History, Part 5
The Seventeenth Century
The patronage of the European nobility had brought to the guitar, first, recognition and then a measure of indispensability. The number of composers for the instrument, along with guitarists and guitar makers, grew to staggering proportions. Improvements in methods of documentation have allowed their names and accomplishments to come down to us.
It is known that king Louis XIV of France himself played the guitar and regarded it as his favorite instrument. He had for his teacher one of the most important French guitarists known to us - Robert de Visée (1650-1725). Jean Baptiste Lully was a great composer of that time. He played guitar and composed for the instrument.
The names of several guitar makers during the Baroque period in France have been recorded. René Voboam represented the heigh of French instrument building (fig.8) in the seventeenth century. He made a guitar dated 1641. It is an example of the more ornate style of instrument making. Alexandre Voboam and his son Jean made also guitars representative of seventeenth century.
German influence
There was a considerable number of works containing guitar music published in seventeenth century Holland. The work of Isabel van Laughenhove is representative. But it was in Germany that the instrument achieved its greatest popularity among Northern Europe. Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654) and Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630) were important.
Among the number of German guitars still in existence, the first known German-made guitar was built by Jacobus Stadler in 1624. It is typical curved, stripped back and shows strong Italian influence. A seventeenth century guitar of an entirely different type was made by a priest, father John of Apsom. The back of the instrument is decorated with a crucifixion scene.
The most outstanding guitar maker of all Europe was Joachim Tielke of Hamburg (1641-1719). His striking guitars were made and decorated with materials such as ivory, tortoise shell, ebony, gold and silver, mother-of-pearl, jaracanda wood. The workmanship was consistently of the highest quality. On one of them, the sides are made of ivory with pictures engraved on them. These pictures represent scenes from Genesis. His other guitars are covered with Tielke-type floral decorations surrounding mythological scenes, a characteristic of his handiwork. This tendency toward elaborate decoration, as manifested in Tielke instruments, represents the heigh of German craftmanship; it is comparable to that of the masters of the Italian Renaissance.
