Consortium member Luis Briso de Montiano published an article on the part of Dionisio Aguado’s personal library that has survived in the in the legacy of guitarist Rosario Huidobro. The article was published in ‘Roseta’, the journal of the Sociedad Española de la guitarra, in Spanish; see here. A pdf of the article can be found here.
Brian Whitehouse, Patron of the Consortium, has just published a magnificently illustrated study, accompanied by a CD, of the many musical and personal dealings between Dr. Walter Leckie and Francisco Tárrega.
The book is available from the Classical Guitar Centre.
Christopher Page’s new book, The Guitar in Georgian England: A Social and Musical History is now in press and will be published by Yale University Press in 2020.
The Consortium for Guitar Research, an affiliate of the Royal Musical Association of Great Britain, now invites applications from guitar researchers, at an early stage of their work, for a Fellowship in memory of Dr. Andrew Britton. The Fellowship comes with funding for board and lodging, and thanks to the intervention of a generous benefactor, Mr Jeff Wells, now includes a contribution to travel costs up to £350. The three-day colloquium of the Consortium, to which the successful candidate will be invited, will run from Saturday 4 April to Monday 6 April 2020 and be based in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. This award provides an opportunity to share ideas with a group of acknowledged experts in the field. See www.guitarconsortium.wordpress.com for more information regarding the Consortium and its members.
The recipient is expected to give a 30 minute paper at the Consortium conference and subsequently to prepare a succinct report on their work for placing on the Consortium website.
Applicants are invited to submit their CV, and a 400 word (maximum) statement describing their latest research and why this award would be useful to them. Please send applications via email, in a Word or PDF document, to Dr James Westbrook j@theguitarmuseum.com by Sunday 1 December 2019. The chosen candidate will be notified by Friday 20 December 2019 and will be asked to accept the place by Friday 10 January 2020 and to give, in their message of acceptance, an estimate of travel costs. It is the responsibility of the candidate to ensure any necessary visas are in place. See also The Cohort.
Dr Andrew Britton was a Founding Member of the Consortium. His PhD thesis The guitar in the romantic period: its musical and social development, with special reference to Bristol and Bath is a benchmark to all new Scholars and is available online on the British Library Ethos site.
Erik Stenstadvold’s acclaimed reference book, An Annotated Bibliography of Guitar Methods, 1760-1860, which has been out of print for some time, is now available again from the publishers, Pendragon Press.
Erik Stenstadvold has recently produced a new edition of Antoine Lhoyer’s Six Exercices, op. 27 (Paris 1812), published by Guitar Heritage (www.guitarheritage.com).
Lorents Mollenberg – Early 19th Century Maker of Musical Instruments (Swedish lutes, guitars, harps and square pianos) in Stockholm, Sweden. Paper read at the 7th Lake Konstanz Guitar Research Meeting in Hemmenhofen March 29-31, 2019.
Daniel Fryklund – Swedish Collector and Author of Studies Concerning Musical Instruments. Paper read at Musical Instrument Collectors and Collections – International conference at the University of Oxford 23-25 augusti 2019.
Christopher Page has started his fourth series of free public lectures at the prestigious Gresham College in London. The new series is entitled ‘For Courtesan, Queen and Gallant: The Guitar in England from Henry VIII to Samuel Pepys’. There are four more lectures to come. These events are free to attend, and will also be live-streamed, so anyone can listen in from anywhere! The lectures are illustrated with fabulous musical intermezzi by Taro Takeuchi and Ulrich Wedemeier, and will be made available afterwards on the Gresham College website and on YouTube.
Several of the members of the Guitar Consortium have been involved in the WoodMusICK COST Action FP1302, a 4-year European initiative that finished this year. WoodMusICK aimed to promote knowledge and interdisciplinary dialogue on the study and preservation of wooden musical instruments, bringing together specialists from diverse fields, such as organologists, musicologists, wood scientists, museum curators, conervators, musical instrument makers, acousticians, etc.
WoodMusICK has published proceedings of their conferences, usually containing extended abstracts of each paper, in Open Access booklets, which are available for free downloading here.
WoodMusICK also published a special issue (Wooden Musical Instruments Special Issue) in the Journal of Cultural Heritage, which includes a couple of articles relating to the guitar or other plucked instruments (this is not in Open Access).
A new book on Schubert and the guitar
Italian researcher Nicoletta Confalone, participant in the 2017 Cambridge Cohort for guitar research, has written a new book on the relationship between Franz Schubert (1797-1828) and the guitar. Schubert played the instrument himself, but only wrote minor works for it. Many of his songs though were published early on with guitar accompaniments (by others) and have been performed by voice-guitar duos ever since.
The new book is available with Ut Orpheus Edizioni.
The Cambridge Consortium for Guitar Research 