The Guittar in the British Isles, 1750-1810 (2025)

The guittar, now commonly known as the 'English guittar', is a small plucked instrument which was widely used in the British Isles from the middle of the 18 th to the beginning of the 19 th centuries. Appearing in a variety of shapes and sizes, and having essentially wire strings and an open major tuning, it was more related to the cittern, and quite different from the Spanish guitar. Being cheap, elegant, and relatively easy to play, the guittar quickly became popular among amateur musicians, especially upper-class ladies. In addition, the guittar was at the forefront of mechanical and technical invention, and especially the later types of the instrument were often fitted with several innovative devices that found use on other contemporary or successor instruments. This thesis refines the results of past research concerning the guittar by undertaking a critical review of the relevant literature, and by introducing new data collected during the detailed examination and comparison of numerous surviving guittars in museums and private collections. The results are supported by the investigation of a wide variety of primary sources, including literary references, newspaper advertisements, patent records, legal documents, music scores, and iconographical evidence. The research has led to the establishment of a methodology for the documentation and classification of extant guittars using a prototype template, and to the creation of various reference databases for the future study of the instrument. This thesis is the first complete study of the guittar in the British Isles during the second half of the 18 th century. It presents the most important facts and figures related to the origins and development of the instrument, while documenting and highlighting its main historical, musical and technical features, with emphasis on aspects of design, construction and decoration. Additionally, this thesis examines the guittar's social and cultural role as a predominantly domestic female instrument, and also brings to light new interesting details about the establishment of a guittar trade within and outside the British Isles. Finally, it accounts the main reasons for the decline of the guittar and also identifies its significance in the wider fields of musicology and organology, indicating possible relations and influences with other contemporary musical instruments across Europe.

Technology, Novelty and Luxury

Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe - HAL - Grenoble Ecole de Management, 2022

The possession of musical instruments in diverse cultures usually indicates wealth, prestige and social standing. Yet musical instruments have seldom been examined within the context of luxury in scholarly studies, despite their often great monetary and symbolic value. One of the most interesting periods for further research on this topic spans the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. During this time, numerous 'populuxe' musical instruments appeared as part of the so-called 'Consumer Revolution', which instigated and sustained a market for affordable, semi-luxury products built with innovative approaches and traded at an international level. Apart from their pioneering musical, functional and aesthetic features, many of these novel, fashionable musical instruments, ranging from pedal harps to mini pianos and from walking-stick recorders to keyed guitars, exemplified above all the implementation of new ideas and new technologies in the musical instrument-making industry. Using various case studies of plucked stringed, keyboard and wind instruments, this article will discuss diverse aspects of technology, such as substitution, innovation, miniaturisation, portability and mechanisation, and examine how they shaped the production and consumption of populuxe musical instruments during a groundbreaking period in European history.

Studies 12: Technology, Novelty, and Luxury

Deutsches Museum Studies, 2022

The meaning of luxury is complex, elusive and continuously debated. Among the innumerable facets of luxury, technology is one of the most important, but it is also rather overlooked. The key argument of this edited volume is that technology provides a fundamental background for luxury. The authors analyse technology-related aspects of luxury by focusing on four categories of objects from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: musical instruments, educational toys, pocket watches and furniture. These case studies illustrate how various stakeholders have manipulated technology in order to generate new types of luxury, competing with older ones, and to introduce innovative consumption patterns and fashion trends. This tense and creative process has led to the broadening and reinterpretation of the concept of luxury. In particular, the implementation of new materials and technologies has given rise to accessible forms of luxury that have challenged established perceptions and led to novel user practices and experiences. As the authors show, the interplay of technology with the values and beliefs of given societies has contributed to the shifting meanings of luxury, a fascinating concept that keeps evolving. Technology, Novelty, and Luxury is a cross-disciplinary volume that aims to enrich research and debate in many domains, including the history of technology and design, cultural history and the history of mentalities.

‘A very mistaken identification’: the ‘sultana’ or ‘cither viol’ and its links to the bowed psaltery, viola d’amore and guittar

Early Music, 2016

History and Current Location of the Boddington-Pyne Collection (Smith 2007)

2007

The focus of this dissertation is a collection of musical instruments, being mostly keyboard instruments, collected during the latter half of the nineteenth century by Dr. James Kendrick Pyne who was then the organist at Manchester Cathedral and Manchester City Organist. In 1888, Pyne sold his collection of instruments to Henry Boddington II, then Chairman and owner of the Boddington’s brewery (also based in Manchester). Boddington and Pyne produced a catalogue of this collection in 1888; this is the only surviving record of what the collection contained. The collection was broken up at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Boddington began to sell off the instruments. The collection has become known in academic circles simply as the ‘Boddington’ collection, this name referring to the collection’s second owner. However, as Henry Boddington bought the collection in its entirety, rather than being the collector, it is historically inaccurate to ignore the involvement of James Kendrick Pyne. Therefore the present author refers to the collection as the Boddington-Pyne collection, and where instruments are cited by their numbers given in the catalogue they will be given the reference BP x with the ‘x’ being replaced by the number given in the catalogue.

Louis Panormo: 'The only Maker of Guitars in the Spanish style

Early Music, 2013

This exhibition celebrates harmony, both musical and visual, by bringing together instruments and archival material from the Victoria and Albert and Horniman Museums. It explores the personalities and environments that generated these great collections, and the issues surrounding their use and care.

Citterns and Guitars in Colonial America

The instrument that is the subject of this paper is the 18 th -century cittern, which has also been called the English guitar, spelled either "guitar" or "guittar". Although David Rutherford calls the instrument "the cittern or guittar" in his tutor 1 , there are few other uses of cittern to describe this instrument. Kitara, cetra and cetera are amoung other terms used, but during the 18 th century the term used most often is guitar or guittar 2 . Use of the adjective "English" to distinguish this cittern-type guitar from other types is now being contested, primarily for lack of contemporary use of the term. Rob MacKillop has made a good case for the Scottish guitar, in terms of style and repertoire, but the instrument used in the Scottish tradition is identical to the socalled English guitar, which developed into the Portuguese guitarra during the 19 th century. Because there was no consistent terminology used to identify this instrument during the 18 th century, the main problem when trying to glean information from original documents like newspapers, letters or diaries is identifying when a guitar is a so-called Spanish guitar and when it is a cittern-type guitar or, as MacKillop calls it, an 18 th -century wire-strung guittar.

The Portuguese Guitar: History and Transformation of an Instrument Associated with Fado

Since the mid-nineteenth century the Portuguese guitar has been connected to the fado genre. Over the years, both the instrument and the song genre have experienced significant transformations, at times related to aesthetic changes, at other times conditioned by social, political and economic alterations. This thesis focuses on the historic organological development of the Portuguese guitar, as an instrument associated with fado, and explores how the Lisbon guitar model has been progressively replaced by the Coimbra guitar model (both in practice and iconic symbolism). I argue that this tendency is related to the current new era of Portuguese guitar practice with its origins in the post-revolutionary period lived in Portugal after the political overthrow in 1974. My study is based on the review and analysis of the most recent works on the subject, fieldwork among players and makers, iconographic and archival research, and my own experience as a player and maker of both models of the Portuguese guitar.

In defense of the cithara lusitanica: celebrating cittern practice in Portugal since the 16 th century

2022

In the realm of Portuguese organography several musical instruments have been surrounded by myths and ideological agendas, that has constricted a healthy flow of information. The so-called Portuguese guitar (GP) is one of those examples, involving fundamental questions of nationality and cultural sovereignty. From the beginning of the 20th century up until 1982, there was basically a single school of thought regarding the origin of the GP: the instrument evolved from the “English guittar” (EG) and there was no prior practice of it before the introduction of the British specimen in the 18th century. This notion started to be challenged by Pedro Caldeira Cabral in the early 1980s, proposing a continuous culture of the European cittern in Portugal since the 16th century. Later, Cabral comes up with the latinized expression “Cithara lusitanica” as the cultural paradigm, englobing all cittern practice in Portugal. Departing from a critical analysis of the literature since the early 20th century, I explore the works of prominent scholars and non-academics, pointing out fantasies, misleading messages and contradictions that have been cultivated by some, in detriment of useful knowledge. Disclosing new evidence obtained through archival and iconographic research, I refute the arguments against Cabral’s vision, that flourished at the beginning of the new millennium, and I demonstrate that the old theory of origin via EG is now a thing of the past. Then, I give an historical account of the cittern in Portugal, suggesting a probable Flemish connection and I identify a female cittern player from the late 16th century in Funchal, Madeira. The work is speckled with several specific case-studies, counterarguments, and organological/technical details, including a new interpretation of the 1795 method for “Guitarra” by António da Silva Leite and considerations regarding tunings and stringing of the Cithara lusitanica.

The working methods of violin maker Benoit Joseph Boussu (1703-1773): assessing a proposed making sequence by building a copy (Conference: Musical Instruments - History, Science and Culture, Oxford University, July 2013)

Musical instruments in unaltered, original and good conservational condition are cherished by curators, collectors, auctioneers and marketing specialists of museums. However, a close look at historical instruments in collections reveals that many of them have undergone substantial changes during their lifetime. Modern technical methods of investigation have increased the possibilities of detecting alterations which so far had not been found by methods of e.g. style analysis or tracking the provenance. Often, when an 'oldest' or 'unique' instrument turns out to be a pasticcio, the deception is deep.