Django's Classical Guitar

PayneJon

Thankyou for the replies. I am flattered to recieve posts from people whose posts I have long admired.
Yes, I can use paragraphs. I have been accused of rambling on too much, but never for writing anything even remotely resembling Prose.
There is a guitar at www.azstarnet.com which is a 1924 Herman Hauser.
I think there is a certain significance to this instrument when compared to those of Mario Maccaferri as it contains the following features:
- a tapered fingerboard which extends slightly into the soundhole.
- a moustache shaped bridge
- rounded neck block, unlike the squared off ones used by Martin.
- Lacote style bracing.
And, additionally, Herman Hauser uses a metal tailpice on what is a very classical guitar. All this in 1924 . And wasn't it around 1926 that Mario started to develope his guitars?

Stackabones

That link just sent me to the front page of a newspaper. :?:

Is this the link ... ?
http://www.azstarnet.com/public/commerce/zavaletas/greene/hauser.htm

PayneJon

Sorry. The computer that I am using clicked off just as I pressed the link
to check it out.
Yes, that's the guitar and a good photo of it too, I might add. What with its' bolt on neck and optional use of a metal tailpiece (although not on this guitar, but on others) it is practically an acoustic guitar! All one need do is add steel strings.
I suppose there are some who would dismiss the notion that it is anything but a classical guitar meant for classical playing. And I can understand that some of the features on this guitar, such as the cutaway shape, can be found on instruments dating back as far as Grecian times, but why the metal tailpiece?
Looking more like an L-5 to me all the time. I will will try to find some more specific information on Ida Presti.

Stackabones

PayneJon wrote:

I suppose there are some who would dismiss the notion that it is anything but a classical guitar meant for classical playing.

Not me. I go through periods when my main gigging guitar is a nylon string. I tell people that I play a classical guitar, but I'm not a classical guitarist.

Some of my fav nylon stringers ... Thomas Dutronc, Sylvain Luc, Chet Atkins, Jerry Reed, Willie Nelson, Habib Koite, João Gilberto ...

PayneJon

Still not an L-5 quite yet, huh?
Well, I've been searching for some information concerning Ida Presti and Django, but have comme up with few leads. I'm going to order her biography and read what that contains.
I am left with the impression that Django was a "Moderniste". That is to say that he was interested in Modern Music and French Modern Music moreover. That brought me to the musical group Les Six of which Jean Cocteau was a member. We see him in a photo with Django listening to Hot Club music.
Jean Cocteau has been refered to as the "spokesman" for the group,however I have read where he was acting more as a "spy" rather than a spokesman in the intersest of finding out about Jazz music in order to incorperate it into the Modern Music as presented by Les Six.
Many composers around this time,including Debussey and Ravel earlier on, utilized the evolving music that was Jazz into their works. A great book that I have finished recently which provides a good backdrop of music during Django's days is called "The Rest Is Noise" by Alex Ross.
The composer Francis Poulenc was a member of Les Six and also, as it turns out, a friend of Ida Presti. So there's a connection. But possibly it was Jean Cocteau who formed a closer friendship with Django. The Gypsies, it seems, really interested him. As I read in an acount of Cocteau's visit to Picaaso's home in Castille for an elaborate dinner:
" Picasso, too, enjoyed the Gypsies- the meaner and more thieving the better. He would get up and danse flamenco with them and laugh and clap his hands as they ground their heels in the glasses they had smashed and fought over things that glittered." pg. 266 "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" by John Richardson.
So, I will continue my search and I think that it is wonderful that you use a classical guitar for Jazz and I wish that more people did!
Habib Koite is coming to the Iron Horse in Northampton, Ma. this April so I will go and listen. Thanks for the suggestion!

scot

Some things here just don't fit the facts. "Les Six" was formed in 1920 and by and large, those composers were finished with jazz only a few years later. It was mostly just a fashionable infatuation anyway - they were trying to incorporate some "negro syncopations" into their modernist classical music.

According to Antoinetto, Django actually had no contact with intellectual society until he'd returned to Paris in 1933 or so. It was not "Les Six" - it was a group descended from the "Front Populaire" and "Groupe Octobre", that he came to know through his friendships with Savitry and Pianfetti . Django was barely literate - we can only imagine exactly how he might have fit into this exclusive intellectual circle. The best guess would be as a "token". Plus, Delauney reports that the taciturn Django, when the conversation took too serious a turn, would get up and leave the room. He had no appetite for discussing aesthetics - the intellectuals raison d'etre.

I can't find a single reference to Django's friendship with Ida Presti in Williams, Antoinetto, Balen, Spautz, Dregni etc. Django was 14 years older than Ida Presti and they did not exactly run in the same circles. She may have studied with Maccaferri, but he and Django never met. She also studied with the narrow-minded and notoriously stern Segovia. It's more than difficult to make a connection here. That Ida Presti owned a guitar made by Bouchet who was sort of a student of Gomez-Ramirez and a picture exists of Django playing a guitar that looks like a guitar made by Gomez-Ramirez - that is about the best I can do, and that's a stretch! But without a doubt, Ida Presti was an absolutely awesome guitarist.

Elaborately carved bridges were quite common on guitars made in France in the late 19th and early 20th century. So were moustache bridges. Guitars like the oddly designed Gomez-Ramirez were likewise actually not so odd.

Django wasn't an intellectual - he was a semi-literate gypsy who like Ida Presti, was extraordinarily talented at playing the guitar. He wasn't a classical guitarist. But I expect he was a guy who could pick a classical guitar up and make it sound better than just about anyone else. My 2 cents...

A book that intellectually covers this period of time in Paris but is not djangocentric is "Making Jazz French" by Jeffrey Jackson. It's interesting.

Stackabones

scot wrote:

A book that intellectually covers this period of time in Paris but is not djangocentric is "Making Jazz French" by Jeffrey Jackson. It's interesting.

Fascinating post!

Just got that book and I'm looking forward to reading it. 8)

PayneJon

Facts? What facts are referred to? That Les Six finished with their flirtation with Jazz a few years after 1920 and were not responsible for in
troducing Django to Modern Music?
To clarify:
I mentioned Les Six to show that its members and Jean Cocteau in particular would have had the interest and impetus to meet with a musician such as Django in the first place. Cocteau had a talent for a dual role in this respect. Not that they had schooled Django in the ways of Atonal and Twelve note music.
Although it encompassed the sphere of the Western world the Popular Front, which was formed in 1936, in a larger sense had to do withdealings between Russia and the United States, neither one being France. My Django books put Django's meeting with Savitry in 1930 or,in some books,1931.
We remember Savitry best for introducing Django to recordings of Satchmo among others. Not Beethoven. Ellingtonian politics aside, this was Django and not Pete Seeger. So whatever" exclusive intellectual circles " Django may have joined, Savitry,the Bohemian Gauguin wannabe , like the Duke, could have taken Django only so far.Hardly what one would call an intellectual group. No wonder he got up and left the room in a huff!
If you can't find any reference whatsoever to Ida Presti in your Django books, well, I couldn't even find an article about her in a recent edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. There you have it. One of the greatest classical guitarists to ever hit the planet and not even in New Grove! I did find some reference to her on the Brazilian Guitar Archives site. Words to the effect that Django and Ida Presti played guitars together around the campfire. Yes, they moved in different circles so they formed their own. Yes, Django never met Maccaferri, but why wouldn't he be a topic of conversation around the campfire? And how can Segovia be called narrow minded? His was the task of steering the vesselage that was the classical guitar through the course of history even at a time when people were reduced to constructing their prohibited guitars in secret at night in their cellars less they become discovered by the police. Narrow minded? What does that make Ashley Alexandra Dupre? Open minded?
Yes, Django was illiterate and I'm sure that his "big brother" Stephane Grappelli could become exasperated when trying to teach him to write. But France, like England, loved and adopted him.

Stackabones

I think it's a fascinating possibility and plausible imo. Just because it ain't in the history books, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

scot

I am a great admirer of Segovia, but that doesn't change the fact that he was at best not interested in other styles of guitar music, and at worst he was downright hostile. Some folks might consider that narrow-minded. I've liked Ida Presti since I first heard her 5 or 6 years ago. You and I may think she's one of the best classical guitarists ever but this is apparently not the consensus of the classical guitar world today - for better or worse. Ida Presti was recognized as a prodigy and maybe Django was aware of her. If you guys want to project or imagine a relationship between Django and Ida Presti, OK by me. All I'm saying is that people who are far more expert than I am never made even a hint of this. There isn't a shred of evidence - either way, I'll agree - that they ever met. And if I was inclined to speculate, based on what I know right now, I'd say it wasn't likely.

The best source for information on Django's relationship with Parisian high society and intellectual circles is a long article by Alain Antoinetto in Etudes Tsiganes issue 3-4 1989. This article is also a chapter in the Billard/Antoinetto biography. This text discusses Django's transition into Parisian life and society, how his natural grace enabled him to move easily in and out of high and intellectual society. My references to the "Octobre Groupe" and the "Front Populaire" (many of the artists associated with the october group were also committed communists at one time) came from this text.

My point about "Les Six" is simply that these men were interested in atonal and jangly music. It's hard for me to imagine that they'd be much interested in Django's swingy, melodic and romantic music. He was certainly not interested in their kind of music. Django preferred Bach, and his own symphony owes a lot more to Bach than to modernism. Rather than continue to rant on this, I strongly suggest that you read "Making Jazz French" and the Billard/Antoinetto biography. These are well-documented and accurate, and are more credible than I am.

Also worth reading is this:
http://www.jazzmagazine.com/Vies/portra ... jango1.htm

That's my last .02 euro.