A colleague called me up this week to tell me that someone is using his good name to sell cheap guitars. A player sent him a message with a photo of a guitar with a label he didn’t recognize but with his name and a different address (same city though). He also noticed that the guitar had not been made by himself. This is not a new problem; I have seen factory produced guitars with a label claiming it was built by an individual maker in Granada (a non-existent person) and I have heard of falsifications too of well-known builders. Using Granada on a false label seems to be a marketing technique. This is a real problem for the guitar-maker, firstly because having an inferior product out there can seriously damage your reputation and who knows how many of these instruments there might be. A factory could conceivably produce more instruments in a short time than there are originals. Secondly, if the maker warns potential clients on a web page or social media that bad copies of his instruments are being offered it might actually scare some of them away as they might not trust that they will get the real thing. 

Obviously this type of fraud is reprehensible and should be persecuted but I do wonder how easy it is to trick clients this way with all of the resources at the buyer’s disposal. These days it is rather easy to contact the maker of an instrument by phone, email or a social media account and confirm that the guitar in question was indeed made by him or her. Many of the buyers of my guitars contact me before or after acquiring a guitar from another source. And I have had a few enquiries about the authenticity of these instruments. So far I have not heard of any copies of my work. Not famous enough I guess.

I had another restoration in last month. This was a guitar which had already had some work done on it perhaps on two different occasions. Someone had modified the guitar to conform to what were then modern standards. Neither myself nor the owner thought that undoing all of the changes was a good idea. I fixed a crack or two, installed geared tuning pegs and did some work on the bridge, nut and frets to make it playable.

Josef Pagés was the son of Juan Pagés who was also a guitar-maker. Very influential in the late 18th and early 19th centuries not only in their native Cádiz but all over Spain. Another of the four guitar-making sons, Francisco, who emigrated to Cuba and worked there expanded the fame of the Pagés family.

Those of us who are driven to write about guitar organology and guitar construction owe so much to José Luis Romanillos. His book on Torres set the bar for that sort of research and turned Torres into a household name among guitar aficionados. I think I have never written an article without referencing that book. Torres’ guitars and research in general have become an important part of my work and whithout his trail-blazing I doubt I would have got here. 

I met José Luis and Marian on a number of occasions: here in Granada during their research for the Diccionario and in Córdoba for the Antonio de Torres exhibition. He served on the jury at the guitar-making competition in Gelves in 1999 where I presented a guitar. When I started building copies of Antonio de Lorca he encouraged me and when I uncovered a guitar by Etienne Laprevotte he guided me in my investigations.

I include a quote from the 1987 version of the book which honours the master:

“To say that this book owes a great deal to my wife is an understatement: her encouragement and total support made it possible for me to write this book. Not only did she type the draft several times but also helped give the book its final shape. My indebtedness to her is immeasurable and only her modesty and unselfishness in refusing to share the authorship of this book prevented me from including her name alongside my own. Marian, I thank you.”

Javier Riba kindly allowed me to publish what he wrote here. Translation below.

Preludio al atardecer (1926) de Joaquín Rodrigo Javier Riba (guitarra)
En el año 2019 el musicólogo Javier Suárez-Pajares encontró una pieza inédita de Joaquín Rodrigo en el archivo del compositor titulada “Preludio al atardecer”. Hasta ese momento desconocíamos la existencia de esta composición que, si nos atenemos a la fecha del manuscrito (1926), podría tratarse de la primera obra para guitarra del autor del Concierto de Aranjuez. El “Preludio al atardecer” no es una tentativa de un joven compositor pianista que se acerca a la difícil empresa de escribir para la guitarra; todo lo contrario, es, en mi opinión, una pieza madura, sorprendentemente bien resuelta en el plano instrumental (aunque con una demanda técnica que se adelanta a los parámetros de su época) y muy audaz en el planteamiento tonal. Escrita en el modo flamenco de Do, con armadura de Fa menor (4 bemoles), presenta un episodio central con rasgueados en Mi mayor cuya luminosidad contrasta abruptamente con la oscuridad de las secciones que la preceden y la siguen. El guitarrista Juan Manuel Cañizares ha sido el primero en comunicar la pieza tanto en concierto como en grabación, desde una óptica flamenca, a través de su proyecto “Rodrigo por Cañizares”. Aquí les presento mi lectura “clásica” desde un prisma más académico.

In 2019 musicologist Javier Suárez-Pajares discovered an unpublished score by Joaquín Rodrigo in the composer’s archives titled “Prelude at sunset”. Until that moment we were completely unaware of the existence of this composition which, according to the date (1926), might well be the first piece the author of Concierto de Aranjuez ever wrote for the guitar. But this prelude is hardly a “first try” by a pianistic composer who wishes to take on the difficult task of writing for the guitar; rather it isa mature piece which is surprisingly well resolved on the fretboard of the guitar. It must be said that the technical difficulty is ahead of its time as is the audacious tonal approach. Written in flamenco mode in C with a key signature of F minor (4 flats) it includes a central episode with “rasgueados” in E major the luminosity of which contrasts abruptly with the darker sections which precede and follow it. Guitarist Juan Manuel Cañizares was the first to both record and play this piece in concert of course from a flamenco point of view in his project “Rodrigo by Cañizares”. Here is my classical vision using a more academic approach.

Mi agradecimiento a Cecilia Rodrigo y a la Fundación Victoria y Joaquín Rodrigo.
Grabación de estudio (noviembre de 2021)
guitarra John Ray (2005) copia de Torres (1892)
Estudio Hanare (sonido e imagen de Lauren Serrano)