- When I first encountered this instrument, I thought it was
- pretty plain, but to understand how it changed music history, I found it to be very profound.
- This guitar as much as Andre Segovia
- established classical guitar playing. He
- resurrected this tradition of playing--finding nineteenth-century composers and
- even eighteenth-century arrangements, and figuring out
- how to play it on a guitar --and brought what had been a parlor instrument
- to the concert stages. Many of his greatest recordings were all done with this guitar.
- Hermann Hauser, the maker, met Segovia probably in about 1925.
- Twelve, thirteen years after they met, Hauser brings this guitar
- to Segovia. It’s incredibly constructed,
- but this specific instrument
- real artistic importance
- is how beautiful it sounds.
- figuring out how to play it on a guitar and
- brought what had been a parlor instrument
- From the very lowest note to the very highest note,
- it’s so even. It’s got this mellowness to it, but yet it’s never weak.
- When he played this guitar it was like it was made for him.
- And you can see white salt stains from Segovia’s sweat;
- this is like tied to him by his DNA.
- In the early 1960s, he was in a recording session and the microphone fell into the guitar.
- Segovia never liked the sound of it after that point,
- but we can hear his recordings when it was in its finest form.
- I listen to him play and I just get this profound respect,
- and yet both Segovia and Hauser lived in
- a very troubling time,
- in a very dark place in Europe.
- Hauser’s working in Munich, which is the hotbed of the Nazi party.
- Many people speculated
- what was Hauser’s politics. And
- Segovia had a very difficult relationship with Franco.
- He was criticized for not having separated himself more. It is troubling.
- There’s always been a question about how did such great art
- come from such horrific times and surroundings. That an object can transcend such evil
- and an art form can
- be birthed within that. And that this guitar
- and all that it led to could come from such a time and place. The fact that this is
- such a transformational piece that I adore and that I love the music that was made on it,
- and yet it’s a question that I wrestle with.
String TheoryJayson Kerr Dobney
Guitar, 1937
Hermann Hauser (German)
Spruce, rosewood, and mahogany
Gift of Emilita Segovia, Marquessa of Salobreña, 1986 (1986.353.1)
Hermann Hauser (German)
Spruce, rosewood, and mahogany
Gift of Emilita Segovia, Marquessa of Salobreña, 1986 (1986.353.1)
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