Watch this new documentary about the Romeros. This quartet is easily the best-known in the world and I have had the pleasure of seeing them here in Granada. Their interest and willingness to participate in the Granada Guitar Festival has made them important to its continuación.
I am being called upon more and more often to appraise or at least identify historical instruments. The challenge is exciting and the necessary research is rewarding but you are very likely to find yourself on shaky ground if you want to give a conclusive answer. There are a few characteristics of a guitar which will immediately point to a particular maker: headstock shape, rosette pattern and obviously label and signature or stamp on the wood itself. José Luis Romanillos famously said that the label is the least reliable aspect when identifying a guitar. While it is true that a label can be removed, re-affixed inside a different instrument, or copied; we cannot always assume that there has been foul play so I might be a little more forgiving than Maestro Romanillos. The next step is to look for subtler characteristics in the building style that you have observed in other instruments by a particular maker. Already we are running into difficulties as most of us are intimately familiar only with a limited number of makers. In my case I would be hard-pressed to offer my expertise outside of the historic Spanish makers and even then, certainly not all of them. If a maker is not suggested by any of these characteristics we are left with the possibility of identifying an era or a school which might have produced this guitar. In Spain the most important schools or traditions were the Madrid, Granada, Valencia, Cadiz, and Barcelona schools. A careful study of the physical aspects of the instrument can usually determine which school it comes from especially since some of these traditions are limited to a certain historic period.
There are two almost insurmountable problems with appraisals in general. The first is the high incidence of vested interests either in the person of the owner (seller), the appraiser or the buyer. The pressure is on to assign a high value to the instrument for reasons of prestige or simple greed. This is common in the violin world especially because the “experts” are so often buyers and sellers of violins. The other factor that should be mentioned is the tendency to assume that a guitar-maker always uses the same techniques on each guitar. In reality it does seem that we can find commonalities between many of the instruments of one maker but at the same time we see similar commonalities within a school of different makers. However, we also see an evolution in the body of work of one maker and some unexpected experimentation within that same maker’s work. The result is that we might not recognize two guitars from different periods as made by the same maker.
In any case there is no substitute for experience and access to the largest number of guitars possible, detailed notes and photographs and access to a good network of experts in historic guitars by different makers as one person usually does not have expertise in very many makers.
Fran López Montoro and Raúl Enrique Navarro, both great-great grandsons of Antonio de Torres have finally been able to release their documentary about the seminal figure of the guitar. The Association of Guitar-makers bought a copy last week and I recently received it. I am not a fan of Amazon but it is the only place I have been able to find it so far. https://www.amazon.es/Espa%C3%B1ola-Torres-DVD-Hermann-Hauser/dp/B08LHXHLDG/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_es_US=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=la+espa%C3%B1ola+la+de+torres+dvd&qid=1610700010&sr=8-1
The idea was to have a viewing all together but it looks like we will be watching it one at a time in the privacy of our homes so I guess I had better get busy and watch it since I am first on the list. It seems to have been made in Spanish but has English subtitles. Check it out!
The video below was just posted and reminds me what a great thing the guitar festival has been for Granada. Once more I would like to praise Vicente Coves for his tenacity and organisational skills. In a year that saw a great number of festivals and concerts cancelled he was able to secure support for the Granada festival once again and to put together a great programme. I can only imagine the difficulties he faced in adapting everything
to the COVID requirements and getting the permissions and support he needed. This video summarizes the activities of the 2020 festival and gives us hope for a 2021 festival, this time perhaps with visitors from all over the world as we had in 2017, 2018 and 2019. As I have often reported here, the great thing for me and other guitar-makers is that the city fills up with players, teachers, students builders and concert-goers.
In 2017 the Badalona Guitar Associacion organized an excellent event centred around the figure of Antonio de Torres Jurado. Events included a competition for young guitarists, an exhibition of copies of Torres’ guitars, concerts and some very interesting presentations. I was invited to talk about my work restoring historic guitars. 