The Guitar’s Apostle: Imaginaries and Narratives Surrounding Andrés Segovia’s Religious Redemption of the Classical Guitar

Abstract

ABSTRACT Media and scholarly publications often depict Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia as an apostle who redeemed the classical guitar from its relegation to the periphery of art music. Such ideas should be challenge by arguing that Segovia put a myth into circulation that has significantly distorted dominant historiographies of the guitar until today. Discussions about the roots and essence of the Spanish nation, the emergence of sound-reproduction technologies, and Segovia’s mediation helped to help establish a narrative that, through a religious rhetoric, positioned his artistic debut as a breaking point in the history of the classical guitar.