La Leona
La Leona (FE 04) is the fourth guitar built by Antonio de Torres and is considered his best instrument. It is also considered the archetype of the modern guitar, as Torres revolutionized guitar making with this guitar, which was built in 1856.
history
Around 1850, Julián Arcas came to Seville to join the guitar maker Antonio de Torres with the desire for a guitar. This instrument, the "La Leona", was completed in 1856. The inscription on the sticky note on the floor, inside the guitar, reads: “Por D. Antonio de Torres. Seville calle de Cerrageria núm. 32. AÑO DE 1856. “The guitar was never sold to Arcas, he played it at concerts in Spain, for example in Madrid , Castellón de la Plana or in England, but it was never his property. The concert in Castellón was attended , among others, by the nine-year-old Francisco Tárrega , who was a student of Arcas, together with his father. Tárrega was so fascinated by the sound of La Leona that he later had a similar guitar built by Torres himself.
The audience was enthusiastic about playing Arcas, but just as much about the sound of the instrument, which up to that point was still unknown as a concert guitar . A British journalist who had heard Arcas play La Leona wrote in 1862 of a "speaking instrument full of voices, even a weeping instrument with pleading tones" and of "tones so clear and full that one believes to be able to grab them. A fine radiance, a sound that moves, seems to breathe. ”In fact, the sound was extraordinary and very different from all guitars known at the time. The guitar has a strong but warm tone and was also unusually loud and powerful for the time. Critics of the time described the sound of La Leona as "wild", from which the name La Leona, "the lioness", was derived. Who ultimately gave the instrument this name cannot be said with complete certainty, but it was used according to letters from Francisco Mingot to Tárrega von Torres. La Leona was very much appreciated by Arcas and Torres themselves, but also by, for example, Tárrega, Miguel Llobet , Emilio Pujol and Regino Sáinz de la Maza . Therefore it stands to reason that one of these guitarists is at least partly responsible for the naming.
After Torres' death in 1892, his daughter Anita inherited twelve guitars, including the La Leona. In 1892 Tárrega bought the instrument for his daughter and student Elvira, which then remained in his possession until his death in 1909. After that it came into the hands of a friend of Tárrega. He could not do much with the instrument and sold it to Don Hilario Solsona in the 1920s. Then the guitar, like all other Torres instruments, fell into oblivion.
In 1979 the British newspaper "Guitar International" published an article by José Romanillos with the content that the heirs of Don Hilario Solsona want to sell La Leona. On the basis of this article, the Cologne doctor and collector Erhard Hannen bought the family instrument from Señora Luisa Solsona de Barcelona in 1980 . However, it was in very bad condition, so that the much admired sound from that time was hardly imaginable. La Leona was therefore not only meticulously restored by Benno K. Streu in Freiburg im Breisgau , he also found the original “puente secreto”. Before the restoration, the instrument was no longer playable. The success of the restoration was celebrated in the gazettes with the headline “The Leona roars again”.
Around 2011 it was played exclusively by Wulfin Lieske, on permanent loan from Erhard Hannen, who owns it to this day. He set the pitch to a ′ = 428 Hz.
In 2008, La Leona was examined by Helga Haritz from the Fraunhofer X-ray Technology Development Center in Fürth on behalf of the musicologist Helmut Balk with the help of X-rays in order to decipher the secret of the special sound. It was also examined at the Greifenberger Institute for Musical Instrument Research to find out the exact construction.
In 2007 Wulfin Lieske recorded the album El Canto de La Leona with La Leona.
construction
La Leona is larger than typical other guitars of the time, but still significantly lighter than other instruments due to the very thin wooden panels used. The thickness of the top is between 1.2 and 1.7 mm, the bottom about 2.2 to 2.5 mm and the sides about 1.3 to 1.7 mm.
The honey-colored ceiling of the La Leona is made of spruce wood . The sides and the three-part base are made of cypress wood , while the joints between the three parts of the base are made of rosewood , just like the bridge . The neck is made of cedar wood and the fingerboard is made of ebony .
A special feature of the La Leona compared to today's guitars is the bridge without a bridge inlay. This type of bridge can be found in this or a similar form in the first half of the 19th century on most guitars in southern Spain. There is a guitar by Pernás from 1861 that has exactly the same bridge type as the La Leona, but Pernás instruments with this bridge type already existed in the 1840s, so Antonio de Torres cannot be assumed to be the author of this form. This type of bridge was possibly problematic in terms of playing and construction technology as early as the 19th century, since the position of the strings cannot be adjusted using the bridge insert. Because of this problem, the bridge of the replicas is built today, for example, with an exchangeable bridge insert or similar solutions. But it tries to keep the original character.
The Tornavoz, a funnel made of a copper alloy with brass or bronze under the sound hole, is striking . La Leona was one of the very first instruments with a Tornavoz. This should support the soundboard and concentrate the sound. It should concentrate the sound waves in the body and in this way emit a louder sound. The Tornavoz thus also provides a special sound.
Inside the instrument, Torres used the fan capacity developed by Pagés, although only with his simple instruments only five fan bars. For guitars like the La Leona, he worked with seven centered fan strips made of spruce wood with two V-shaped end strips.
Dimensions
The dimensions used by Torres for the La Leona are very close to the dimensions still used today for concert guitars.
| Upper bout | 263 mm |
| waist | 229 mm |
| Lower bout | 343 mm |
| Body length | 464 mm |
| Scale length | 649 mm |
| Ceiling area | 1240 cm² |
| Weight (including mechanics) | 1200 gr |
Replicas
After Torres' death in 1892, the first copies of La Leona were made, which is why José L. Romanillos, who wrote a biography of Torres first published in 1987, had to check all "Leonas" to find out the original. The instrument was still on display under this name in an exhibition of instruments in Barcelona in the 1950s and in the 1960s the knowledge of the real identity of the guitar was known in the guitar circles of Barcelona, but was gradually lost in the following years .
For a long time until it was rediscovered by Romanillos, La Leona was more of a legend, about which one did not really know which guitar was actually meant. For example, in his book "The Flamenco Guitar", the American author David George confuses the very simple Leona from 1856 with the much more spectacular guitar from 1858 (FE 08), with which Torres allegedly won a prize. Confusions of this kind as well as assumptions that La Leona might not even exist any longer occurred frequently.
It was not easy to find out the inner construction of the La Leona, because unlike most guitars, the Tornavoz blocks the view inward through the sound hole. The only way is to see sections with the help of small mirrors.
Another option would be to open it. The La Leona has already been opened at least once, which can be seen from the fact that in the early 1940s the Madrid guitar maker Santos Hernandez signed the inside of the instrument next to the sound hole, a place that you cannot go to other than by opening the instrument can come.
José Romanillos also mentions in his work on Torres that the guitar maker Marcelino López Nieto in Madrid built a copy of La Leona for his own collection of copies and replicas. That must have been around or shortly before 1980.
Since the early 1990s, the German guitar maker Gerhard Oldiges in Niederweimar has occasionally built replicas of La Leona.
A few years ago Fritz Ober made some replicas in Munich, who also restored several other guitars by Antonio de Torres.
With the replica of the original made in June 2017, the guitar maker Carl Hermann Schäfer from Niederbruch near Limburg followed the restoration principles of Helmut Balk (Greifenberger Institut für Musikinstrumentenkunde). Neck angle, bracing and the attachment of the strings correspond to the presumably original concept of the original.
literature
- Stefano Grondona, Luca Waldner, Massimo Mandelli: La Chitarra di Liuteria . L'officina del libro, 2001, ISBN 978-88-86949-18-7 .
- Franz Jahnel: Manual of Guitar Technology: The History and Technology of Plucked String Instruments . Erwin Bochinsky, The Bold Summer Ltd., 1965, ISBN 0-933224-99-0 .
- José L. Romanillos: Antonio De Torres: Guitar Maker - His Life and Work . 2nd Edition. Bold Strummer Ltd, 1997, ISBN 978-0-933224-93-3 .
Web links
- Erhard Hannen: The story of La Leona. In: wulfin-lieske.de. Retrieved February 21, 2011 (Spanish).
- Video: Wulfin Lieske plays the original La Leona. gourmet-guitars.com, archived from the original on July 11, 2011 ; Retrieved February 21, 2011 .
- Video: Making of - Wulfin Lieske and The Zervas Array Test Recording Master guitars by Antonio de Torres (FE04 La Leona 1856), Santos Hernandez 1925 and Fritz Ober 2014 in comparison, played by Wulfin Lieske. Reinhold Zervas (production manager), Rainer Klock (assistant), Charlotte Klauser (video)
- Video: The famous Antonio de Torres 'La Leona' played by Wulfin Lieske at Siccas Guitars
Individual evidence
- ^ José L. Romanillos: Antonio De Torres: Guitar Maker - His Life and Work . 2nd Edition. Bold Strummer Ltd, 1997, ISBN 978-0-933224-93-3 , pp. 205 ff .
- ↑ History of the Guitar. Romance. In: TaBazar. Retrieved April 21, 2011 .
- ↑ Ulrich Mehner: La Leona - the lioness among the guitars! In: mehner.info. February 20, 2011, accessed April 21, 2011 .
- ^ Streu, Benno K .: About the restoration of master guitars - A workshop book . Ed .: Dietmar B. Streu. 1st edition. Self-published, Freiburg im Breisgau 2017, ISBN 978-3-00-056674-5 , p. 304 .
- ^ Wulfin Lieske: La Leona. In: wulfin-lieske.de. Retrieved April 21, 2011 (Spanish).
- ↑ Dirk Becker: The teeth of the lioness. In: tagesspiegel.de. September 20, 2008, accessed February 19, 2011 .
- ^ Greifenberger Institute: La Leona. In: Greifenberger Institute for Musical Instrument Studies. Retrieved April 21, 2011 .
- ↑ The origins of the guitar. (No longer available online.) In: Spanishguitars.ch. Archived from the original on April 23, 2011 ; Retrieved April 21, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Stefano Grondona, Luca Waldner, Massimo Mandelli: La Chitarra di Liuteria . L'officina del libro, Sondrio 2001, ISBN 978-88-86949-18-7 , pp. 13 .
- ↑ Ulrich Mehner: Tornavoz funnel: the special guitar sound. In: mehner.info. February 20, 2011, accessed April 21, 2011 .
- ^ Franz Jahnel: Manual of Guitar Technology: The History and Technology of Plucked String Instruments . Erwin Bochinsky, The Bold Summer Ltd., 1965, ISBN 0-933224-99-0 , p. 146 ff .
- ^ José L. Romanillos: Antonio De Torres: Guitar Maker - His Life and Work . 2nd Edition. Bold Strummer Ltd, 1997, ISBN 978-0-933224-93-3 , pp. 211 ff .
- ↑ Gerhard Oldiges: Oldiges Guitars. Retrieved February 22, 2011 .
- ^ Fritz Ober: Classical Guitars. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 12, 2009 ; accessed on February 22, 2011 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ La Leona at Grabberger-institut.de
