OTROS PASIVOS NO FINANCIEROS CORRIENTES El detalle de este rubro, es el siguiente:

different ways.

14

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The making of the enharmonic Guitar (Louis Panormo’s involvement)

John Tallis, the English cartographer and writer, who knew of General Thompson’s scientific attainments, said this of Panormo’s involvement in the manufacture of the enharmonic guitar:

We must say, in justice to Mr. Panormo, the manufacturer, that, being convinced his own simple guitars on the Span- ish model have more tone in them than any other, we regret he should have employed so much labour in the construction of this very ingenious, learned, and impracti- cal invention.15

The cost of the guitar is given on Plate II in the frontispiece of the Instructions (see Figure No. 2) as follows: “Price, in

common wood 10 Guineas.” Louis Panormo’s standard guitars, in the same year, ranged in price from two to fifteen Guineas. They were probably subsidized in order to stimulate the market. Furthermore, it appears that the Instructions were

originally sold in two “divisions,” at two shillings each, the first of which was issued on November 12, 1829.16

Just how many of Panormo’s enharmonic guitars were made is unknown, and currently only one, made in 1829 and now housed at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum of the University of Leipzig, survives (Inv.-Nr. 566; see Fig- ure No. 1). It is quite likely, however, that some prototype

enharmonic guitars were made before Thompson’s treatise was published, perhaps towards the end of 1828, as a way to test his theories.17 _{Furthermore, there is evidence of in-}

terest in this instrument as late as 1836 and, perhaps more intriguingly, signs that Thompson himself was selling the guitars. This is suggested by the following letter from R. Cocks & Co. (a London music warehouse) to Thompson, dated May 24, 1836:

Sir,

Please do let us know if you can supply us with some copies of your most ingenious instruction book for the Enharmonic Guitar — we cannot get a single copy at D’Almaines. What is the last price you could let us have 2 of the instruments? We are Sir [unreadable signature] R. Cocks & Co., 20 Princes Street, May 24 1836, Hanover Square.18

Princes Street was very much in the heart of the area inhabited by guitar-makers, Edward Panormo and R. & W. Davis having workshops there at one time.

There may be a possible reference to at least one more gui- tar, seen in a Sale by Auction advertisement in the Melbourne

Argus (1869) and sold with a “100 Tons of Colonial Guano”:

Spanish guitar, Panormo fecit 1832, mathematically con- structed to play the most scientific and intricate composi- tions.19

By 1850, however, Thompson’s treatise on the enharmonic guitar was no longer in print.20

Organology

The only extant example of Thompson’s enharmonic guitar was made in Louis Panormo’s workshop at 46, High Street Bloomsbury, London, in 1829, and was assigned the serial number 1766. It is by far the largest bodied Panormo guitar known, measuring an unprecedented 370 mm across the lower bout compared to 289 mm of a standard one. The tun- ing machines are not original. The unusually thick head was designed to accommodate machines which probably had a larger side plate, for the cogs of the tuning machines, accord- ing to Thompson’s treatise, were to be increased in diameter by one half, and the number of teeth increased from twelve to eighteen. Perhaps the originals were replaced because they were found to be impractical. However, there is one Louis Panormo guitar from 1833 (LP20030) which has a larger than average body and tuning machines with sixteen-toothed cogs instead of the usual twelve (Thompson recommended eighteen), which may give some impression of the originals. The reason for increasing the size of the cog and the number of teeth was to make tuning more positive and reliable.21

The guitar was designed to accommodate a profoundly cambered cello-like fingerboard made from natural colored boxwood. The fingerboard is double layered, using the same kind of wood as the neck, the layers hidden when viewed from the side. The fingerboard thickness gradually increases, starting at the nut, reaching its thickest point around the neck juncture and then tapering off again towards the sound hole. Unlike a cello fingerboard, the underside of the cedar is not hollowed but is left flat along its whole length. The nut and bridge were made correspondingly cambered to complement the convex fingerboard.

Although the concept of individual frets would have been Thompson’s starting point, it is possible that other London-based inventors such as Mordaunt Levien, with his improved harp-guitar with hoop-like frets, manufactured in the 1820s but sold by Clementi &Co. from 1824, gave him the confidence to approach Panormo, London’s most famous guitar-maker.22

The holes to accommodate the frets, or “hoops” as Thompson called them, were bored right through both layers of the fingerboard. However, before the holes were bored, the

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positions of the “feet” had to be marked out, and Thompson recommended first making a steel marking implement, as shown on Plate I (Figure No. 3). The hoops are shown on as “Fig. 3” on the same Plate. The key positions were stained an

orange color by the application of aqua-fortis.23

Thompson mentions that the frets for the first instru- ments constructed, and the bore-holes in the finger-boards, were made by a Mr. G. Rivington, Engine and Lathe Manu- facturer, 192 High Holborn, London, and the graduation of the fingerboards was executed by a Mr. I. Aston, Rule-maker, 25, Compton Street, Soho, London (see Figure No. 4 for a

comparison between Thompson’s Instructions and the Leipzig Panormo).24 _{He also explains how to graduate the fingerboard,}

which is perhaps useful advice both to adept musicians as well as to other instrument-makers wishing to produce their own enharmonic instruments.

The majority of hooped frets were made of blue tempered steel and, according to Thompson’s treatise, each guitar would be provided with 150 frets including provision for losses. In addition to these, twenty frets of “white” metal for notes belonging to “mutations,” plus

twenty more of brass with a small hollow filed in the upper surface, “to be employed in the contracted dissonances,” were provided.25 _This

is to allow some string clearance when the string is stopped just be- low the brass one, and thus prevent the string from “buzzing” against the brass fret.

According to the Instructions,

the length of the first string was set at twenty-five “English” inches (635 mm.) with no compensa- tion. However, compensation was gradually introduced across the remaining strings so that the sixth-string was one fourth of an inch longer than the first.26

Thompson also mentions that one should keep “a tin” in the string compartment within the guitar- case, divided into compartments for the spare frets, bridge-pins, a tuning-fork, spare strings (an equal number of the sixth and

fifth, twice as many of the fourth Figure No. 4. Comparing the 1st and 12th positions of Plate I(see Figure 3) to an actual guitar.

and third, four times as many of the second and eight or ten times as many of the first). There should also be “paper for correction,” a material similar to sand-paper for correcting false gut strings by making them more uniform.27

The guitar represented in the Instructions (Figure No. 2)

was set in the key of A, and an ivory plaque was provided on which to pencil the key in use. Correspondingly, the ten musi- cal snippets provided begin in A major and take the student through simple key changes. Philip Bone claims that Philippe Verini contributed exercises to the treatise, but his name only appears next to one of them, and this short exercise may have been taken from an earlier published work.28

One of the drawbacks of Thompson’s enharmonic guitar is that individual frets have to be added to the existing ones for each diatonic change of key. Any deviation to other keys involved studying a diagram supplied with the treatise which could mean moving over one-hundred hoops. Then there was the question of actually tuning the guitar. The Leipzig guitar is currently unplayable with a mixture of the different kinds of frets placed in an equal tempered system; because of this,

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and with no written indication left on the ivory plaque, all clues as to the last enharmonic key used on this guitar have been removed.

At the base of the Leipzig guitar are six evenly spaced and plugged holes. Historically, it is common for nineteenth century guitars to undergo the transformation of having a tailpiece added to accommodate steel strings. However, the fact that there are six holes, all too large for the usual screws used for such alterations, suggests that they may have been created for bridge pins to anchor the strings to the base. Whether this was an original feature, perhaps some sort of post Instructions design, and part of his “sliding bridge saddle”

device (see below), is not known.

General Thompson’s obsession with mathematical musical problems never ceased, and in 1834 he produced a

pamphlet on the enharmonic organ. One example was built by T. Robson in the same year.29 _{A later model was exhibited}

in the Great Exhibition of 1851, and a later “improved” 1856 model is housed at the Science Museum in London.30 _This

monumental effort almost certainly overshadowed Louis Panormo’s enharmonic guitar, which was also exhibited in 1851, but that nevertheless did not go unnoticed. Tallis was quick to praise Thompson’s reasoning and exactitude,31

and there seems to be at least one additional feature to the guitar made in 1829. The Great Exhibition catalogue mentions that the guitar exhibited in 1851 had strings that could be lengthened separately at the bridge ‘to correct the defects of the depression [of the strings] to the neck, or of false or worn strings’.32 _{This innovation is described in some}

detail in Thompson’s 1850 publication, mainly covering the enharmonic organ:

Each string pass[es] over a distinct piece of ivory approach- ing to a pyramidical form, and in size to that of a human tooth, sliding in a separate groove in the wooden bridge.33

By 1850, Thompson was proposing the construction of three guitars in the keys of A, E, and C, with fixed frets, save for one or two, instead of one guitar capable of playing in all keys.34

Although much of the internal construction in the en- harmonic guitar that Panormo built is consistent with other Panormo guitars from the same year, notably with the seven symmetrical fan braces, it seems that whenever a new inven- tion was tried it invariably brought innovation with it, as we will see later with Carden/Lacote’s version of an enharmonic guitar. Thompson also put forward many important principles and ideas that may have influenced subsequent guitar-makers, and guitarists, which include:

•How to correct false gut strings;

•How to compensate the string-length on any guitar, by •Angling the saddle;

•The proposal that strings could be lengthened separately at the bridge;

•The use of cambered fingerboards to assist with barré technique;

•How to tie strings and repair broken ones;

•The proposition that the cogs of the tuning-machines should be increased in diameter by one half and the number of teeth increased from twelve to eighteen for greater preci- sion and stability of tuning;35

•An increase in body size for greater resonance.

Figure No. 5: A portrait of Thomas Perronet Thompson; the portrait was published in The News, September 30, 1838,

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A Brief Comparison to Lacote’s (Later) Tem- perament-Corrected Guitar

As we saw earlier, R. Cocks, the music importer and sometime dealer of guitars by the Paris luthier Pierre- René Lacote, was keen in 1836 to purchase two copies of Thompson’s Instructions for the enharmonic guitar. Who

were these copies for? It is clear that Lacote was drawn to the idea of a “French” version of an enharmonic guitar, albeit designed by another Englishman, Henry Carnegie Carden, living in Paris. Unlike either Thompson or Pan- ormo, Carden patented his design which was filed in Paris on May 9, 1843, with a supplement on May 6, 1844 which added nine aspects to the original Brevets d’invention pour un manche de guitare. The design included a gui-

tar support and resonance table, much like the idea of Dionisio Aguado’s tripodion and Jean-François Salomon’s piédestal. The primary objective of this design, however,

like Thompson’s, was to improve the intonation of the guitar while playing in different keys. Carden’s solution, superior to Thompson’s, was to slide the individual frets into their required positions. At least three examples of Lacote’s Guitare à tempérament réglable survive, from ca. 1845 (No. 2), ca. 1845 (No. 5) and 1852 (no serial

number).36

There were, and still are, many subsequent experiments concerning the design and making of guitars for playing in tune, by adjustments of frets and/or bridge.

If Thompson really believed his book was for the use of young ladies, then he was clearly deluded, and the overly- complex design, so unhelpful to the player in all respects save the highly refined one that the guitar was designed to promote, was doomed from the beginning. However, at least the treatise must have sold well, for it seems that the publish- ers sold all the copies, despite (or because of ) the contention that it inspired. Furthermore, later in life Thompson wrote:

A professor of the guitar who would take up the subject, and exhibit the power of the enharmonic instrument both in solos and in accompanying the voice, would take a step among scientific musicians, and be exceedingly likely to secure the attention of the public. In accompanying, he would have something like a monopoly.37

So, perhaps Thompson was thinking as much of the professional guitarist as of the mathematician, and it is likely that he reached both constituencies, hence the sales of both the treatise and Panormo’s instruments. If this were the case, his ideas and invention may have achieved much more than

is usually credited to him, by highlighting the problem of equal-tempered tuning while attempting to tackle many other issues in the set up of the instrument. Many nineteenth- century guitar methods commonly consisted of a page or two of rudiments followed by some simple minuets, songs, or ar- rangements from the opera; Thompson’s proposals, however, were a genuine attempt to improve the instrument, both in technical and musical terms. With this in mind, Instructions to My Daughter, for Playing on the Enharmonic Guitar, published

in 1829, must have been as exciting to read in its day as the 1832 translation of Sor’s Method for the Spanish Guitar and

Aguado’s 1837 Hints to Guitar Players.

I would like to thank: Wolfson College Cambridge, for the Donald and Beryl O’May Studentship; the Musikinstru- menten-Museum of the University of Leipzig; the University Library, Cambridge; the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Research Collections; Hull University Library; Ian Watchorn; and the organizer and participants of the First Cambridge Conference on the Nineteenth-Century Guitar.

Endnotes

1 _{Taken from a letter, published in Leonard George Johnson,} General T. Perronet Thompson: 1783–1869, His Military, Literary and Political Campaigns (London: Allen & Unwin, 1957), 138.

2 _{Enharmonic is the small difference in pitch between two notes}

such as Ab and G#, not present in instruments of equal tempera- ment such as the modern piano, but significant in the intonation of stringed and wind instruments.

3 _{T. Perronet Thompson, Instructions to My Daughter, for Play-} ing on the Enharmonic Guitar (London: Goulding and D’Almaine,

1829), 16.

4 _{T. Perronet Thompson, Theory and Practice of Just Intonation:} With a View to the Abolition of Temperament … (London: Effingham

Wilson, 1850), 72.

5 _{Johnson, 36.}

6 _{Ibid., 136–7. For the now obsolete sense of “maggot” here, see}

the Oxford English Dictionary, sv “maggot”, sense 2(a): “A whimsical,

eccentric, strange, or perverse notion or idea.”

7 _{Johnson, 139.} 8_{Ibid., 157–8.}

9_{Harmonicon (1830), 35.} 10_{Examiner, January 29, 1832.} 11_{Giulianiad, No. 4, 1833, 51.}

12 _{Thompson became joint-owner and editor of the Westminster} Review, see Johnson, 158.

13_{Harmonicon, No. 8, (1830), 401.}

14 _{I am grateful to Dan Tidah for his expertise on temperament.} 15 _{John Tallis, History and Description of the Cristal Palace and} the Exhibition of the World’s Industry in 1851, I (London: London Printing & Publishing Company, 1854), 118.

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17 _{Thompson says, in Part I of his treatise, “The frets for the}

first instruments constructed …,” but there is no mention of who made them and they could have been adapted instruments. See Thompson, Instructions, 16.

18 _{Hull University Library, DTH 3/9. R. Cocks & Co. was}

also a music publisher that published John Abraham Nüske’s Easy Method for the Guitar in 1832 and, in the same year, the English

translation of Sor’s Method for the Spanish Guitar. 19_{Argus (Melbourne), March 20, 1869, 2.} 20 _{Thompson, Theory and Practice, 77.} 21 _{Thompson, ibid., 77.}

22 _{See Harmonicon, January, 1824, for Clementi &Co.’s adver-}

tisement for Levien’s Harp-guitar.

23 _{The light-colored box-wood was necessary in order to receive}

the stain and lettering; however, it is liable to warp, and thus two layers were to combat this. Aqua-fortis was a solution of nitric acid in water, also used to give a tortoise shell-like appearance to canes. Thompson, Instructions, 16.

24_Ibid.

25 _{“Mutations” is a term derived from Medieval and Renais-}

sance music theory where it principally meant a change from one hexachord to another via a shared pitch to annex a further set of pitches or intervallic relations. Thompson employs it here to mean a change of key during playing, without stopping to alter the ar- rangement of the frets.

26 _{Thompson also included in his treatise a scale drawing of}

an enharmonic violin fingerboard with a first-string length of “one French foot” with a compensation extending to the fourth-string of one fifth of an inch.

27 _{Thompson, Instructions, 15–16.}

28 _{Philip Bone, The Guitar and Mandolin (London: Schott &}

Co., 1914), 297.

29 _{Even in 1829, in his Instructions, 19–21, Thompson includes}

applications of the enharmonic principle for other musical instru- ments, including the organ, and instruments from the brass and string families.

30 _{Science Museum, Museum (London), Inventory Number:}

1876–602 and technical file, T/1876 602.

31 _{John Tallis, History and Description, 118.}

32 _{Peter and Ann Mactaggart, eds., Musical Instruments in the} 1851 Exhibition (Herts: Mac and Me, 1986), 77.

33 _{Thompson, Theory and Practice, 77.} 34_Ibid.

35 _{It seems that this recommendation was not heeded; apart}

from (presumably) the enharmonic guitars and one other instru- ment from 1833 (LP20030), all Panormo guitars from the very first one, from 1822, to the last one in 1872 by George Lewis Panormo, had tuning machines with twelve teeth. Today, however, one of the most successful manufacturers of tuning machines, Rogers, uses fifteen teeth in their cogs, whether their “Baker,” “Hauser,” or own model.

36 _{Respectively: Private collection, England; Musashino Mu-}

seum, Tokyo; and Cité de la musique, accession number: E.1043.

37 _{Thompson, Theory and Practice, 77. •}

(Plate 15) and Pieters, 19.

27 _{Brian Jeffery, Fernando Sor, Composer and Guitarist, 2nd ed.,}

(London, 1997), 47.

28_{Morning Chronicle, March 29, 1817, referred to by Jeffery,} op. cit.

29_{Giulianiad, Vol. I, No. 5 (1833), 46-7.}

30_{Athenæum, No. 28, May 7, 1828. The concert was also re-}

ported in Revue musicale, quoted in Pieters, 19. That report more

bluntly stated that “these three estimable artists would produce a very pleasant result in a salon, but those who engaged them to play

In document C ON T E N I D O S. I. Documentos Constitutivos 3. II. Directorio III. Dirección Ejecutiva 8. IV. Servicios Entregados a los Proyectos 9 (página 59-67)