Hudleston’s Harmonic Sounds: An Evaluation of Josiah Hudleston’s 1841 Treatise on Guitar Harmonics
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Redmond O'Toole, 'Hudleston’s Harmonic Sounds: An Evaluation of Josiah Hudleston’s 1841 Treatise on Guitar Harmonics'Download Item:
Abstract:
Josiah Andrew Hudleston (1799-1865) was a forgotten figure in the history of guitar
until the early 1990s when his collection of guitar music was re-discovered in the
basement of the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. His collection is now one
of the largest in the world and holds over one thousand prints and over eight hundred
manuscripts. Hudleston was part of a family of civil servants working for the East
India Company. He spent the majority of his adult life living in Madras where he
followed a steady career path, becoming the Chief Tax Collector in Madras in 1841.
He returned to his native England in 1855 before retiring to Killiney, Dublin, a year
later. Shortly after his death in 1865, his widow left his collection of guitar music,
methods and theory books to the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. The
collection is like no other due to the fact that Hudleston collected the work of his
contemporaries and it contains works by all of the main guitarist-composers of the
period. In addition there are also numerous compositions from Hudleston himself as
well as his ‘Treatise of Harmonic Sounds’.
No other method or publication has gone into such detail on the subject of harmonics
either before or since. This document gives us a new insight into nineteenth-century
guitar technique that will be a worthy asset to the study of authentic guitar
performance. The treatise is unpublished and has to date only been viewed by a
handful of people. In this dissertation Hudleston’s treatise will be examined and
compared to the advice of his contemporaries with comment on the originality of his
ideas. In response to this thesis twenty-first-century performers may have to reevaluate
their execution of harmonics in the romantic guitar repertoire.
Author: O'Toole, Redmond
Advisor:
Neary, DeniseType of material:
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