The Guitar Before 1900: What the Dictionaries Reveal

by Sean Ferguson

Overview

Ferguson shines a whole new light on the history of the guitar by delving into historical dictionaries and encyclopedias. Between the earliest of these to mention the guitar (1606) and the last one surveyed, Baker’s Dictionary of Musical Terms (1895), nearly fifty dated sources—early descriptions of the guitar—are put into context and discussed. They run the gamut from the anecdotal to the objective, from ignorance and prejudice to clarity and insight. Sprinkled through these definitions are highly colorful comments on the guitar’s place in everything from love to war, as for example this remark by Charles Burney in the Rees Cyclopoedia (1819): “The Portuguese having lost a battle, 14,000 guitars were found on the field of battle.” There are first-time ever English translations of numerous foreign-language sources (Spanish, French, Italian, German); the originals appear in facsimile in an appendix. Cultural historians as well as curious guitarists will find the attitudes toward the guitar reflected in these dated sources to be both entertaining and informative.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940012276711
Publisher:	Guitar Foundation of America
Publication date:	03/15/2011
Series:	GFA Refereed Monographs , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Sean Ferguson (born 1965 in Pittsburgh) holds bachelor’s (1988) and master’s (1992) degrees in music history from The Ohio State University, and a master of library science degree (1991) from Kent State University. He studied guitar at the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, and was a winner of the WFLN Radio Young Instrumentalists Competition. He performs on early and modern guitars, lute and theorbo as a soloist, accompanist and chamber musician, and has played in orchestras for numerous opera productions. Since 2009, he has been a member of the medieval/renaissance ensemble The Early Interval. As a librarian, he has worked at OCLC Online Computer Library Center and The Ohio State University Music/Dance Library, and has served as editor-in-chief of the music iconography database for the Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM) project. He is a founding member and current President of the Columbus Guitar Society.

Editorial Reviews

- "I think this monograph will be a useful tool for some time to come."

- "I then wholeheartedly recommend this monograph go up as the first in the new
GFA Refereed Monograph Series."

- "It is valuable to have so many lexicon entries gathered in one place, and this
monograph may become a useful research tool, one that will be quoted from for years to come."

Peer Reviewers