Traditional and Modern Guitar

Vahdah Olcott-Bickford (1885-1980) was an established guitar virtuoso and a prominent writer and contributor to plucked-stringed journals, such as _Cadenza_and _Crescendo_. During the Interwar period, in 1923, the American Guitar Society was established as the first guitar society in the United States; Olcott-Bickford was one of its founding members and became its musical director, a position she held until her death. In this paper, I propose­ that Vahdah Olcott-Bickford - known popularly as the "Grand Lady of the Guitar" - defined the American landscape of guitar musical culture and institutions between 1910 and 1980. She did so through her published writings, lectures, performances, concert hosting, concert organization, social network, and activities as the founding member of the American Guitar Society (AGS) and the Guitar Foundation of America (GFA). Her vision to champion the classical guitar resonated throughout the country, and local guitar societies were established in many cities after 1923. Her correspondence shows how she became a sought-after source for guidance about establishing such societies. Indeed, a close exploration of her work unveils the construction of the modern American guitar landscape and the role that Vahdah Olcott-Bickford played in the establishment of the institutional umbrella that has successfully championed the classical guitar during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 


This research contributes to growing scholarly discourses about both musical patronage and the contributions of women to the development of American musical life. Since my focus is to analyze the contributions of women musicians emerging in the first decades of the twentieth century, I show how certain professional activities influenced and informed others within an artist's trajectory. Moreover, contextualizing the rise of the elaborate California suffrage campaign contributes to fully understanding how Olcott-Bickford forged a multifaceted career, achieving recognition as a professional concert artist, composer, patron, teacher, and pioneer in her lifetime.

In the opening of Carlos Saura's 1995 Flamenco (https://youtu.be/-dW-uFO1AIQ 00:00 – 00:35), before "La Paquera de Jerez" steps forward to sing in the 6/8 rhythm of bulerías, one guitarist strums out a rhythm, and all the accompanying palmeros (hand-clappers) answer him instantly, putting their hands together in a gesture that pulls all the musicians into a tightly-integrated rhythmic stream. Paquera growls and shrieks into a virtuosic vocal warm up, called the "salida" (entrance). She hits the end of her first line with a guttural exhale (on the same beat that the palmeros had accentuated, the "10" in flamenco counts) and, breathing with her in perfect rhythm, the accompanists all respond with an ¡ole! on the next accent (the "12" in flamenco counts), thus propelling the music onward. 


I call the gesture of bringing the hands together on the flamenco "10" a "pellizco," which means "pinch." I think of it as an opening, a moment in which the decision of whether to extend or close the phrase is held in suspension. We know that many flamenco rhythms are in 6/8 and that this time signature has been used to represent Spanishness in compositions spanning from "Vaya de Fiestas" from Le Bourgeoise Gentilhomme (Jean Baptiste Lully, 1670) to "America" from West Side Story (Leonard Bernstein, 1957). But in contrast to the horizontal amalgam of 3/4 and 6/8 these composers use, the hemiola in bulerías is vertical, an overlay of two threes with three twos. In the resulting interplay, the triple must punch forcefully into the duple accents, standing out in its opposition, yet leading up to the upward motion and improvisational potential of the "10," our pellizco.


The trajectory of Paquera's brilliant salida is too rhythmically complex to transcribe adequately, and it is equally complicated in terms of pitch, emotional tone, and literary and cultural reference. But everyone in the scene uses a common gestural lexicon-the group's common conceptualization of the music has a gestural component. It is a signal done always, and by everyone: singers, guitarists, dancers, hand-percussionists, and listeners alike. This movement dimension is the focus of this presentation.

If, as was famously said, the Congress of Vienna "did not march, it danced," it waltzed its way through the negotiation of power and territory to the music of Italian-born guitarist Mauro Giuliani (1781–1829), a figure typically marginalized in a musicological historiography that has prioritized the Beethovenian symphonic tradition. However, Giuliani's status as a foreign guitar virtuoso with footholds in Vienna's public and private music cultures suggests that surveying this momentous event in the history of diplomacy from the vantage point of his sphere offers new insights into a range of cultural activities associated with the Congress. Such an alternative Congress narrative touches on the small-scale and the private, offering insight into the less mainstream aspects of Vienna's music culture. This paper will analyze the musical events surrounding the Congress of Vienna through the lens of Giuliani's career, while exploring the broader political implications of Congress-related music. 
While Giuliani's creative activity is not associated with the monumentality typically attributed to the Congress's large public events, I argue that his performances alongside Vienna's other most notable instrumentalists nonetheless served as musical embodiments of the Congress's mandate of international cooperation and conversation. Giuliani's public Congress activities included his participation in the "ducat concerts"-public performances, held in small venues, which could be attended for the price of one ducat-and subsequently, a series of evening serenades hosted by Count Palffy at the Schönbrunn Palace gardens. To complement his performances, Giuliani published numerous pieces which-with their references to the musical traditions of France, Austria, and Russia-tapped into the market for Congress memorabilia. In this paper, I will consider how some of Giuliani's performances and publications during the period 1814–1815 engaged with aspects of the Congress's political agenda. Although music was associated with some of the more frivolous activities that took place during the Congress, it played an integral role in communicating the goals of the Congress, as well as those of the emerging Austrian state.