Musicology Commons^™

Nineteenth-Century Guitar Songs: An Idiosyncratic Survey, By Ian Gammie, Richard Long

Soundboard Scholar

A review of Nineteenth-Century Guitar Songs: An Idiosyncratic Survey, by Ian Gammie.

21st-Century Spanish Guitar (Levin), Nathan Cornelius

Soundboard Scholar

A review of 21st-Century Spanish Guitar, album by Levin, Adam.

Corbetta: La Guitarre Royalle (Elias), Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

A review of Corbetta: La Guitarre Royalle, album by Elias, Izhar.

Francesco Corbetta: La Guitarre Royalle (Carter), Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

A review of Francesco Corbetta: La Guitarre Royalle, album by Carter, William.

Works From La Guitarre Royalle (1671) And Italian Guitar Music Of The Seventeenth Century, Battuto And Pizzicato (Eisenhardt), Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

A review of Works from La guitarre royalle (1671) and Italian Guitar Music of the Seventeenth Century, Battuto and Pizzicato.

Featured Facsimile: Two Arrangements For Five-Course Guitar From La Muse Lyrique (1787), The First By Trille Labarre, Barthélemy Trille Labarre

Soundboard Scholar

No abstract provided.

Dating Trille Labarre’S Nouvelle Méthode: Caught Between Printing And Publishing?, Kenneth Sparr

Soundboard Scholar

When was Trille Labarre’s noteworthy five-course guitar method engraved and printed? And when was it actually published—sold to the public? Could years have elapsed between the two activities? This essay reviews the various methods used to date undated printed music of that era in the hopes of achieving some clarity. The first technique involves looking for personal names, like dedicatees, engravers, and publishers. The latter approaches are more analytical.

Men, Women And Guitars In Romantic England (Page), Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

A review of Christopher Page, Men, Women and Guitars in Romantic England (Gresham College), six videos, https://www.gresham.ac.uk/series/men-women-and-guitars-in-romantic-england/.

Un Angelo Senza Paradiso, By Nicoletta Confalone, Richard M. Long

Soundboard Scholar

A review of Nicoletta Confalone, Un angelo senza paradiso: La chitarra alla ricerca di Schubert (Bologna: Ut Orpheus, 2017).

España De La Guerra, By Brian Jeffery, Richard M. Long

Soundboard Scholar

A review of Brian Jeffery, España de la Guerra: The Spanish Political and Military Songs of the War in Spain, 1808 to 1814 (London: Tecla, 2017).

Soundboard Scholar No. 4: Editor's Letter, Thomas Heck

Soundboard Scholar

An introduction to the contents of this issue.

New Chamber Music With Guitar: The Aleph Gitarrenquartett, Gubaidulina, And Plucking, Nathan Cornelius

Soundboard Scholar

Reviews of the following recordings:

• Aleph Guitar Quartet, Aleph Gitarrenquartett, vol. 2 (NEOS 11710, 2017)
• Bernard Lang, The Cold Trip, with Sarah Maria Sun, Juliet Fraser, Mark Knoop, and the Aleph Guitar Quartet (Kairos 0015018, 2017)
• Sofia Gubaidulina, Complete Guitar Works, with David Tanenbaum et al. (Naxos 8.573379, 2015)
• Tom Johnson, Plucking, with Just Strings (MicroFest Records MF9, 2017)

Alfabeto Falso (Vallerotondo, I Bassifondi), Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

A review of Alfabeto falso, with Simone Vallerotondo (Baroque guitar) and I Bassifondi (Arcana A435, 2017), compact disc.

François Campion: Music For Baroque Guitar (Hofstötte), Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

A review of François Campion: Music for Baroque Guitar, with Bernhard Hofstötter (Brilliant Classics 95275, 2017), compact disc.

Ma Guiterre Je Te Chante: 16th Century Guitar Solos And Chansons (Nelson, Bartram), Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

A review of Jocelyn Nelson (guitar) and Amy Bartram (soprano), Ma Guiterre je te chante: 16th Century Guitar Solos and Chansons (Nelson 5637610050, 2010), compact disc.

Barthélemy Trille Labarre: Professeur De Guitare Et Compositeur, Élève D’Haydn, Kenneth Sparr

Soundboard Scholar

Barthélemy Trille Labarre (1758–1797) was a French guitarist and composer active at the end of the eighteenth century, when the five-course guitar was still the instrument of choice for many French guitarists. Trille Labarre's Nouvelle méthode pour la guitare, Op. 7, is impressive in its scope and its attention to detail, in comparison to other methods of the eighteenth century, but copies of it are extremely rare. Many of Trille Labarre’s other works also have survived in few or unique copies.

While Trille Labarre may be mentioned briefly in later biographical dictionaries, he is totally absent from most of …

Soundboard Scholar No. 4: Cover

Soundboard Scholar

It was in about 1828–29 that Parisian guitarist and publisher Charles de Marescot brought before the public a short collection of his easier solo guitar pieces entitled La Guitaromanie. It was enhanced with six unpaginated satirical lithographs, of which the most memorable one (“Discussion entre les Carulistes et les Molinistes”) appears on this issue’s cover. Readers are welcome to review the publication details, found in the accompanying article by Damián Martín. See his text between footnotes 16 and 17. A complete digital copy of the Guitaromanie collection, represented as being in the public domain, was posted during the preparation …

Soundboard Scholar No. 4 (Complete)

Soundboard Scholar

No abstract provided.

A Checklist Of Works Attributed To Charles De Marescot, Damián Martín-Gil

Soundboard Scholar

The musical output of Charles de Marescot (1790–1842) has never been subjected to close examination. Only a few of his compositions are featured in guitar scholarship, notably his Méthode de guitare, op. 15, and the collection of pieces entitled La Guitaromanie, op. 46. And yet Marescot was rather prolific in his time. This checklist offers, for the first time, a catalogue—albeit incomplete—of all his guitar music published in France and England, offering, if possible, locations and dates for each work.

The Guitarist Behind La Guitaromanie : Charles De Marescot, Damián Martín-Gil

Soundboard Scholar

The guitarist Charles de Marescot is a figure often cited when referring to the guitar mania that arose in France during the first decades of the nineteenth century. Yet very little is known about his life and musical production, which was dedicated almost entirely to the guitar. Drawing on several newly discovered documents, this article aims to understand the role of this polemical figure in the vogue for the guitar by reconstructing his whereabouts. Particular attention is given to his relationship with Hector Berlioz, with whom he conducted some minor business.

Guitar Music Manuscripts In The Senate Library Of Madrid: The CancióN PatrióTica De La Alianza And Its Experimental Notation, Ricardo Aleixo

Soundboard Scholar

The modest collection of manuscripts of guitar music preserved in the Senate Library of Madrid seems to provide a representative sampling of the types of guitar repertoire circulating in Spain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Despite its small size, this corpus contains the most typical genres of the period— namely, two chamber music works for guitar with bowed string instruments, by Federico Moretti and Antonio Ximénez, a guitar duet by Pierre-Jean Porro, a solo guitar work by the mysterious señor D. G. G. M. A., and two songs with guitar accompaniment, one by Francisco Xavier Moreno and …

Soundboard Scholar No. 3: Editor's Letter, Thomas Heck

Soundboard Scholar

An introduction to the contents of this issue.

The Way We Were: A Review Of Early Efforts To Find Classical Guitar Music In Collections, Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

This article was originally copublished online with the author's article, "Guitar Music in Collections: A New Web-Based Index Is Launched," Soundboard Scholar, no. 3 (2017), https://digitalcommons.du.edu/sbs/vol3/iss1/6.

Soundboard Scholar No. 3: Cover

Soundboard Scholar

The color portrait of Fernando Sor which appears on the cover of this issue, not previously published as far as we know, is a hand-colored version of a printed (b&w) copy of a painting—an original portrait (now lost) of Sor—by one Innocent Louis Goubeau. Before it disappeared it was copied, in the mid-1820s, by both a lithographer and an engraver, probably in response to public demand. The lithograph, according to the British Museum exemplar now online and well documented (No. 1893,0123.45), bears the attribution “Goubeau pinxit / Lith de Engelmann / Lithod par Bordes,” which means that the original painter …

Soundboard Scholar No. 3 (Complete)

Soundboard Scholar

No abstract provided.

A Newly Discovered Letter Of 1827 By Fernando Sor, Erik Stenstadvold

Soundboard Scholar

This article discusses a hitherto unknown letter, written by Sor in Saint Petersburg in April 1827. It provides new insight into the publishing and personal relationship between Sor and his Paris publisher, Antoine Meissonnier, to whom the letter was addressed. We learn about three airs with variations Sor was busy composing at the time; he was particularly pleased with the variations Meissonnier later published as op. 30. The letter also mentions some unknown Sor works, including a book of drafts at Málaga, and it reveals that Meissonnier had published, without Sor’s knowledge, music that he had received from sources other …

AndréS Segovia’S Unfinished Guitar Method: Placing His “Scales” In Historical Context, Andreas Stevens

Soundboard Scholar

For over sixty years, guitarists of my generation have been familiar with the so-called Segovia Scales—the systematic scale fingerings advocated by the Andalusian maestro. They have been an influential—some might say a definitive—bestseller since their first USA publication in 1953. Countless guitar students have incorporated them into their daily practice routines. For the publisher, Columbia Music, they seem to be the goose that laid the golden egg. Are they everything that Segovia wanted them to be? Two books of recent date on guitar technique attest to their enduring value and relevance. Thomas Offermann wrote in 2015: “The fingerings of the …

NapoléOn Coste: Composer And Guitarist In The Musical Life Of 19th-Century Paris By Ari Van Vliet, Richard Long

Soundboard Scholar

Napoleon Coste: Composer and Guitarist in the Musical Life of 19th-Century Paris, by Van Vliet, Ari is reviewed.

New Voices In Old Bodies: A Study Of “Recycled” Musical Instruments With A Focus On The Hahn Collection In The Deutsches Museum, By Panagiotis Poulopoulos, Richard Long

Soundboard Scholar

New Voices in Old Bodies: A Study of "Recycled" Musical Instruments with a Focus on the Hahn Collection in the Deutsches Museum, album by Poulopoulos, Panagiotis is reviewed.

The Russian Guitar 1800-1850 (Timofeyev And Schneiderman), Stanley Yates

Soundboard Scholar

The Russian Guitar 1800-1850, album by Oleg Timofeyev and John Schneiderman is reviewed.