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RE: Antonio de Torres-Creator of the Flamenco Guitar
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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 RE: Antonio de Torres-Creator of the... (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
But the kicker is that Arcas and Torres met in a flamenco club and there was not a thing called "classical guitar" yet.
I'm not sure whether you mean the instrument "classical guitar" or the musical genre by the same name. If the musical genre, then it had existed for a while: Sor, Giuliani, Legnani, Carcassi…and Arcas played this music, as well as his own compositions and transcriptions.
From some of his published works one wonders whether Arcas was "classicizing" flamenco pieces for a literate audience, or whether flamenco, in that pre-recording era was pretty different from what appeared a few decades later on the first records.
If you mean the musical instrument presently called "classical guitar", well yes, it was being developed at the time Torres went pro--with the proviso that the same instrument was predominantly played by the far more numerous flamenco players--and Torres had a big influence on the development by producing such good guitars.
RNJ
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Date May 17 2014 4:30:34
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Antonio de Torres-Creator of the... (in reply to estebanana)
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From my perspective the classical/flamenco divide has its roots in the social milieu of each genre. Sor, Giuliani, Tarrega et al were from the educated middle class, and their clientele were the middle and upper classes. Javier Molina and Antonio Chacon were from the dirt poor Barrio Santiago of Jerez, Chacon the adopted payo child of a gitano cobbler.
Of course there was a middle and upper class audience for flamenco in the 19th century cafes cantantes and in the juergas of the señoritos, but my picture of it is like the middle and upper class American audience for jazz in the early 20th century. I remember my father telling of hearing the great jazz trumpeter W.C. Handy--there was an exotic element in the experience.
Flamenco was a peculiarly Spanish art, an exotic treat for foreign tourists, while what we call classical guitar music was a pan-European phenomenon, the product of musicians and composers trained in schools run by the gente de razon.
Of course in Spain there was influence flowing in both directions between classical and flamenco, just as in the USA there has always been cross-fertilization among jazz, classical and popular music.
I have read and been told that fandangos were a folk form taken into flamenco fairly recently. I have seen the pandas in the province of Malaga doing verdiales in traditional non-flamenco form. I have read that in the 19th century each region of Spain had its own fandango.
RNJ
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Date May 17 2014 17:11:00
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Antonio de Torres-Creator of the... (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
... in Spain there are bands called Tunas that come out of the universities. Tunas are hold over groups from the times of Troubadors, they are distant descendants of that musical tradition and they exist today. Depending in the instruments they have at hand there are usually steel sting and nylon ( gut in the old days) instruments in that kind of band.
The university in Sevilla in Torres' day would have had tuna bands performing and he or other guitar makes could have made instruments for them. The main Sevilla University Tuna still exists today and is famous.
I enjoyed nearly an hour of tuna serenading in Madrid.
The daughter of one of my best American friends was at university in Madrid. I took her out to dinner at Botín, in Arcos de Cuchilleros, near the Plaza Mayor. Bernabe's shop was a block closer to the Plaza Mayor in those days, with the three beautiful showpiece guitars in the display window. We had the canonic roast suckling pig, and a very nice Rioja Gran Reserva that she chose off the wine list. Botín wasn't quite as overrun by tourists in those days.
The tuna of a local university were in the dining room going from table to table, serenading. They stopped at our table and began to play. After the piece I offered a tip, but they refused. They stayed through all courses of the meal and well into dessert. The leader of the tuna was very polite. Raising an eybrow, he seemed to ask permission to stay. I smiled, and nodded. He glanced at my companion.
She was a ravishing 19-year old strawberry blonde, who spoke perfect Castilian, while smiling and chatting with the musicians.
RNJ
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Date May 18 2014 19:13:48
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Antonio de Torres-Creator of the... (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
Please Bill, it was his friends daughter. He works in aerospace not Hollywood, for Gods sake.
Indeed, the daughter of one of my very best friends. In fact, as one of Eddie Freeman's students he was the guy who got me into flamenco while we were starving university students. Years later I became good friends with his Mexican wife, the daughter of a prosperous family of publishers, editors and film directors. The wife was a brunette, the daughter looked like one of her Mexican aunts, another striking fair skinned strawberry blonde.
But yes, the daughter of my very closest friends, thus definitely, absolutely, beyond any shadow of doubt off limits.
Sigh...
RNJ
I will grant you Titian, but Torres is only distantly connected via steel strings, and Zapruder seems a bit of a stretch.
I claim the privilege of age and two glasses of Wild Horse cabernet, which is to ramble incoherently while the audience retains the outward appearance of polite interest.
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Date May 19 2014 4:04:34
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Antonio de Torres-Creator of the... (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
I remember Jernigan AKA "The most Interesting Man in the World who does not drink Dos Equiis but drinks Rioja" told a tale of some thinly veiled society ladies in a club in Morocco- and given enough time I'll find the connections between Antonio Torres, strawberry blonds, Titian the painter and the Zapruder film.
There is an old, traditional western (cowboy) song entitled "The Strawberry Roan," that might account for the confusion regarding strawberry blonds, and if the Zapruder film is part of the mix, can the "grassy knoll" be far behind?
General Douglas MacArthur's final speech at West Point, delivered not long before he passed away, contains the famous line that no one on the plain that day will ever forget: "Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps. I bid you farewell."
The same sentiments might be expressed by anyone who has spent time at the Emperador in Madrid: "When I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of the Emperador, and the Emperador, and the Emperador, thinly veiled to me now as it is."
All of the above, of course, spans a direct link between Antonio de Torres and the thinly veiled society ladies in Morocco.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date May 19 2014 11:49:16
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Jim Frieson
Posts: 19
Joined: May 28 2014
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RE: Antonio de Torres-Creator of the... (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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As Richard Brune documented , there was at the time not such a thing as flamenco guitar , or classical guitar . Now we are divided into camps , flamencos looked down upon by many followers of what Segovia fostered , the appreciation of the guitar as a classical instrument . Friend of mine now passed away related the following story , he was seated at an outdoor cafe , participating in the general happy noise-making which featured a guitar . A young man comes and approaches them and says , Mister Andres Segovia is nearby , conducting class in guitar , and wishes if you can be more quiet .
He wishes me to say , he has devoted his life to lifting the guitar from the gutter .
To which one of the merrymakers replied , Well you tell Mr Segovia that if he lifted the guitar from the gutter , then he must have been there himself .
I imagine it to be one of those highly embellished stories , but believe it to be allegorical truth . Segovia was from Spanish culture which had the origins of what is now flamenco as part of the culture , yet he did everything possible to put himself
into the 'classical' set and social class and remove all possible associations with 'crude' 'gypsy' music .
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Date May 28 2014 7:42:02
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Antonio de Torres-Creator of the... (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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My impression is that there exist basically two mind-sets of "gutter".
One that is overall alright with being only little sophisticated. An attitude that appreciates education and knowleged spirit a lot, but will not feel tragically incomplete about the self.
This kind of mind-set in my impression often yields a lot of wisdom and with many views demonstrates how it arrived at the same conclusions and insights like the systematically logical school out there.
It will usually be of a calm, understanding and tolerant personality.
The second type values wit as determinating on life ( cluelessness not being worth of living) in a hysterical way.
And with such a way of evaluating is eager to distance itself from the low-being.
It will adore the sophisticated ( usually especially physicians, of which it will yet the doc´s wife call "Mrs. Doctor", just like it used to be in the occident until early last century) and do whatever it takes to superficially put itself on equal footing. It will try to collect the outer insignia of the sophisticated, respectively what it thinks them to be. All, only usually not taking the efforts to actually educate oneself.
Instead commonly denying its uneducated condition and aiming to conceal it by going forward unnaskedly and forcing the personal retardedness uppon the surrounding.
And in its hysterical seek for apparent status and distancing from low-life it will in cold blood mistreat the unfortunate ( low caste, homeless, poor ) and animals. Viewing animals as dumb the wit-adoring type will hysterically strive for distancing itself from animals and their apparent cognitive inferiority. Which is why it abandons them from the house as vermin and tortures them.
It thinks the worse it treats fellow creatures and environment the more it would be elevating itself into urbanity and civilized being.
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This is not to say that Segovia was of the second type, as I know too little about his motivation, but the mentioning of dressing insignia in the last post, made me reflect on a certain immodest kind of mind-set that is a true pest to the world.
Ruphus
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Date May 28 2014 8:45:56
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