Book Reviews 587

continue to reveal untapped primary sources for examination, as iconography and

other modern disciplines enter the picture, [that] a fuller sense will emerge of what
Moravian music means” (xv). Readers who approach with curiosity, with regard
for hidden potential and clues to future research quests, and who understand that
much of American (non-Moravian) musical history is similarly incomplete, may
find themselves, as Goethe, Herder, Washington, and Franklin were, moved by the
emotionally charged religious sentiment of Moravian music.

Sarah Eyerly
r r r

Journal of the Society for American Music (2008) Volume 2, Number 4, pp. 587–590.

C 2008 The Society for American Music doi:10.1017/S1752196308081376

The Guitar in America: Victorian Era to Jazz Age. By Jeffrey J. Noonan. Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 2008.

Challenging widespread assumptions regarding the guitar in the United States as an

instrument predominantly belonging to a traditional or popular musical heritage,
Jeffrey J. Noonan’s The Guitar in America: Victorian Era to Jazz Age successfully
redresses the history of the instrument by providing a detailed study of the clas-
sical guitar in the United States until the 1930s. In addition to the guitar, the
author takes up the history and popularity of the banjo and mandolin within the
banjo, mandolin, and guitar (hereafter BMG) movement, which began in the late
nineteenth century and provided an intricate intersection of art and commerce
between manufacturers and music enthusiasts. Impeccably researched, Noonan’s
book utilizes promotional periodicals associated with the BMG community from
the period under investigation as primary sources.
Citing an abundance of legendary American guitarists in the various styles of jazz,
blues, country, and rock, Noonan observes that many guitar historians overlook the
American classical tradition: “Little wonder that when guitar historians like Harvey
Turnbull or Frederic Grunfeld wrote about the instrument, they either ignored
America altogether (it had no classical tradition) or they focused on America’s
guitar-playing cowboys or bluesmen (romanticized and visible icons of the country’s
popular music roots)” (176).1 Noonan takes into account the classical tradition that
flourished in the BMG movement, and his book is a welcome companion to such
publications as Philip F. Gura’s C. F. Martin and His Guitars, 1796–1873.2 The
author also recognizes the significance of the electric guitar in American society;
however, that subject lies beyond the scope of this book.

1
Harvey Turnbull, The Guitar: From the Renaissance to the Present Day (Westport, Conn.: The Bold
Strummer, 1974); and Frederic V. Grunfeld, The Art and Times of the Guitar: An Illustrated History
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1969).
2
Philip F. Gura, C. F. Martin and His Guitars, 1796–1873 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2003).

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196308081376 Published online by Cambridge University Press

 588 Book Reviews

Noonan provides the necessary background for the guitar and BMG movement
by tracing descriptions of the gut-strung instrument from the Colonial era to the
1880s. The guitar in the United States until the late nineteenth century was viewed
as an instrument of culture, as was the piano, appropriate for the parlor and for
accompanying the voice. The author suggests that, around 1850, the increasing
popularity of the piano and banjo, notwithstanding the presumptive associations
of the banjo with the lower class, diminished the allure of the guitar. The guitar
attained renewed popularity during the 1880s as a result of the BMG community’s
attempts to connect the perceived privileged status and technique of the instrument
with the mandolin and banjo.
The 1882 publication of the S. S. Stewart’s Banjo and Guitar Journal, a promo-
tional tool for Samuel Swaim Stewart’s commercial enterprise, led to the estab-
lishment of numerous other periodicals such as Cadenza and Crescendo, which
in turn promoted the banjo, mandolin, and guitar. Publishers advertised their
instruments, sheet music, and accessories, then also provided columns with tips
on technique, concert reviews, compositions, and biographies of musicians. The
publication of BMG magazines spanned fifty years and flourished throughout the
nation, providing insight into both commercial and social values of musicians. In-
strumentalists, composers, teachers, and manufacturers associated with the BMG
movement definitively shaped the practices of the guitar in the United States.
Initially, Stewart linked the banjo to the higher status and tradition of the classical
guitar in order to elevate its position. According to Noonan, the BMG community
eventually recognized the guitar as a second-class instrument, relegating it to an
accompanying role in plectral orchestras. Furthermore, BMG magazines portrayed
the guitar as exotic, sensual, and morally corrupt, citing its Iberian roots as well as
spread-legged sitting position as evidence. Ultimately, the mandolin replaced the
banjo as the principal instrument among BMG ensembles.
Noonan also explores the issue of the guitar as an icon in the BMG movement.
He observes in BMG literature that the guitar was often linked with the lute,
conflating the two distinctly different histories of the instruments. BMG magazines
also associated the guitar and mandolin as foreign instruments belonging to Spanish
and Italian culture, implying a sharp contrast to the banjo. Addressing the issue
of gender, the author further analyzes the diverse ways in which BMG magazine
covers portrayed women, ranging from their inclusion as mere adornment to the
instruments to less stereotypical representations.
Noonan focuses his discussion on guitarists mentioned in BMG periodicals rather
than on composers, because, as he explains, “the history of the guitar in America
remains largely a history of players. Before the late twentieth century no important
American composer wrote for the guitar and no American guitarist achieved any
lasting reputation as a composer” (61). An early chapter in the book provides
detailed biographical descriptions of numerous guitarists, revealing the diversity of
the initial BMG movement. Noonan devotes a later chapter to two in particular, the
virtuoso William Foden and the esteemed Vahdah Olcott-Bickford. Foden achieved
acclaim in the United States for his performance abilities, often playing his waltzes
and variations reminiscent of works by European guitarist Johann Kasper Mertz.
Olcott-Bickford, one of the most important BMG musicians, played a major role in

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196308081376 Published online by Cambridge University Press

 Book Reviews 589

the promotion of the guitar. In addition to her concertizing, she introduced readers
to many twentieth-century guitar innovations in columns for both Crescendo and
Cadenza.
During the late nineteenth century, manufacturers experimented with hybrid
blends and families of the three instruments of the BMG, resulting, for example,
in the construction and use of the mandola (tenor mandolin), mando-cello, and
mando-bass. Other hybrid instruments developed by manufacturers included the
mandolin-guitar, harp-guitar, banjeaurine (soprano banjo), and banjo with a guitar
neck. In response to greater demands, the guitar experienced modifications around
this time as well (the use of steel strings increased, for example, resulting in instru-
ments with bracings capable of withstanding greater tension); however, the guitar
remained a parlor instrument rather than an instrument of the concert hall. Within
the BMG complex, manufacturers developed hybrid instruments such as the steel-
strung plectrum guitar, eventually altering the position of the gut-strung classical
guitar in North American society. By the early twentieth century, a divide grew
among guitarists, as plectrum players with steel-strung guitars preferred popular
and jazz genres and classical guitarists with gut-strung instruments opted for the
European repertoire:
American guitarists played both classical and plectrum guitar, [and] by the mid-1920s
the two instruments and their repertoire were recognized within the BMG community as
distinct. This divide between plectrum players with steel strung guitars and fingerpicking
classical guitarists with gut-strung instruments mirrored the growing chasm between the
popular and elite American audiences. As plectrum guitarists increasingly turned to the
American vernacular of jazz and popular music, classical guitarists remained committed to
a nineteenth-century technique and musical sensibility (155).

Concerts in the United States by Spanish guitarists Miguel Llobet and Andres
Segovia altered the practices of many American guitarists. Segovia, in particular,
established a new standard of technique and repertoire, serving as a model of a
solo classical guitarist that was independent of mandolin and banjo orchestras in
America, which Noonan argues weakened the BMG movement.
The Guitar in America contributes to a greater understanding of American musi-
cal life at the turn of the century, revealing a fascinating record of the guitar, banjo,
mandolin, and subsequent hybrid instruments. Indeed, Noonan’s revisionist his-
tory reveals that the modern guitar tradition dates further back than previously
assumed:
Historians and fans of the guitar in America generally identify the birth of the modern guitar
as the moment when the development of single-line jazz soloing (usually credited to Eddie
Lang) was joined to the electric guitar. . . . [T]he physical and technical roots of the new
American guitar were planted firmly in the BMG movement’s promotion of the mandolin
family. America’s new guitar first appeared when inventors and instrument manufacturers
created the hybrid mandolin-guitar and mandolinists took up this new instrument with
their plectrum technique (136).

The book includes numerous illustrations that demonstrate how the BMG com-
munity portrayed the guitar and contains a useful discography that lists recordings
of solo and duo guitar, plectrum arch-top guitar, small ensembles, and mandolin

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 590 Book Reviews

orchestras. It also provides insight into the history of guitar technique and repertoire
in the United States, surely beneficial to any guitarist interested in American music
at the turn of the century. Noonan succeeds in placing the history of the guitar—
classical and plectrum—within the larger BMG complex, filling a long overdue gap
in the bibliography of American music.

Mark E. Perry

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196308081376 Published online by Cambridge University Press