My first introduction to the concept of a Russian playing guitar was sadly misleading; it was a verse from the rich ballad of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar and his battle to the death with Abdul le Bulbul Amir. In that verse Ivan is characterized as a man of all seasons:

"He could imitate Irving, play poker and pool,
And strum on the Spanish guitar.
In fact, quite the cream of the Muskovite team
Was Ivan Skavinski Skavar.."

Little did I know that this was more significant an ability than it would be for a mid-20th century boy to learn. The 6-string Spanish guitar was one of two strong branches in the evolution of instruments from the early ancestor that had five pairs of strings. The Spanish guitar in turn led to the American steel string, the slide guitar and all the wonders of EADGBE we know so well.

But its cousin evolved otherwise. The Russian guitar evolved also into single strings, not double, but there were seven of them, and they were tuned into an open G chord for the standard instrument. In addition, a tenor model was popular, much shorter, which was tuned in the the open C chord one fourth higher.

At the turn of the century, before the Bolshevik revoution, there was a rich culture of Russian guitar music. In the early 20th century, two forces displaced the instrument from popular knowledge. One was the cultural force of the revolution which insisted on associating the seven-string Russian guitar with the complacency of the fallen aristocracy. The other was the rising expansion of the Spanish guitar's popularity, spearheaded by the rising young Andres Segovia.

There are two modern-day proponents of the Russian seven-string guitar. One is Oleg Timofeyev, about whom much can be learned at this page at Talisman Music.

The other, who I had the great pleasure to listen to last night (Fridaty night, actually) is John Schneiderman, an American finger-picker who has studied with some of the best guitarists in the world -- the British pedagogue Frederick Noad, the Schola Cantorum in Basel, and Eugen Dombois, a lutist of renown. He has played plucked instruments since he was nine. He is also on the faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

A great deal more can be learned about the Russian guitar by following some of these links. More on John Schneiderman, whose playing is just masterful, can be found on his web page.

It was an eye-opening evening.

Regards,

A