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Review: The Guitar of Andres Segovia Hermann Hauser 1937

Review: The Guitar of Andres Segovia Hermann Hauser 1937

Reviewed by Tom Harper

Originally published in American Lutherie #83, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015



The Guitar of Andrés Segovia Hermann Hauser 1937
Liner notes by Richard Bruné and Don Pilarz
Produced by Dynamic S.r.l., Genova, Italy
Dynamic catalog number CDS 433

Wouldn’t it be great to have in one source working drawings, textual explanations, photographs, and recordings of one of the most important instruments ever built? Dynamic’s offering does exactly this. Richard Bruné, Don Pilarz, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art collaborated to create a definitive description of Andrés Segovia’s famous 1937 Hauser guitar. The result is a boxed set containing a multilingual pamphlet (Italian, English, German, and French), three sheets of full-scale working drawings, a full-length audio CD of Segovia playing the instrument, and a poster. All this fits into a box that is about 6" × 9" × 3/4".

The pamphlet describes Segovia’s challenges to establish the guitar as a serious classical instrument, the requirements for the instrument, technical details about it, and its physical state. One also gets a sense of Hermann Hauser as a builder. It is clear that he did not create great instruments by accident or luck. There are also almost thirty color photographs that display important details of the outside and inside of the instrument that are very useful to a builder wanting to create a Hauser-style instrument. The writing is clear and concise and provides construction details that I have not seen elsewhere.

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Review: Aux origins de la guitare: vihuela de mano by Joël Dugot

Review: Aux origins de la guitare: vihuela de mano by Joël Dugot

Reviewed by Bryan Johanson

Originally published in American Lutherie #81, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015



Aux origines de la guitare: la vihuela de mano
Joël Dugot
ISBN: 2-914147-23-6
Paris, France: Cité de la Musique, 95 pp. 2004
www.cite-musique.fr

When I started high school, I was given the choice of taking French, Spanish, German, or Latin. This was in addition to the regular “boy” curriculum of math, English, P.E., biology, social studies, and metal shop. (“Girl” curriculum included secretarial studies and home economics.) I had heard that cute girls took French (a gross inaccuracy, as it turned out), so French seemed like a good choice. It was taught by a very round, short, bald man who insisted we call him Maitre. Every day he would breeze into class, walking quickly to the front saying, “Bonjour la classe!” as he went. We would drone back, “Bonjour, Maitre.” We could normally tell from his voice what kind of day it would be. If he was jovial, it would be bad French jokes day. If his voice was stern, we would be covering new material. If his voice sounded tired, we would be conjugating verbs. On rare days he would say nothing at all. That was the silent language of pop quiz.

For two years the main focus of the class was to learn to have a conversation with correct pronunciation. My conversational French was never very good. This was mostly due to the fact that I could barely hold a conversation in English. It was a harsh thing to take a shy, sensitive fifteen-year-old boy and stand him in front of class with an equally shy fifteen-year-old girl and make them speak to each other in clear, enunciated tones: “Hello Claire! Are you going to the library? I heard the record player does not work. Have you seen Jean? He is at the bakery. I think it is going to rain today. It is very moist....”

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Review: Folk Harp Design and Construction by Jeremy H. Brown

Review: Folk Harp Design and Construction by Jeremy H. Brown

Reviewed by C.F. Casey

Originally published in American Lutherie #83, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015



Folk Harp Design and Construction
Jeremy H. Brown
www.musikit.com 150 pp.

You’ve got to like a book that begins, “Anybody can spout off his own opinions into a book if he puts his mind to it. Why a person would want to go to such trouble is a question I’ve been asking myself lately.”

I should point out that there’s an alias at work here. Jeremy H. Brown, author, is in another life Jerry Brown, founder and head honcho of Musicmaker’s Kits, Inc. (See John Calkin’s “Kit Review: Musicmaker’s Regency Harp” in AL#69, BRBAL6.) Does that mean the book is a shill for selling kits? Not at all. Naturally, most of the references are to Musicmaker’s designs. That’s reasonable enough; they are, after all, the designs Brown would be most familiar with. You wouldn’t expect Chris Martin to write a book on Gibson designs. However, Brown doesn’t stop there. I counted over two dozen references to the approaches and opinions of other harp builders throughout the eight chapters of the book.

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Review: Left-Brain Lutherie by David C. Hurd, PhD

Review: Left-Brain Lutherie by David C. Hurd, PhD

Reviewed by R.M. Mottola

Originally published in American Lutherie #81, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015



Left-Brain Lutherie
Using Physics and Engineering Concepts for Building Guitar Family Instruments: An Introductory Guide to Their Practical Application
David C. Hurd, PhD
ISBN 0-9760883-0-4
Ukuleles by Kawika, Inc.
www.ukuleles.com

A prepublication copy of David Hurd’s Left-Brain Lutherie was given to AL for review. A draft of the following review was sent to the author prior to publication so that any factual errors in the review could be corrected.

During the early 1980s I worked at a small engineering company that made instrumentation used in biomedical research. As the company grew, the product line expanded to include devices used in other fields, including analytical chemistry and materials science. I count the time I spent on this job as some of the most precious in my life, in no small part because it provided the opportunity to spend a good deal of time with research scientists and to be directly involved in some of their efforts. This contact taught me the value of scientific methodological inquiry, and it shaped my consideration for the folks who do this work as some of the most creative and open-minded people to be found. That scientists are smart, careful, and highly analytical fits well with the general image of those in the field. But the fact that they approach their research subjects with high levels of openness, objectivity, and general creativity unfortunately somehow gets lost in the general stereotype of scientists.

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Review: The Vihuela de Mano and The Spanish Guitar: A Dictionary of the Makers of Plucked and Bowed Musical Instruments of Spain by José L. Romanillos and Marian Harris Winspear

Review: The Vihuela de Mano and The Spanish Guitar: A Dictionary of the Makers of Plucked and Bowed Musical Instruments of Spain by José L. Romanillos and Marian Harris Winspear

Reviewed by Bryan Johanson

Originally published in American Lutherie #80, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015



The Vihuela de Mano and The Spanish Guitar: A Dictionary of the Makers
of Plucked and Bowed Musical Instruments of Spain (1200-2002)

José L. Romanillos and Marian Harris Winspear
ISBN 84-607-6141-X
Guijosa, Spain: Sanguino Press, 585 pp., 2002

In the world of players and makers of fine classical guitars, the name José Romanillos stands tall. For decades he built some of the finest classical guitars ever made. His work with Julian Bream is legendary. With the 1987 publication of his first major book, Antonio de Torres: Guitar Maker — His Life and Work (with an extensive revision published in 1997), we were introduced to another side of this impressive artist, that of author, scholar, and fact-sleuth extraordinaire.

We now have his latest contribution to the realm of fact: his amazing new book on Spanish luthiers, The Vihuela de Mano and The Spanish Guitar; a Dictionary of the Makers of Plucked and Bowed Musical Instruments of Spain (1200–2002). It is a rare thing these days to find an author (in this case coauthors, Romanillos and his wife Marian Winspear) tackle the concept of writing a dictionary. The result of this ambitious undertaking is a highly readable reference book that includes much information not ordinarily included in a dictionary proper.

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