Barthélemy Trille Labarre (1758-1797)

Although in many plces the five-course guitar was being superceded by the six-string (or six-course) guitar, it was still popular in late eighteenth-century France. Labarre wrote a method for it, and he could not have been more forcefully opposed to nails:

‘It is the action by which the right hand causes the strings to sound by touching them, from the extremity of the fingers, avoiding, above all, to pluck them with the nails, which removes all the mellowness of sound. We cannot too much recommend this principle, because all the merit of the instrument is lost if only sharp sounds are derived from it: whatever the degree of force of which one can boast.’¹

He later continues:

‘It is by plucking the string with the pulp of the finger, avoiding especially plucking it with the nails, which only yields weak, acrid sounds; and it is therefore recommended that the nails should not be allowed to grow in imitation of the Italian peasants, or of some French masters with bad taste.’²

(I would love to know who these ‘French masters with bad taste’ are!)

1. Kenneth Sparr, ‘Barthélemy Trille Labarre: Professeur de Guitare et Compositeur, Élève d’Haydn’, Soundboard Scholar, 4.1 (2018), pp. 17-34 (p. 23). ↩︎
2. Ibid., p. 24. ↩︎