69/index.xml?section=topstories
27 Partch. H. “A Quarter-Saw Section of Motivations and Intonations” (1967), Bitter Music (1991), 197.
28 Bitter Music received a 2012 nomination for Best Classical Compendium; Castor & Pollux garnered a 2014 nomination for Best Chamber Music Performance; Plectra &
Percussion Dances won the award for 2014 Best Classical Compendium.

guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 37

 BIBLIOGRAPHICA
An Uncatalogued Piece by Fernando Sor?1
By Ricardo Aleixo
This paper discusses a page of music manuscript, shelf no. MD-C-90
(4), preserved in a royal monastery situated in Madrid: the Convent
of the Descalzas Reales.2 It contains three works for guitar, including
two attributed to the Catalan composer and guitarist Fernando Sor
(1778-1839).3 The first, entitled Minué de Sors, is known as Sor’s
Op. 23, No. 6, while the second short composition, Alemanda de-
sors [sic], is not yet officially attributed to Sor. While recent research
has revealed that Salvador Castro de Gistau (ca. 1770-?), a publisher
originally from Madrid, issued this same piece in his Op. 6 with the
title Allegretto, the version found in the manuscript of the Convent
of the Descalzas Reales provides a new perspective on this work,
potentially by Fernando Sor.4 The third piece is a minuet (Minué) in
a simple binary structure of two eight-bar phrases. Unlike the other
two pieces, it appears without attribution.
Description of the manuscript MD-C-90 (4)
The catalog of the Royal Library of Madrid describes the manu-
script in question simply with these words: Minué: 6a en Fa; Aleman-
da; Minué/de Sors. The document is also referenced in the database
of the bibliography of National Heritage (IBIS), which records the
holdings of the Royal Library and that of the Royal Trustees (Real
Biblioteca y Patronatos Reales): the Abbey of Santa María la Real
de Las Huelgas (Burgos), the Royal Monastery of the Incarnation
(Madrid), the Royal Convent of Tordesillas, and the Convent of the
Descalzas Reales (Madrid).5 The document studied in this arti-
cle is the only manuscript source of guitar music attributed to
Fernando Sor in this vast database.
Figure 1: Minué de Sors and Alemanda desors, MD-C-90 (4) recto. © National Heritage (Spain).
38 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org
In landscape format, the score measures 29.3 x 21.5 cm. Its
‘text box’ is 25.8 x 18.6 cm. Musical notation can be found on both
sides of the single page. On the recto are the Minué de Sors and the
Alemanda desors, while on the verso is another minuet, along with a
fragment (two eight-bar phrases) of unidentified keyboard music in
triple time, in a different hand. There are no visible watermarks. The
property stamp (“Descalzas Reales. Clarisas”), on the upper right
corner of the recto side, is followed by these marginal notations in
pencil: “CA - 28 / E - 4 (2); Num. Asiento 845; CAJA 90/4.” (See
Figures 1 and 2).6
The first three compositions in the the manuscript, with no
title page, are for guitar solo. The fourth, added later and in anoth-
er hand, is clearly for a keyboard instrument, being written in two
grand staffs. By consulting several manuscripts kindly provided by
Sister Mary Almudena, responsible for the archive of the Convent of
the Descalzas Reales, it was possible to identify the handwriting of
the last piece as that of Francis Xavier Gibert (1779-1848), the Con-
vent’s Chapel Master (Maestro de Capilla) until his death in Madrid
on February 27, 1848.7 The information provided by Sister Mary
supports the idea that the manuscript belongs to the archive of scores
collected by the Convent’s Chapel Masters. In addition, the fact that
it is not a recent acquisition allows us to conclude that Gibert was in
possession of the document. Therefore, it could be from the first half
of the nineteenth century.
 Figure 2: Anonymous Minué and a keyboard piece, MD-C-90 (4), verso. © National Heritage (Spain).

Additionally, it is quite likely that Francis Xavier Gibert had A comparison of the manuscript version with the printed
some relationship with guitars, because another work by him from version, as found in the second edition of Op. 23, shows several
the same period contains two “boleras” for voice and guitar.8 Both differences. (Refer to Figures 4 and 5.) Some of them are quite
compositions are under the simple heading of “voleras,” and their obvious, as in the case of measure 9:
lyrics begin with “Pepa asked me if I love her …” and “A sensitive
heart ... .” 9   
The handwriting of the pieces for guitar—the same for all   


three—has an appearance that is not very compatible with what

one expects from a copyist. Nor does it seem to be the work of an
amateur, since the G-clefs are well drawn and the note heads are fair- Figure 4: Measure 9 ms. MD-C-90 (4) Figure 5: Measure 9 op. 23, No. 6.
ly consistent. This is surely the calligraphy belonging to a musician
with some writing experience. Moreover, the absence of a title page Similarly, there are clear differences between the two versions
or price suggests that it is a personal copy, not a manuscript created in other measures. These variants as well as the ones in the previous
for sale within the flourishing copyist’s market. example show that the copy archived in the Convent’s Library is
considerably more complex. (Refer to Figures 6 and 7.)
The music of the manuscript MD-C-90 (4)
The first piece of the manuscript, Minué de Sors, is known as his
Op. 23, No. 6 (Figure 3).

6 a en Fa Figure 6: Measures 22 and 23, ms. MD-C-90 (4).

� � �� � � �
�� � �� � �� � �� �� �� ��� � � � � � �� �� �� � � � � �
Andante

� 3 �
�
� 4 ��� �� � � ��� � �� ��� ��
� �� � �       
�� �� p p � �      
f
8

 
Figure 3: Excerpt from Andante Op. 23, No. 6. Figure 7: Measures 24 and 25, Op. 23, No. 6.

The French composer Jean Antoine Meissonier (1783-1857)

published two versions of this opus. The first one dates back to 1825;
the second could have been issued in 1826 under the supervision of
Sor after his return to Paris from Moscow.10 The second version has
significant changes from the first; one of them is precisely the incor-
poration of the Andante—the very piece copied in the manuscript of
the Convent of the Descalzas Reales with the title Minué de Sors.11

guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 39

 An Uncataloged Piece by Fernando Sor (cont.)
However, the most interesting part of the manuscript is the
second short piece, the Alemanda desors, a work that is not in the
catalog of the composer. Although it is questionable to assign the
authorship of this piece to Sor based solely on a copyist’s manu-
Figure 10: Measures 7, 8 and 9 ms. MD-C-90 (4).
script attribution, the same music with very minor variants appeared
in a print published by Salvador Castro de Gistau in Paris between According to the cataloguing by Jeffery, only two pieces of Sor
ca. 1803 and 1805. The work is one of several contained in this were published with the name alemandas (allemandes): the Alemanda
edition, preceded by the initials “F. S.,” but without a specific title— Op. 23, No. 5, and the Alemanda Op. 36 (Trois Pièces de Société).
only an indication of tempo, as seen in Figure 8, below.12 Both pieces are stylistically very different from the Alemanda desors,
In regard to the attribution of the piece in the manuscript, there and in the case of the Alemanda Op. 36, there are structural differ-
is little doubt that the initials “F.S.” in the Castro de Gistau print ences as well. The Alemanda Op. 23 appears only in the first edition
indicate the authorship of Fernando Sor. In fact, the publisher from of that opus by Meissonnier, as previously mentioned. It dates from
Madrid uses these initials on other occasions that can be directly 1825. (Figure 11)
connected to Sor, as is the case with some seguidillas in his earli- 6 a en Re
est opuses.13 In his doctoral dissertation, Kenneth Hartdegen lists
 � � � � � � � �� �
�
�� � ��� � � � � � �� � �

the many works that Castro de Gistau attributed to “F. S.” To the � 2
4 � � �
aforementioned Seguidilla and to the Allegretto we must add another 8
� � �� �
short piece of only sixteen measures, published by Castro on page 5 �
of his Op. 8, Plusieurs Petites Pieces Pour la Guitare, entitled Cont.ce Figure 11: Excerpt from the Allemande, Op. 23, No. 5.
[contredance] Angloise, since it is headed with the same initials.14
The Alemanda desors and the Allegretto published by Castro are This consists of a short melody with simple accompanying
in C-major and both use a simple melody over an Alberti bass—an notes, having a binary structure of 8 + 8 measures and a two-voice
accompaniment technique Sor used on various occasions. However, texture, maintained throughout the composition.
although the two versions are very similar, one can see several dif- The Alemanda Op. 36 was published in 1828. It is a more
ferences between them, such as minor melodic variants and some complex piece from the structural standpoint and exhibits a more
failures of the manuscript version to maintain the Alberti bass pat- successful use of the capabilities of the guitar (Figure 12).15
tern. Furthermore, the structure of the piece with two sections of 9
�Allemande
+ 8 measures, does not match with the structure of 8 + 8 measures � � � � �� ��  � � �� � �� �� � �� �  � � � � � � � ��

�� � �
found in Castro de Gistau’s print. Besides, the two final measures of � � 42 � � � � ��
�
the first section of the print version have very little in common with 8 � � � � � � � �
the last three measures of the manuscript (Figures 9 and 10).

  Figure 12: Excerpt from Allemande in Trois Pièces de Société, Op. 36.

       

  As can be seen, with the exception of the 2/4 meter, which is
 common in all three pieces, and the simple textures and binary struc-
Figure 9: Measures 7 and 8, Castro, Op. 6 ture shared with the Alemanda from Op. 23, the Alemanda desors has
few similarities with the two known and cataloged Alemandas.

Figure 8: Allegretto by “F. S.”

40 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org

 Fernando Sor wrote some pieces similar to the manuscript The authorship of these variations was unknown until Kenneth
alemanda found in the Convent’s archive, but they are not presented Sparr brought to our attention the Etudes et Variations Espagnolles
as alemandas. This is the case with the Thema of the Air Varié, with- Par Sors, a work that had been published in the Journal de Guitare
out opus number, which Castro published in 1809.16 The theme ou Lyre of Pierre-Jean Porro.19 Although Porro’s version shows some
that precedes the variations has a binary structure of 8 + 8 measures, differences with the manuscript in the Historical Public Library in
much in the style of Alemanda desors. Consequently, it also resembles Madrid (the variations appear in a different order, and Porro added a
the style of the Allegretto of Castro’s Op. 6 (Figure 13). seventh and final variation), according to Sparr, it is very likely that
the Variaciones para guitarra is an original work by Fernando Sor.20
� � � � � � � �� �  �

�
Andante 
� 42 �� � � �� � � � � �� � � � �
Regarding these variants and modifications, it should be men-
� � � � � � � � � � � �� � � � � �
8
� � � � � � tioned that Fernando Sor showed his concern about the publication
of some of his works having come to light prematurely and without
Figure 13: Excerpt from the Thema of the Air Varié by Fernando Sor. his supervision. The following words reveal that his popularity led to
the spread of various apocryphal and careless versions of his works:
Likewise, the Leçon 17 of the Vingt quatre leçons progressives pour While accompanying arias from Italian operas, often I discovered
la guitare, and even more clearly, Exercice 13 of the Vingt Quatre small melodic ritornellos in one or another instrument. When I tried
exercices très faciles et soigneusement doigtés, both pieces published in to adapt them to the guitar, I realized that the fingering I used for the
1828, while being more extensive pieces, are also based on a simple harmony was essentially what I needed for the melody, and that the
melody and an Alberti bass (Figure 14).17 latter should be almost entirely dependent on the former. This success

having satisfied my desires completely, I proceeded to compose some
4�
Andante
� � � pieces, in truth not very carefully worked out, but which helped
� 42 � � 2 � � �� � � � � � � � � �� � �� � 3 � � � � �� � � � 2 � � �� � � �
1 4 4� 1

8
3 3� 2 3 prepare the way for me that circumstances required me to follow.
These were pieces that I simply had to study seriously to rectify my
Figure 14: Excerpt from Exercice 13, Op. 35. way of writing music, when I became a professeur. Many of these
pieces would never have been exposed to the public if I had been
But the piece that has the closest similarity to the second of consulted, but some people who had copies of them (mostly
the small pieces in the manuscript is the theme from the Variations incorrect) made deals with a publisher, who, overestimating my
for guitar (Variaciones para guitarra) found in the Historical Public talent, gladly took over whatever bore my name.21
Library in Madrid (Biblioteca Histórica Municipal de Madrid),
Figure 15.18 Even if Sor were not referring here to some of the pieces pre-
sented in this article, nor even pointing out that some of these
versions were more or less complicated, it is clear that our composer’s
popularity led to the diffusion of many apocryphal and poorly edited
works.

Figure 15: Theme from Variaciones para guitarra, Mus 722-24 [IV].

guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 41

 An Uncataloged Piece by Fernando Sor (cont.)
Conclusions
The manuscript MD-C-90 (4) from the library of the monas-
tery of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid appears to contain alternate
versions of two pieces for solo guitar by Fernando Sor. In the first,
we find some musical elements pointing to a certain simplification
of the printed version (Andante), published by Meissonier around
the year 1826. However, the opposite occurs in the second piece,
because the absence of some groups of notes forming the Alberti bass
in the Alemanda desors means that the printed version, published by
Castro de Gistau, is slightly more complex.
In the case of the Alemanda desors, this work dates from the first
half of the nineteenth century, or even the last years of the eighteenth
century. It was published as an Allegretto in Op. 6 of Castro Gistau,
appearing initially between ca. 1803 and 1805. The simple style and
character of the work, based on an Alberti bass accompanying a very
simple melody, is found in other pieces by Fernando Sor as well. Fur-
thermore, its classification as an alemanda in the manuscript version
is surprising, because the piece has few similarities with the two cata-
loged alemandas by the Catalan composer. Rather, it resembles some
didactic pieces of the composer and recalls the theme of the Variaciones
para guitarra found in the Biblioteca Histórica Municipal of Madrid.

Thanks to Dr. Rita Martin of Radford University for her English translation of this Spanish article.

ENDNOTES
1 An early version of this article appeared as “Un pezzo non catalogato di Fernando Sor,” in Italian, in il ‘Fronimo’ no. 163 (July 2013), 50-56.
I would like to express my gratitude
to Luis Briso de Montiano for helping me at the time of writing this article and to Erik Stenstadvold, who provided me with important information. I would also like to thank Ana
García Sanz, curator of the Convent of the Descalzas Reales, and Sister Mary Almudena, archivist of that institution, for their kindness in facilitating my gathering information on
this manuscript.
2 Literally translated, this is the Monastery of the Barefoot Royals. The name refers to the custom of the Colettine branch of the Order of St. Clare being barefoot while within the
cloister. Persons interested in viewing this manuscript must access it through the catalog of the Real Biblioteca de Madrid.
3 As a primary reference for this article I have used Fernando Sor: The New Complete Works for Guitar, ed. Brian Jeffery (London: Tecla Editions, 2004).
4 Originally from Madrid, Salvador Castro de Gistau was a Spanish guitarist, publisher, and composer who was very well known in Paris in the beginning of nineteenth century.
His work as a publisher and composer includes the Journal de Musique Étrangère pour la Guitare ou Lyre, a periodical publication in which Castro de Gistau emphasized
Spanish pieces, including several of his own works for guitar solo and Spanish songs for voice and guitar. He also published music for guitar written by other authors such as
Fernando Sor, Pablo Huertos, Isidro de Laporta, Federico Moretti, Carlos Sors and Manuel Soto. See Javier Suárez-Pajares, “Castro de Gistau, Salvador,” Diccionario de la música
española e hispanoamericana, ed. Emilio Casares (Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, 1999), Vol. 3, 407-409.
5 Patrimonio Nacional, Real Biblioteca, and Patronatos Reales.
6 Iwish to thank the Royal Library for authorizing the publication of this manuscript.
7 Ana Cazurra i Basté, “Gibert, Francisco Javier,” Diccionario de la música española e hispanoamericana, ed. Emilio Casares (Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, 1999),
Vol. 5, 595.
8 The manuscript is preserved in the Convent of the Descalzas Reales Archive: E-Mdr, sign.: MUS/MD/C/90 (5).
9 “Me preguntó mi Pepa si la quería…” y “Un corazón sensible…”
10 Brian Jeffery, “Notes on the pieces,” in Fernando Sor: The New Complete Works for Guitar (London: Tecla Editions, 2004), Vol. 3, p. xi.
11 For more information see the edition by Brian Jeffery, Fernando Sor, Vol. 3, pp. x–xi.
12 Plusieurs Petites Pièces A Deux Parties pour être Executées Sur Une Guitare Seule ... Par Castro... Oeuvre 6, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (FPn), sign.: Vm9 3528. I thank Luis
Briso de Montiano for connecting the Alemanda desors with the piece found in Castro’s edition. I am grateful to him and to Erik Stenstadvold for providing me with a copy of
that edition. I would also like to acknowledge the kindness of the Biliothèque National, France, in authorizing the publication of the Allegretto by “F. S.”
13 The seguidilla “Sin voluntad me tienes” (“You got me without wanting to”) was published in a work called Op. 1 by Castro de Gistau (Six Seguidilles ou Chansons Nationales

Espagnoles avec … Accompagnement de Guitare ...) and in his Op. 2 (Six Seguidilles ou Chansons Nationales Espagnoles avec ... Accompagnement de Piano), in both cases
under the initials “F. S.” The same music, but with different words, is found in a Spanish manuscript of the early nineteenth century (GB-Lbl Egerton 3289, ff. 107v-108),
and was published by Brian Jeffery as “De amor en las prisones” in his collection of seguidillas by Fernando Sor (London: Tecla Editions, 1976), 28. This information was kindly
provided by Luis Briso de Montiano.
14 Kenneth Angus Hartdegen, “Fernando Sor’s Theory of Harmony Applied to the Guitar: History, Bibliography and Context” (Doctoral dissertation: the University of Auckland,

2011), 517.
15 Jeffery, “Notes …,” Vol. 5, p. viii.
16 Information kindly provided by Luis Briso de Montiano.
17 Jeffery, “Notes …,” Vol. 4, p. viii; Vol. 5, p. viii.
18 E-Mm, sign.: Mus 722-24 [IV]. I would like to thank the Historical Public Library in Madrid for allowing me to publish a piece from this source. The collection of guitar music
in this library, which includes this manuscript, was described and cataloged by Luis Briso de Montiano in Un fondo desconocido de música para guitarra (Madrid: Opera Tres,
1995). The Variaciones para guitarra are discussed on page 155.
19 The Etudes et Variations Espagnolles Par Sors were published by Kenneth Sparr in the article “Due pezzi sconosciuti di Fernando Sor,” il Fronimo, No. 144 (October 2008), 28-38.
20 Sparr,“Due pezzi,” 29.
21 Fernando Sor, Méthode Pour La Guitare, Par Ferdinand Sor (Paris: L’Auteur, Rue de Marivaux, No. 5, 1830), 4. “En acompagnant des airs d’opéras italiens, je rencontrais
souvent de petites reprises chantantes dans quelque instrument; en cherchant à les rendre sur la guitare, je trouvais que le doigté que j’employais pour l’harmonie était la base de
celui qu’il me fallait pour la mélodie, et que ce dernier devait être presque entièrement dépendant du premier. Le succès ayant complètement répondu à mes désirs, je fis quelque
morceaux, très peu réfléchis à la vérité, mais qui m’ont préparé la route que les circonstances m’ont obligé de suivre, et que je n’ai eu qu’à examiner sévèrement pour rectifier ma
manière d’écrire dès que je suis devenu professeur. Plusieurs de ces morceaux n’auraient jamais été exposés au public si l’on m’eût consulté; mais des personnes qui en avaient des
copies (la plupart incorrectes) en firent affaire avec l’éditeur, qui, faisant beaucoup trop d’honneur à mon talent, s’emparait avec plaisir de tout ce qui portait mon nom.”

42 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org

RETURN WITH US NOW …
Emil Heerbrugger’s Grand Grecian Military March in Facsimile
By Robert Ferguson
Grand Grecian Military March was composed for one or two
guitars by German immigrant Emil Heerbrugger and published in
the 1830s. The score contains no copyright notice, but the address
included with the publisher’s imprint, shown directly beneath the
tuning gloss (of which I will say more below), allows at least the
decade of the work’s appearance to be determined with accuracy.
According to Dichter and Shapiro, Klemm & Brother were based
at 287 Market St. in Philadelphia from 1831 to 1839.1 The second
page of the score bears the stamp of the copy’s original retail seller,
“J.D. Sheppard, Pianoforte & Music Saloon, Buffalo.” 2
Emil Heerbrugger (or Heerbruger), like Frederick A. and
John G. Klemm, belonged to the wave of German immigrants that
entered the United States en masse in the first half of the nineteenth
century, and out of whose ranks came, in Joseph Horowitz’s words,
“the founders of American classical music.” 3 But because the line
between popular and classical music was less rigidly drawn on this
side of the Atlantic than in Europe, many of these musicians moved
easily between both spheres. Heerbrugger was one of them.
Heerbrugger played violin primarily but also guitar and cornet.
From Hanover, Germany, he traveled to America with the Italian
Opera Company, first landing in New York. From there he made
his way south and west. Heerbrugger taught music in Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, as well as Franklin, Tennessee, before settling in Nash-
ville in 1837. During his time in Nashville, he continued teaching
and performing, and in addition operated “Emil Heerbruger’s Music
and Fancy Store.” He also spearheaded the formation of Nashville’s
Musical Fund Society, established late in 1837. The Society’s first
concert, a benefit for Heerbrugger, was presented on December
26 of that year. The organization continued to sponsor concerts in
Nashville once a month through 1839, presenting music of Bellini,
Weber, Meyerbeer, and Rossini, among others.4
In 1840 Heerbrugger showed up in Texas, playing in Austin
and Houston, and advertising himself as “one of the best musicians
in this country or the United States.” (Texas was still an independent
republic at that time.) His concert of April 22, 1840, at the Capital
building in Houston was one of the first performances of its kind
in Texas history, and the first in Texas for which a written program
survives. A number of players participated, as was standard for
that day, and its all-instrumental set list featured music by Rossini,
1 Harry Dichter and Elliott Shapiro, Handbook of Early American Sheet Music, 1768–1889 (New York: Dover, 1977), 211. For more on the Klemm brothers, see Martha Novak
Clinkscale, Makers of the Piano, 1700–1820 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), 214.
2 Sheppard’s store was a fixture in the musical life of Buffalo from the early 1830s until the mid 1860s. Buffalo city directories, 1832–1875.
3 Classical Music in America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005), 397.
4 Tim Sharp, Nashville Music before Country (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2008), 60–63.
5 Gary Hartman, The History of Texas Music (College Station: Texas A&M Univ. Press, 2008), 103; Clayton, Lawrence and Joe W. Specht, The Roots of Texas Music (College
Station: Texas A&M Univ. Press, 2003), 121.
6 I thank Thomas Heck for pointing out this last possibility to me.
Auber, and Mozart on two violins and piano; pieces for French horn;
solo piano; solo violin; and in one case, a “Solo—Guitar,” no doubt
played by Heerbrugger himself.5
Grand Grecian Military March is parlor music for the amateur.
It displays the traits of so much of that repertoire—foursquare phras-
ing, strict diatonicism, tonic-dominant harmony (avoiding even the
subdominant for lack of an open A-string root in Guitar 1), and
simple rhythm. The tambour technique was a staple of nine-
teenth-century martial music on guitar, typically used to evoke
drums, and Heerbrugger marks it as such in his score. The composer
recommends executing the effect percussively with the right-hand
middle finger.
One feature of this piece that gives it some distinction is its
open E-major tuning (E-B-e-g#-b-e’), described in the scordatura
gloss above the first staff of Guitar 1. This tuning increases the in-
strument’s volume and sustain, and allows for a profusion of multi-
string harmonics. Curiously, Heerbrugger instructs the player to
execute these harmonics by bringing the left hand around to the bass
side of the fretboard and approaching the strings from that direc-
tion, with the back of the hand facing upward. Perhaps he used this
mannerism in his concerts as a conceit akin to the technical antics of
contemporaneous virtuoso showmen on piano and violin. Though
strictly conjectural, it might also suggest that Heerbrugger placed
the guitar flat on his lap to perform the harmonics section, or the
whole piece.6 If true, this would predate by at least a half century the
playing method of “lap steel” guitarists.
Heerbrugger instructs the player to finger all notes in the first
guitar part as if in standard tuning. (Note that the G# in m. 7 should
have been placed on the first chord, where it would have affected
both harmonies, producing an actual pitch of An♮ in both.) Guitar
2 is already in standard tuning. One final point: Though it may be
tempting to associate Heerbrugger’s use of Grecian in his title with
the Greek Revivalism that was so much in vogue in his day and
earlier, the word more likely signals the composer’s predilection for
nationalistic color (whether achieved or not), conveyed in other
pieces of his, like Hungarian Waltz, Cicilian Waltz, and Swiss Air.
Robert Ferguson is editor-in-chief of Soundboard quarterly and has long
had a scholarly interest in the guitar in America.
guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 43
44 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org
guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 45
 EDITORIAL: Guitar Research Resources – An Update
By Thomas Heck
In early May, 2015, there was a biennial gathering of guitar history
enthusiasts and scholars at the town of Hemmenhofen, Germany,
on Lake Constance (a.k.a. the Bodensee). At this editor’s suggestion,
one of the sessions was a round table with the title, “Old and New
Sources and Horizons for Historical Research on the Guitar.” It was
designed to stimulate audience participation and certainly succeed-
ed. Brief papers were offered by three scholars in attendance: myself,
Erik Stenstadvold, and Gerhard Penn. What follows is a summary
of the handout I prepared for that session. It identifies eight points
of progress, each of which can be considered good news for those
who work in the field of guitar history. Finally, there is a new stream-
ing-video lecture series from England, produced in 2014–15, that
will delight all who love the guitar.
1. Access to European newspapers is getting much better. As Erik
Stenstadvold points out in his “Note on Newspaper Research” at
the conclusion of his article on Fernando Sor (above, p. 23): A great
number of British newspapers and periodicals are searchable through
the British Newspaper Archive <www.britishnewspaperarchive.
co.uk> under the auspices of the British Library (Examiner, Morn-
ing Chronicle, Morning Post) and the Hathi Trust Digital Library
<www.hathitrust.org> (London Literary Gazette, London Magazine,
New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal). The French sources
[can be] accessed via Gallica <gallica.bnf.fr>, the digital depart-
ment of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, with the exception of
Le Miroir des spectacles (July-Dec. 1822) and Journal de Paris, which
have not yet been digitized, but can be examined through microfilms
at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.
2. Music periodical indexing has never been better, but some
important research databases still remain restricted to participating
libraries. Especially gratifying is how quickly RILM, the Répertoire
International de Littérature Musicale <www.rilm.org> cites online
the contents of a specialized Italian guitar magazine like il Fronimo
virtually as soon as it is received, even if it postpones adding the
abstract until later. Most research libraries provide their users with
access to RILM, RIPM, and the Music Index through a contract
with EBSCOhost.
RIPM, the Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals <www.ripm.
org>, currently offers exhaustive indexes to 223 older music periodi-
cals (1760–1966). Together RIPM and RILM provide access to 255
years of music periodical literature and are designed to complement
each other chronologically.
3. Many academic and research libraries are already publishing
their own “electronic journals,” in addition to purchasing journals
(electronic and printed) from scholarly publishers. See the Wikipedia
46 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org
article, “Library publishing,” <www.en.wikipedia/wiki/Library_
publishing.> Scholarly monographs, dissertations, and conference
proceedings are also being included in this publishing stream. A
search (20 Apr. 2015) of just the keyword descriptor-phrase “full text
online” at the Univ. of Texas library produced 23,683 results. The
Ohio State Univ. Library’s response to the same search was 45,931.
The difference is probably attributable to the latter’s membership in
OhioLINK.
4. Media-rich dissertations and theses are now routinely being
hosted and published online by the libraries of the institutions
granting the degrees. Witness Martin Vishnick’s “Survey of Extend-
ed Techniques on the Classical Six-String Guitar with Appended
Studies in New Morphological Notation” (Doctoral thesis, City
University London, 2014) <openaccess.city.ac.uk/4164/>. It can
be downloaded in five zipped archives—two PDFs for Vols. 1 & 2,
two folders of audio files (tracks 1–56 and 57–109), and a video of
Vishnick’s examples 1–10.
Kenneth Hartdegen’s 1,000+-page dissertation on Sor (2011)
is likewise freely available online: “Fernando Sor’s Theory of
Harmony Applied to the Guitar: History, Bibliography and
Context” (Ph.D. Thesis, Music, Univ. of Auckland, NZ, 2011) xvii,
1008 p. ill. (some col.), music, facsims. It is delivered via three PDFs at
<researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/11142>.
5. The online Catalogo Numerico Ricordi now makes freely avail-
able documentation and dates for all Ricordi editions published
from 1808 to 1870 <www.ricordicompany.com/en/catalog>.
Robert Coldwell writes that as of December 2014 he has added
entries for the [541] named Ricordi guitar works to his Digital
Guitar Archive Search.
6. The Digital Guitar Archive search of Mr. Coldwell <digitalgui-
tararchive.com> now provides references to 5,472 cataloged items
in the Gitarristische Sammlung Fritz Walter u. Gabriele Wiede-
mann, Munich, Bavarian State Library.
7. Hofmeister XIX <www.hofmeister.rhul.ac.uk/2008/index.
html> is an on-line, searchable version of the Hofmeister Monats-
berichte for the years 1829–1900. Having some 330,000 records of
music publications, it is the most extensive resource for establishing
what was published where and when during that period—a time
when publication dates rarely appeared on editions of sheet music.
Records are linked to facsimile images of the actual pages of the
Monatsberichte at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek website.
8. The complete Soundboard is now indexed and selectively
abstracted, in a timely manner, in The Music Index online. There
were 4,337 Soundboard item entries as of April 2015, covering the
magazine from its beginnings to Vol. 40 no. 3 (Jan. 2015).

No full-text searching of Soundboard is available through the

Music Index. For that purpose, the GFA sells a keyword-searchable
DVD-ROM. While serviceable and a great improvement over what
was previously available, this machine-generated DVD-ROM has
“... one of the finest guitar
its limitations due to inevitably incorrect OCR—optical character programs in the world ...”
recognition, especially in the early typescript issues. Exhaustive and - Guitar International.com

detailed indexing with 100% reliable keyword searching is current-

Ernesto Bitetti Petar Jankovic
ly being developed by Jan de Kloe: his Soundboard Index database, Professor of Music; Lecturer in Music
Chair
to be sold online, is coming soon. Contact Jan at <jan.de.kloe@
telenet.be> for more information.
Degrees include Bachelor of Music, Bachelor of Music Education,
Bachelor of Science and an Outside Field, Master of Music,
Men, Women, and Guitars in Romantic England Doctor of Music, Performer Diploma, and Artist Diploma.

Finally, for those interested in media as it relates to the 2016 AUDITION DATES
guitar’s cultural history, there is a new streaming video Jan. 15 & 16 | Feb. 5 & 6 | Mar. 4 & 5
Application deadline is Dec. 1, 2015.
series to recommend—and it’s free! Professor Christopher Page,
founder of the Consortium for Guitar Research at Sidney Sussex Notable alumni include Denis Azabagic, Daniel Bolshoy, Nicholas Ciraldo,
Nemanja Ostojic, Julio Ribeiro, Alan Thomas, Aleksandr Tsiboulski.
College, Cambridge, has produced six fascinating lectures with live
musical illustrations, entitled “Men, Women, and Guitars in music.indiana.edu
Romantic England.” They are among the latest in a centuries-long
tradition at Gresham College (founded 1597) of providing free public
lectures to the masses—initially within the City of London, but now,
through the miracle of streaming video, available worldwide. These
lectures, all superb, should be an enduring and valuable resource for
the study and teaching of guitar history and literature everywhere.
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/men-women-and-guitars-in-
romantic-england

guitarfoundation.org Soundboard Scholar No. 1 47

 S O U N D B OA R D SCHOLAR – CONTRIBUTORS
PANAGIOTIS POULOPOULOS currently holds an appoint-
ment as Assistant Curator in the Department of Musical Instru-
ments at the Deutsches Museum, Munich. His diverse academic
background includes a BA (Technological Educational Institute
of Athens) in Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Arts, a
MMus (University of Edinburgh) in Musical Instrument Research,
and a PhD (University of Edinburgh) in Organology. His doctoral
thesis investigated the so-called English guitar: “The Guittar in the
British Isles, 1750-1810.” Dr. Poulopoulos has extensive training
and experience in the documentation, preservation and exhibition of
musical instruments, having worked for various projects in the
National Museums of Scotland and the Edinburgh University
Collection of Historic Musical Instruments. Apart from his
museum activities, he has been a tutor for “Music and Technolo-
gies” at the University of Edinburgh, and Scholar-in-Residence at
the Forschungsinstitut für Technik- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte
of the Deutsches Museum. Additionally, he is the recipient of
various scholarships, awards and research grants, and has regularly
presented papers at international conferences organized by the Galpin
Society, AMIS, CIMCIM, and other acknowledged institutions.
Besides being the author of several articles as well as contribu-
tor in other respects to the New Grove Dictionary of Musical In-
struments, he is also an ordinary member of the Consortium for
Guitar Research at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
– p.poulopoulos@deutsches-museum.de
JOHN SCHNEIDER is the Grammy® Award winning guitar-
ist, composer, author, and broadcaster whose weekly television and
radio programs have brought the guitar into millions of homes.
He holds a Ph.D. in Music & Physics from the University College
Cardiff (Wales), music degrees from the University of California and
the Royal College of Music (London), and is past President of the
Guitar Foundation of America. He has written dozens of articles on the
guitar; the newly revised and enlarged edition of his well-known stan-
dard text, The Contemporary Guitar, is scheduled to be published by
Rowman & Littlefield (August 2015). He has performed in Europe,
Japan, Vietnam & throughout North America, and been featured by
New Music America, the DaCamera Society, Southwest Chamber
Music, New American Music Festival, Monday Evening Concerts,
Jacaranda Music, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Sym-
phony, Other Minds, and the BBC. Schneider has recorded for the
Bridge, Cambria, Cold Blue, Etcetera, Innova, Pitch, Mode, Micro-
Fest, and New Albion record labels, and is the founding artistic direc-
tor of MicroFest. He also directs and performs with the contemporary
music ensembles Just Strings and Partch, and is the founder of
MicroFest Records. He is a music professor at Los Angeles Pierce
College, and can be heard weekly on Pacifica Radio’s The Global
Village [www.KPFK.org]. – JohnSchneider.LA
48 Soundboard Scholar No. 1 guitarfoundation.org
ERIK STENSTADVOLD is a noted guitar historian and authority
on nineteenth-century guitar music and its performance practices. His
research has led to the rediscovery of several lost or forgotten guitar
compositions from that period. He has played a prominent role in the
revival of the French guitarist-composer Antoine de Lhoyer (1768–
1852), having edited the three-volume critical edition of Lhoyer’s
Collected Guitar Duos (Chanterelle, 2008). He also edited the Collect-
ed Guitar Studies by Leonard Schulz (Chanterelle, 2011). Stenstad-
vold has authored a number of articles in journals such as Soundboard
(U.S.A.), Notes (U.S.A.), Early Music (U.K.), Classical Guitar (U.K.),
il Fronimo (Italy), and Roseta (Spain). His Annotated Bibliography of
Guitar Methods, 1760-1860 (Pendragon Press, 2010) has become
a standard reference work on early guitar tutors. As a performer,
Stenstadvold has recorded, on period guitars, several CDs devoted
to early nineteenth-century music. For his musicological research,
Erik Stenstadvold was awarded the Chitarra d’Oro prize at the 2008
Alessandria International Guitar Competition in Italy. In 2010 he
was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French
Minister of Culture for his “commitment to the promotion of French
music, in particular the work of Antoine de Lhoyer.” Stenstadvold is
on the faculty of the Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo, and is also
an ordinary member of the Consortium for Guitar Research at Sidney
Sussex College, Cambridge, U.K. – es@nmh.no
RICARDO ALEIXO is a graduate of the History and Sciences of
Music program at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where he
earned the Diploma de Estudios Avanzados in 2011. The subject
of his research was “La guitarra popular en Madrid” in the latter
eighteenth century. Currently he is finishing his doctoral thesis, “La
guitarra en Madrid (1750-ca. 1808): fuentes y difusión” (The Gui-
tar in Madrid (1750–ca.1808): Sources and Dissemination), at the
Universidad Complutense of Madrid, under the direction of Professor
Javier Suárez-Pajares. The author’s musicological interests have led to
invited presentations at conferences, and he has written several arti-
cles published in periodicals like il ‘Fronimo,’ Musicología global, Mu-
sicología local (published by the Sociedad Española de Musicología)
and Clásica2. As a performer, he was awarded the title of Profesor
Superior de Guitarra at the Conservatorio Municipal de Barcelona,
after several years of study in Alicante, under José Tomás and Ignacio
Rodes. He did advanced studies at the Escola d’Arts Musicals Luth-
ier of Barcelona under the direction of Arnaldur Arnarson. He was
awarded prizes at the Concurso Premio Jóvenes Músicos of Lisbon, at
the Concurso Juventud Musical Portuguesa, and at the Torneo Interna-
cional de Música of Zaragoza. – sousaaleixo@hotmail.com
Guitar Foundation of America
We gratefully acknowledge our donors who have so generously suppported us.*

SOUNDBOARD
PHILANTHROPIST
The Augustine Foundation
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A Peer-Reviewed Journal of Guitar Studies
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Kirkpatrick Foundation John Olson Gene Madsen
Editions Orphée Richard Osborne
Sheldon Urlik Manley Mallard, II
Bob & Judy Gunter Rual Perkins Kevin Manderville
Brian Head George R. Pleat

Guitar Foundation of America

MAESTRO Erik Mann
Michael Lavin, PhD John Potter Taiki Matsumoto
Mel Bay Publications, Inc. Joseph & Kathleen Mayes Benjamin N. Pyne Rob McCoy
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SOUNDBOARD SCHOLAR
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PATRON Steven Bornfeld Roger Stoll Robert E. Stebbins, Luthier
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No. 1, 2015
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Donor Catagories: Philanthropist – $75,000 and above | Virtuoso – $25,000 and above | Maestro – $10,000-$24,999
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