The dilemma of the sound in guitar,

by Emilio Pujol

The scientific definition of the sound. The timbre in the loudness. Differences of timbre
in each instrument. Factors that take part in the appreciation of the sound. Directions
that have determined their classification. Dilemma of the sound in guitar. The musician
who anxious to know the most intimate secrets his art looked for in scientific books a
satisfactory definition of the sound, would finish disturbed before the mobilization of
numbers and words which they have been necessary to leave without still needing,
which only to the spirit is to him possible to perceive. Those books say learned to us
that the sound is something produced by the vibrations of a body in an average elastic
through as it propagates in sound waves and that their timbre, intensity and amount of
vibrations per second are extremely variable. Certain that all that must be; but
something more also, because of our conscious sensitivity and that nonfigure in those
scientific definitions, reasoned and you cold. A something more than includes from
most insignificant to most transcendental for our spirit. A something more than the
genius of the man can transform into immaterial element of a world wonderful and
fantastic, able to confortar the soul like conforta to the body a sun ray.

The faculty to hear that it is to us own puts under the sound as much diversity of
appreciations as differences of physical nature and moral they exist between the
listeners. To listen is to concentrate in the ear all our sensitivity, sensitivity that differs
in each individual according to its temperament, illustration or criterion. The listener
perceives simultaneously with the sound, his particular timbre (what Helmholtz called
the color of the sound), surrounding in a single unit his elevation, intensity and duration.
The timbre is really the characteristic of each sound; it is what the color to the object,
the perfume to the flower, the form to the body it is enough to consider the importance
that, separately, has in the orchestra each instrumental group and the particular timbre of
each instrument. In the harmonic set, each group represents a determined , subdivided
element in so many sonorous individualities as types of instruments form the group. No
of these instrumental groups offers as much variety of timbres as the one of the pressed
stringed instruments, to cause of its diversity of forms, sizes, thickness and quality of
cords and different procedures in being put in vibration.

The timbre can be good, bad, or better worse, according to the valuation that gives the
critical sense him of that appreciates it. As this appreciation depends, between thousand
causes, of auditory and touching sensitivity, sugestionabilidad, musical and intellectual ,
prejudices or force customary, good sense of criterion and conditions even separate
education, general order of that judges it, the classification of the timbre or the sound,
can vary to the infinite. Nevertheless, within the relative concept a predominant
classification exists that tends to be considered like definitive.

This is the resultant of a series of suffrages of superior capacity, inspired by the

principles of an aesthetic one long sifted and defined by the most severe public, the best
ones schools, the best interpreters and the most eminent creators for all time.
 This sense is the one that has prevailed in the consecration of voices like those of
famous singers GRASSINI, Jenny LYND, Adelina PATTI, the MELBA; the two
famous GAYERRE, CARUSO, CHALIAPIN, etc.; the same one that is you consolidate
the superiority of the STRADIVARI, AMATI and GUARNERI in the arc instruments;
BLUTHNER, BECHSTEIN, PLEYEL, ERARD and STEINWAY on the other marks of
pianos; PAGES, BENEDID, RECIO, ALTAMIRA and TORRES in the guitars, and are
he himself sense that takes care of to weigh each artist in its particular sound. Of all you
known instruments, no will have offered surely matter of as much hesitation and
discussion between its followers, like the guitar by the possibility that offers to be
pressed of two different ways, with the nail and the yolk of the fingers. The timbre of
the cord changes sensibly according to the used procedure and as the possibility does
not fit for same fingers of including both procedures, the guitarist must adopt one of
both: of there the dilemma.

Preferences of timbre in the Antiquity. The Vihuelistas and laudistas of centuries

XVI and XVII. Dilemma of the pulsation in the guitarists of century XVIII. The
theories of WATERED DOWN SISTER and of. Possible determining causes. From the
most remote times it comes provoking and controversial enthusiastic dilemma of the
sound. For the guitarist, the sound constitutes a dogmatic question of as much
importance as it can be for a moralist in faith feeling. The peculiar thing is, that, through
aesthetic sense - almost always intuitive or inherente to each partisan of a determined
timbre, an outline of personal espiritualidad could be deduced. Each preference
supposes a divergent direction, leading to opposed purposes diametrically. During the
Greek civilization, the preferences oscillated between the sound of the cord pressed with
the fingers and the one that was produced by means of plectro. PLUTARCO refers in
their Apothegmi Laconiciâ that in certain occasion was punished a citarista to have
pressed the cords with the fingers and not with the prong during the celebration of a
ritual ceremony in a temple of Esparta. Without embargo, the cords pressed with the
fingers - a sound rather more delicate and pleasant adds to PLUTARCO producen.

ATHENIAN, 300 years A. C., speaking of EPIGONO says: he was one of the great
teachers of music; ace prudent with the fingers pressed, without plectra.
ANACREONTE and ARISTOTLE also considered superior the sound of the cords
pressed with the fingers (To see Precursors of the violin family. Kathleen
SCHLESINGER, P. 56.). Some applied the pulsation procedure to the character of
music that they interpreted. In Elegia de TRIBULO, poet of first century A. C. (Book
III), it says to you: and accompanying in the thick partition wall and pulsation to him
the cords with plectro by ivory sang one cheers melodÃa with well stamped sonorous
voice and; but later, sweetly pressing the cords with the fingers, it sang these sad words.
VIRGILIO in short, says in the Eneida (Book I SAW, v. 647) There they dance also in
circles, intoned a festive song; the Traciano bard with his long and floating adornments,
accompanies the rythmical song with his thick partition wall by seven cords pressing
either with the fingers, or with plectro of ivory.
 The preferences between the stringed instruments in the Average Age inclined
advantageously in favor of which they were touched with the fingers or the arc.
The Arcipreste de Hita described as chillones or gritadores the stringed instruments of
rough loudness water and. FUENLLANA, in their Orphenica Lyra, when speaking of
redobles1, says: Hurting with the nails it is imperfection What they redouble with the
nail they will find facility in which they will make but nonperfection. Soon it adds: It
has great excellence hurting the cords with blow without touch nail nor another way of
invention, because in single finger, as of alive thing the true spirit consists, who hurting
the cord usually occurs to him. Vincenzo GALILEI, talking about in his Dialogue to
the espineta, the virginal and other metallic stringed instruments, says that they offend
the ear greatly; not only for being its cords of such condition, but by the hard object, as
it is the prong, whereupon put in vibration. It frankly prefers the instruments with cords
of gut with are laud, the guitar or the viola, whose loudness is produced by the direct
bonding of the fingers or the arc (Sees Giuseppe BRANZOLI: Ricerche sullo studio of
liuto. Delle corde metalliche. Rome 1889. P. 53.)

In century XVII, time in which the favor by the handle instruments and pressed cords
marked its esplendoroso apogee, the English Thomas CHURNS, in summary in his
valuable treaty The Music's Monument the technique that locks up the art of its
illustrious predecessors John and Robert ROSSETER, MORLEY, CAVENDISH,
COOPER, MAYNARD (Them Luthistes. Lionel of LAURENCE. Paris. 1929.) and
others, as well as the one of own production, it nobly defended the cause of the good
sound with these words: rtase that the cords will not have to be attacked with the nails,
since some do, trying that this one is the best way to press; I do not create it thus,
because of which the nail, cannot obtain from laud a as pure sound as the one that can
produce the soft and fleshy part of the extremity of the finger.

I confess that accompanied from other instruments enough good can be, since the main
quality of laud that is the smoothness. it is lost in the set; but single, never I have been
able to obtain a so satisfactory result of the nails as of the yolks of the fingers. The
treaties of guitar appeared until aims of century XVIII do not stop to give explanations
nor express preferences on the loudness; they leave the sense of the timbre to the free
will of the executant. To only start off of the moment at which the guitar appears
mounted with six simple cords, it is when the two tendencies are pronounced
categorically. AGUADO, GIULIANI, CARULLI and others, used and recommended
the nail, while SOR, CARCASSI, MESSONIER and others also, prohibited it. How to
know the cause of their preferentes. Could simply be sufficient justification attributing
them to the aesthetic sense of each teacher? Would be in them some force of atavism?
AGUADO and SOR and is most explicit on the matter. In no and the biographical
commentaries of SOR, consist that it had never pressed with nails. In its Method - in
which the analyzed and reasoned fundamental theories of their technique are explained
clearly –
 it declares that to imitate the nasal loudness of the Oboe, very it not only attacks the
cord about the bridge , but that bends the fingers and only uses the little nail that it has
to attack it: It is the only case - it adds - in which I have believed to be able to serve to
me as them without disadvantage. I have never been able to support a guitarist who
touched with nails. It respects the AGUADO pulsation solely of, in grace to its shining
execution: Precise Era that the AGUADO technique of had the excellent qualities that it
has - says SOR to be able to pardon the use to him of the nails.
Of Course, Myself would had renounced to them if he wouldn’t had reached so many
agility, besides is to late to change those fingers adapted to its form of life. So soon it
heard AGUADO some of my works studied them, requesting advice to me on its
interpretation; but, too young then I to allow me the right to correct a teacher of its
celebrity, specially for my music, conceived in a espiritualidad different from that was
inspired the guitarists generally of then. To the end of a few years we returned to be and
it confessed to me personally that, if went to recommence, it would touch without nails.
This confession does not agree, nevertheless, with the declarations that AGUADO year
1843 inserts in the last edition of its Method appeared in Madrid, that is, four years after
the SOR death. In him it says: I always had used of them (the nails) in all the fingers of
which I use to press; but, as soon as I listened to my friend SOR, I was decided not to
use it in the thumb. And I am very contented of it to have done, because the pulsation of
the yolk of this finger, when it does not press parallelly to the cord, produces energetic
and pleasing sounds that are what agrees to the part of the low one that regularly is
executed in the pigrim's staffs; in the other fingers I conserve them.

As it is point of the greater interest, I hope that, by my long practice it will be at least
allowed to give my opinion frankly me. consider preferable to touch with nail, to
remove from the cords of the guitar a sound that is not resembled the one of any other
instrument. To my to understand the guitar has a particular character; she is sweet,
harmonious, melancholic; some times it gets to be majestic, although it does not admit
the grandiosidad of the ARPA nor of the piano; but however it offers very delicate
thanks and their sounds are susceptible of such modifications and combinations, that
they make it seem a mysterious instrument, lending itself very well to the song and the
expression
. To produce these effects I prefer to touch with nails; because, used well, the sound that
is is clean, metallic and sweet; but it is necessary to understand that with single them the
cords are not pressed, because there is no doubt that then the sound would be little
pleasant. The cord with the yolk by the part of her is touched firstly who falls towards
the thumb ; having finger somewhat tended (bent like when it is touched with the yolk)
and immediately the cord by the nail does not slide. These nails do not have to be of
very hard quality; they are had to cut so that they form an oval figure and they have to
excel little of the surface of the yolk, because being very long they obstruct l agility,
because the cord in leaving the nail takes long time and also there is the disadvantage of
offering less security in the pulsation; with them the volatas and with much clarity are
executed very quickly.
 The AGUADO musical education of had not been the same one that the one of SOR.
The one of this one it came from a severely austere atmosphere: the one of the Escolania
de Monteserrat, where besides to learn solfeo, harmony and counterpoint, it studied
violoncelo and it took part from neatly executed the vocal ensembles of sagrada music,
since it has been always fame in that Monastery, without by all it it left its guitar. The
father Martin who was Partner during the five years that SOR happened in the
Monastery, tells the prodigies that did in its guitar, leaving admired to the other
companions and to whatever they heard to him. When leaving the Monastery, studied in
Barcelona the song and the instrumentation and released with success in the theater
Santa Cruz its opera Telemaco. Towards 1803, being official of the army she concurred
to a concert organized in Malaga by Mr. QUIPATRI, consul of Austria in that city, and
left astonished to whichever musicians and other people heard to him, executing
shiningly in the contrabass their Subject with Variations. (Biographical Dictionary of
Events of Spanish musicians.

Balthasar SALDONI.) Of AGUADO, says to LUIS BALLESTEROS to us in his

biographical Dictionary Matritense that: From the first years it showed excellent
dispositions for the study, beginning the eight years to study Latin Grammar,
Philosophy and French and made great advances in just a short time; later to
Paleography, having to its untiring assiduity the title of Palografo of the Council of
Castile.
By way of distraction and recreation it tried to acquire the first rudimentos of the guitar
and it received from Fray Miguel GARCIA, monk in the convent of San Basilio, that
made him include/understand the resources and party that could remove from this
instrument. He himself SOR says us of her admirable colleague, who their teachers
touched with nails in a period in which the tendency was to execute speed passages to
boast of great dominion and to dazzle to the public; they did not include/understand
another music that the one that was touched in the guitar and called touched to the
quartet of cords, music church. Luckyly its own personal sense, when orienting itself
freely, impelled to him towards a superior high musicality.

Nevertheless, as much their works of concert as their Method accuse one more a
compenetrated espirituality with the brilliance of technique that with the depth of
emotion and elevation of concept. Being SOR and AGUADO two great guitarists, the
superiority of first mainly must to the musical and artistic aspect of its work. To the
classic idealidad of their Sonatas, Fantasies, Studies and Minuetos, are suitable the
loudness without nails, more identified with the camera music. From the summit of her
knowledge and experience, in the middle of an expanded horizon, SOR includes almost
all the dominions of music. AGUADO, captive of her guitar, stranger vibrates encerado
in the small world of her sonorous box, other people's to all musical expression.
The SOR life was a anxious and intense life; its character, anxious and impetuous; its
sensitivity, intensely vibrant; its temperament, ardent, disordered and fighter. It traveled
much and it knew so much the intoxicating pleasure the great triumphs in art, love and
fortune, as the pain the failure, the forgetfulness and the poverty. It died to the 61 years,
without fortune and victim of a cruel disease, whose causes attribute some, to its wild
passions. The AGUADO existence of was however calm, affective and laborious. Their
natural inclination to the study, its fine musical sensitivity and the spirit of order and
continuity in their ideas, did of him admirable pedagogo that we know.
The death of its mother - of that never was had separated - altered La Paz of its
provincial life, and was transferred to Paris, where their personal talent of artist and its
dowries knew to conquer the admiration of the greatest artists and the effect of all
whatever treated to him. When returning from this trip to Spain the 12 of April of 1838,
the diligence in which traveled, when arriving at Ariza (Aragon), were assaulted by a
game of carlistas pertaining to the army of Goatherd; which, after ransacking to him,
lead to him to mounts with their fellow travellers and they notified the death sentence to
him, that single could be revoked, bringing to readiness certain amount of money. The
same one spurts threatened the other travellers; it was nevertheless first who reached the
freedom without being put under these conditions that prevailed for their rescue; then
their venerable old age and amiable treatment managed to soften the heart of those to
those who as much it had hardened the war. Through some letters that we have read
directed to its Monsieur collaborator Of FOSSA, it can be included/understood all the
kindness of its character and the amount of love and intelligence that spilled in its work.

Could have the opposite preferences of sound in these artists atavism reasons? Between
the devotee ones of the guitar that has existed and exists in cities like Vienna, Berlin,
Moscow, London, Copenhagen and others, the greater part presses (without perhaps
realizing), with the yolk; while in others, they touch generally with nails. Familiarized
all with their customary procedure, the norms follow restlessness nor preferences that
the habit establishes. We could admit so, that the sense of the sonority had been
influence by SOR in Cataluña culture; and in AGUADO according to the custom of
Castile, possibly opposed. It seems improbable to us for being artists in whose criterion
and eagerness summary nobly to the most disinterested spirit of intelligent generosity
and sincere love the true art.

Influence gives AGUADO school of, ARCAS and TÃRREGA. - The sound without
nails. - Difference between the TARREGA procedure and the one of its predecessors.
Artistic evolution of TÃRREGA and deduction of its preferences. To start off of the
time at which so high relief had these prominent figures, the AGUADO Method of
served as guide all the later guitarists and has contributed effectively to that this sense of
loudness prevailed, until the case of TÃRREGA at the beginning of 1900. TÃRREGA
had not always touched without nails.
 The guitarists who he knew, even ARCAS, touched with the nails. It touched like them,
without at the outset suspecting the possibility a loudness better. In this period of youth,
it was when it made the artistic campaigns that gave fame him. But his anxious and
investigating spirit had to hit a day the troublesome dilemma of the sound. That day, not
without titubeos doubts nor, could be decided, after several attempts, to will clear of the
means that encumbraron it, to submerge suddenly in the abysses of the uncertain thing,
in looks for of better matter whereupon to purify its art. It had to deprive itself during
one long season to touch in public and God knows if with it it created to his precarious
situation, distressing difficulties that to win. It had to work to all hours to dominate the
resistance of a new technique in which it had to constitute disciple and teacher
simultaneously.
When these obstacles were overcome to the aim, those that we heard to TÃRREGA in
its last times we will never forget the so pure sensation art that gave its guitar. In order
to obtain the sound without nails that TÃRREGA obtained, it is not enough to cut the
nails to skin head of cattle; it is necessary to form the sound; that is to say, to develop in
the yolk of the fingers a certain balance of tact, elasticity and resistance that only can
obtain with a constant practice and attention. Doubtlessly the sound of SOR without
nails had to be different from which TÃRREGA obtained, as it also had to be the one of
AGUADO, with nails, to the one of TÃRREGA before modifying their pulsation.
TÃRREGA that did not use nail none attacked generally the cord in perpendicular
direction of the same one, resting, after the impulsion, on the immediate cord. This
procedure that a ma¡ximum of amplitude, intensity gives and purity of sound in regard
to the width, smoothness and firmness of the body that moves it were not used by SOR,
AGUADO nor another one of its contemporaries; this can be deduced of its writings
and is necessary to suppose that, to have been thus, they had mentioned it specifically in
his treated respect. TÃRREGA was influenced in his first times by a time of badly
pleasure.

Their programs were integrated most of like those of the concertistas of other
instruments at their time, with works in which the musicalidad served only as pretext
the most audacious shows of virtuosity. Happily also as the AGUADO case of, its
temperament, its talent and its good taste, impelled it towards more polished horizons.
Its evolution means a musicalidad advance: MOZART, HAYDN and BEETHOVEN get
passionate to him and absorb primeo; CHOPIN, MENDELSSHON and SCHUMANN
later; compenetrado to the aim with the espiritualidad of BACH, it not only manages the
miracle to interpret on the six simple cords the works of this author that better adapt to
the nature of the instrument (among them the Fuge of the First Sonata for single violin)
but that their same production demonstrates, from then, a marked sense of aspiration
towards pure music. This purismo had to be reflected unavoidably in the sound. The
cords pressed without nails offered the dreamed loudness to him; a pure, immaterial and
austere timbre. With the work it obtained a perfect unit between notes pressed by any
finger and in any cord. Dominated therefore the matter,was discovering new timbres
and sutilizas of execution that gave to their interpretations greater relief and persuasivo
enchantment.
The preference that TÃRREGA granted to the loudness without nails founds on which
being these died matter, they isolate the contact of the sensitivity of the artist with the
cord. The guitar pressed without the nails comes to be like an prolongation of our own
sensitivity and for an essentially touching temperament like he was the one of
TÃRREGA, this reason seems to us irrefutable. It does not have to attribute the smaller
influence of imitative or conventional sense to the change of pulsation adopted by
TÃRREGA; it was a premeditaded resolution long and progressively defined to traverse
of a series of successive overcomings, born of its anxiety of perfection.

Causes of prevent the right appreciation of the sound. Factors that take part in the
formation of the criterion. Subjective classification of the sound. The lack of official
protection to that the guitar in almost all the countries has been relegated almost always,
has caused that in its technique governed the most deplorable anarchy irremediably. For
any instrument of which in each conservatory a method is taught, existed or appropriate
system that the professor adopts and by as each student it obtains in proportional result
to its personal faculties.
If some discrepancy and establishes sometimes between different professors on
technical particularitities from a same instrument, is rare that it never gets to alter itself
by such disensión, the general result of the studies. The education of the guitar is
exerted most of the times by teachers who studied as they could, freely following
methods of defective schools or indications of unexpected teachers. Positions to teach,
teach as well honestly what they know.
The disciple who feels perfection avidity finds with insurmountable obstacles; the
method of modern technology able to satisfy its aspirations does not exist and the few
teachers who could help him are not always accessible.
All sentence to the nascent one to resign themselves and completely without
information to look for the way that better can guide traverse of so many stumbling
blocks and difficulties. And he is natural, which a criterion formed under these
circumstances is susceptible to ignore not only the importance of a difference in the
loudness, but the same difference. Our sense is educated and defining themselves
according to the atmosphere that surrounds to us almost always inducing to us to dissent
of everything what n or agrees with him.
Only the chosen ones manage to live alert on their own criterion trying that their
convictions do not prevent them to include/understand trying that are to them new and
the right opinions of the others. The questions of aesthetic are sanctioned better
sometimes through that anonymous intelligence of the senses, that under the balanced
examination of our experienced reason. For that reason, when trying to form an opinion
on the sound - nonexistent without our facility to hear - it is not possible to establish
another personal classification, in agreement with the auditory sense that it acts directly
on our spirit.
Physical character of the sound. The classification in the instruments and the
procedures. The sound of the cord attacked with the nails. The sound of the cords
pressed with the yolks. Superiority of the loudness without the nails. Intensity, height
and stamp are the acoustic particularitities of the sound. Whenever two or more notes of
the same intensity and height produce in our ear a different sensation, they will be of
different timbre. This difference that can vary to the infinite, is, within the comparative ,
susceptible sense of classification. Proof of it is that the category of certain instruments
of a same type is founded on the conditions of its loudness. What avalora mainly the
instruments of the creators of Cremona on the other instruments of arc - as it happens
with the PAGES guitars , TORRES and some other - is not only the power but the
beauty of its sounds. Equal cords, simultaneously placed in guitars different and
pulsations from the air by a same hand in a same point of the cord, will produce in each
instrument a different loudness.

The sound that seems better to us will be produced surely by the guitar that better
conditions of loudness it will have; therefore we will classify to that guitar of better than
the others. However; a same instrument in equality of conditions the same does not
sound in different hands executants. Violoncelo of CASALS, the violin of KREISLER
or a piano of selected mark, does not produce the same quality of sound, treated by
different hands. Soon a superior category of sonorous quality in a same instrument
exists that is in the particular procedure of each artist.

The sound of the cord depends: 1ª of the way to attack it; 2ª of the point where is
attacked it and 3ª of its diameter, tension and elasticity. Being the nail a hard body of
surface, diverse thickness and consistency, gives by its impulsion to the cord a brilliance
of penetrating, spontaneous timbre and a little little metalist although of amplitude. The
sound without the nails produced by the impulsion of a soft, subtly sensible body and of
better thickness and width, produces a timbre different from greater volume,
smoothness and purity. The diferents ways to touch the string is the quantity and the
intensity of the superior harmonics that belongs to fundamental sound, so much strong
and weak as vibration movement could be.
When pressing a cord, the finger separates it of rest supposition from an end to the other
of its length before leaving it. A discontinuity only takes place in the opening more or
less expanded of the angle that offers the precise site where it has been impelled by the
finger.
This angle is acute if the cord is attacked with the nail that when it is attacked with the
yolk of the finger. In the first case a more penetrating sound is obtained, accompanied
by a great amount of elevated overtones, that tend to metalize their timbre. In the
second, the vibrations are less acute, let perceive these overtones and the timbre is less
shining, smoother and more sonorous.
 Although in both sound fundamental is more intense than the one of this sounds
auxiliary, as the body becomes hardened that attacks them, accentuate these in damage
of the fundamental sound. Prove to attack the cord with a hard object, nail or prong.,
and will be observed that the sound that is is acute and metalist; paying the necessary
attention of ear, an amount of notes elevated on the main sound will be distinguished,
If the same cord with the yolk of the finger is pressed, those notes stop and the sound is
less brilliant, smoother and ampler.
Of there the sense of vaciedad of the sound with the nail (enemy of the fundamental
and protective sound of the auxiliary sounds), in opposition to the full and pure sound of
the loudness produced by the yolk of the finger, totally favorable to that one in damage
of the others.
The change of timbre of a same cord under he himself system of pulsation also is
related to the theory of the natural overtones. The purest sound, gives the pulsation it in
half of the cord, where the node of its first overtone forms and is as much more
emptiness and gangoso at the most it separates of this point towards his extremities.
The material of the cords and its diameter also exert their influence in the timbre. The
very tense cords do not give very high overtones because of the alternative flexion in
small divisions of their length overall.
The gut cords are lighter and of elasticity less perfect than the metal cords covered; for
that reason the loudness of those is of less duration than the one of these last ones on
everything in the natural overtones and the acute auxiliary sounds. (The Physiologique
of the Musique H.HELMHOTZ, translation of M Is seen . C. Guerolt, pag 105-113)

If we consider the sense that has prevailed for the classification of categories in the
same-type instruments and for sonoridades produced on a same instrument, we will
incline, evidently, with preference in favor of the sound without the nails, next to the
pure sound of the ARPA or the piano, and not in favor of the sound with the nail, that
does to its way, a noble praise of the prong. Between a lute of simple cord and a guitar
pressed with the nails, little would reduce, in certain passages of moved music, in favor
of this one. And there is no doubt that, in the suplantación of the harpsichord by the
piano, it influenced much in the quality of the sound obtained by the plush hammer.

Translating reviewed by Hugo Alcayaga Ramírez