Month: December 2023

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New Book by Dr. James Westbrook

We are delighted to announce the publication of a new book by our member and current Vice-President Dr. James Westbrook, Guitar Making in Nineteenth-Century London: Louis Panormo and his Contemporaries (ASG Music Ltd., Halesowen, 2023). This encylopedic work contains three chapters on the Panormo family, one on Madame Pratten and her guitars, a comprehensive directory of makers and dealers, and information about the Mirecourt luthiers working in London, for example, the Roudhloffs (whole chapter), Boullangier (large section), Gerard (large section), the Guiots, Pons, and Lacote guitars imported into London. This is a luxury A4 size hard-back publication of 514 pages, containing 370 colour images and some 170,000 words. It may be soon ordered from the website of the Classical Guitar Centre Ltd.

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Winner of the Andrew Britton Fellowship

We are delighted to announce that Yseult Martinez has been elected to the Andrew Britton Fellowship for 2023-4. Yseult earned a Ph.D. in early modern history from Sorbonne University, with the dissertation ‘De la puissance des femmes: réflexion sur cinq personnages d’opéra créés par G. F. Handel pour Londres entre 1730 et 1737’, a research that was awarded with the Prix Philippe Lescat in 2023. She is especially interested in Italian opera librettos, particularly in tracing and analysing their evolution from the first version to later adaptations in order to better understand the choices made by the composer and librettist and, consequently, the expectations of the audience. Yseult is currently preparing the publication of her thesis with Classiques Garnier (forthcoming). Since September 2022 she has been working at the University of Angers as a postdoctoral researcher on the program ‘CastrAlter: Castrati. Discourses and experiences of otherness in the Europe of the Enlightenment’. After initial training in piano, she now studies the lute, theorbo and opera singing. She is now starting a new research project on the French guitarist and theorist François Campion.