First, some sad news. Sandro Volta died last month. He was a fine guitarist and lutenist, who played without nails, and recorded many albums. We emailed back-and-forth a year back — he was interesting and generous. I particularly remember amicably disagreeing about whether Giuliani used nails (Sandro thought he did — I disagreed!) So here is one of Sandro’s recordings of Mauro Giuliani’s songs:
At the recent colloquium of the Cambridge Cohort for Guitar Research I gave a paper with the slightly-mischievous title, ‘Alpine Hats, Abbreviated Trousers and Long Fingernails’. I spoke about how the emergence of the use of fingernails on the guitar corresponds with changing fashions towards long fingernails generally, among other things… There were many memorable lectures and recitals at the colloquium. Uniquely, there was also an evensong featuring canticles for guitar and voice, taken from the Pepys guitar books!
In the first photo, you get a sneak peak of some of the data I’ve been collecting.
At the Royal Academy of Music was a very interesting evening of recording guitars into a c. 1900 Edison phonograph. There were four guitarists: two nail players and two no-nail players. Whether or not one can tell, just by listening, if a player is using nails is a frequent and troublesome question. What can be conclusively said that it is essentially impossible to tell who is using nails through this old recording equipment. Saying that, there was one interesting distinction to note. The one player, otherwise very capable, who couldn’t really produce enough volume of sound (note I did not say loudness) to get a good sound out of phonograph — for you have to play with great strength and vigour into the horn — was playing a lattice-braced guitar with nails. Make of that what you will.
Finally, a reel from my visit to the Emilio Pujol archive in Lleida, Spain. Apparently I was also in the city newspaper. An Englishman turning up at the archive was, I suspect, a bit of a novelty.
Leave a comment