estebanana -> RE: Antonio de Torres-Creator of the Flamenco Guitar (May 16 2014 23:09:53)
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Torres did work with a classical guitarist, Julian Arcas. Arcas definitely associated with the upper crust, playing for English aristocrats and the Queen of Spain. He held an honorary position on the staff of the Conservatory. Arcas's concert programs contain names of flamenco palos, but published versions of, for example Soleares don't have the compas of the present day palo: https://www.everynote.com/goods.1/Arc_G_Solea.pdf Still, various biographical sources claim that Arcas played flamenco as well as classical. But the kicker is that Arcas and Torres met in a flamenco club and there was not a thing called "classical guitar" yet. It seems like Arcas was the one to encouraged Torres to become a professional and that he was playing in a variety of settings. It's still pretty safe to say there was no distinction between classical and flamenco guitars at that point an one could not have been derived from a fully realized version of the other. In the Brune' research he points out that by using the entries in the musical dictionaries, the same references books which claim the flamenco guitar is derived form the classical guitar, he calculates the number of guitarists in Spain during those time and lists which kind of music they are credited with playing. The list reads as a who's who of 19th century flamenco playing and shows the very book which tried to say the classical guitar came first lists mainly flamenco focused players from the longest time span. I know not everyone has access to Romanillos book, Brune's essay is posted here on the Foro, comparing the two texts if possible is informative. Regarding Segovia and Arcas, it's interesting to note both players were deeply involved with flamenco; Arcas meets Trores in a flamenco ambiente and Segovia judges and plays in the 1922 Concurso of Cante Jondo. Both are involved with flamenco, but after this Segovia makes break and distances himself from flamenco. Segovia had several motives for separating himself from flamenco, they had to do with his social status and his goals as a musician. I don't think Segovia set out to denigrate the flamenco guitar, but it certainly became a byproduct of his personal agenda. He found other guitarists as competitors both those who specialized in flamenco like Ramon Montoya and those who were composers like Barrios. And because he wanted to play Western "classical" music, which had not really been called classical music yet by the general public he put spoke about them as not being sophistcated and that they unlike him perpetuated a backward outlook. It's interesting to note that Segovia thought so much of himself that when he shared the same hotel floor with Emanuel Feuermann the great cellist that he could only complain of Feuermann's constant practicing to his friend the Spanish cellist Gaspar Cassado who was housed on a different floor. In all his attempts and energy focused on legitimization of the guitar in the bigger picture of the Central European tradition of music I wonder if it occurred to him to knock on the door of perhaps the greatest cellist of all time? Anyway, my own speculation on why Segovia choose Hauser asa person to make a guitar for him is that Hauser was from the country of Brahms, Beethoven and Bach; I speculate that consciously or unconsciously he knew that a guitar from Central Europe with the name of maker from that part of Europe would help him to persuade that the guitar was not just an Iberian phenomenon. But he did want tehSpanish format of the guitar as put together by Torres, he rejected the Stauffer format once he had a taste of his Santos built Ramirez. And he had other reasons to pick Hauser, as Hauser was a capable maker, but it's too juicy and tempting not to think Hausers being from greater Germany the same place the revered composers were form has something to do with Segovia choosing him over another Iberian made guitar which would have served his purpose just fine. Just some of my own speculation on Segovia, which has nothing to do with the Brune' essay or Romanillos' book, but what I came to reason after looking at those and several other texts. But the part that is taken from the two texts we are discussing goes up until the time Segovia makes break from flamenco and think it is important to realize up until Segovia's break with flamenco there seems not to be the conflicted internalized problem of different kinds of music mingling together. It's only after Segovia uses his clout to separate out the musics does the damage really occur. This really interesting because now since the separation is so definite flamenco players use the specialization to set themselves apart from other types of music. But as time goes by and more an more kids play flamenco a classical guitar at the same time the gaps spectrum of specialization are drawing closer. In the future we might be going forward to a model of guitarist more like Arcas who played all the musics and did not specialize; or are not shut out of one world of playing because they are advanced in another world. The worlds have collided and there's no going back to the old duality that Segovia set in motion.
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