Our knowledge of music for the guitar during the Great Vogue is still rather fragmented. If a ‘collection’ may be defined as a group of objects, of one type, gathered together purposefully by one or more committed people, then the most interesting collections of guitar music from the period of the Great Vogue are naturally those that were compiled when the material was first published, played and performed. To my knowledge, however, there are few substantial examples of such contemporary collections. Perhaps the most remarkable is the Hudleston Collection, now in the Royal Irish Academy of Music, which consists of more than a thousand solo and chamber works for guitar in original editions; another is the corpus of music from Skottorp Castle in Sweden, of which guitar material forms only a limited part. There are many smaller corpora, which have sometimes survived because they were bound, as well as uncatalogued assemblages of guitar music that vary in size; these are to be found all over Europe, in country houses and estates, and deserve closer attention. A study of one such, by Sarah Clarke, shows how an investigation of the kind she carried out may shed light on the guitar in its domestic and cultural context. A Swedish instance of a similar small collection, which includes a six-string (originally perhaps a six-course) guitar by Josef Benedid from 1792, was located at Herrborum Manor in Östergötland, and probably belonged to a lady companion, referred to as ‘Mademoiselle Jeanette’.

Research aids

Some parts of the picture have been pieced together by Paul Sparks and the late James Tyler in their book The Guitar and its Music (2002), which emphasises the importance of Paris and the quantity of music for the guitar published there. Much French guitar music, and especially vocal music with guitar accompaniment, was distributed – in Paris, as elsewhere – in periodicals that were mostly ephemeral publications, which explains why there are many gaps in the surviving runs. These gaps are indeed unfortunate, for the issues we possess contain much information bearing upon problems of dating, changes in musical taste and the capability or diligence of composers, arrangers and publishers. The task of cataloguing such publications demands much time and plentiful resources, and it is quite clear that they have generally been (and perhaps still are) considered of minor importance by librarians and the keepers of public collections.