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The Lacôte Harp Guitars by Gregg Miner Historians, Collectors and Players of "classical" and "early romantic" guitar will undoubtedly be nonplussed by my above title. Pierre René Lacote, the renowned Parisian guitarmaker certainly never made "harp guitars," did he? Well, it's all a matter of semantics and perspective. Those familiar with my Harp Guitar Organology discussion will recall that the "harp-guitar" term wasn't applied to instruments with floating sub-bass strings until the 1890s in America. In Lacote's time, multi-course (multi-string) or extended range guitars were most often simply called "X-string guitars" ("X" being either 7, 8, 9 or 10). Lacote's instruments were specifically named the heptacorde ("7-string") and décacorde ("ten-string"). I have no problem with Early Romantic guitar historians continuing to refer to the Lacote floating dropped-D string instruments below as "7-string guitars" (or as a "heptacorde"). However, while this is historically accurate, the term allows for no distinction between this simplest of harp guitars and other standard, fully-fretted-across-the-neck 7-string guitars - ergo my choice (and insistence) on referring to them today as 7-course or 10-course harp guitars. While the majority of Lacote instruments are 6-string guitars, a significant number of extended range versions were made. Of the surviving instruments I have been able to locate photos of (below), there are five heptacordes (one earlier version, and later instruments with a more "modern" shape), four décacordes, and one remarkable 9-course specimen. Early guitar dealers Daniel Sinier and Françoise de Ridder note that the fascinating décacorde was made in three different configurations: the original 5 strings on the fingerboard and 5 sub-basses (1st row below, photos 1, 2 & 4), but also 6 strings on the fingerboard and 4 out, and 7 strings on the fingerboard and 3 out. The latter appears in photo 5 and will be discussed in detail on our Featured Harp Guitar of the Month. |
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| decacorde (10-course), c.1826 | decacorde, 182-? | 9-course, 1827 | decacorde, 1830 | decacorde, c.1830 |
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| c.1850 | 1850 | 1855 | 1855 |
| I've yet to find a thorough and detailed history on Lacote, especially concerning his harp guitars. The most up-to-date account appears to be that of Bruno Marlat, in his liner notes to the 2005 Coste CD by Brigitte Zaczek. Exact dates are difficult to uncover, and who specifically came up with these multi-string concepts has yet to be proven (or known to me). |
| By some accounts, Napoléon Coste (1806-1883), shown here
with two different 7-string specimens, was responsible for this
instrument with the single, floating D string. Bruno Marlat
provides evidence that Coste himself dubbed the instrument the "heptacorde,"
and gives 1835 as the first confirmed date of Coste's use of the
instrument (though suspects it was in use earlier).
Elsewhere (Phillip Bone: The Guitar and Mandolin), Fernando Sor is said to have requested the 7th string, though I have yet to find any mention of Sor playing a 7-string at any time in his career. Sor, along with famed fellow Spaniard Aguado, did work with Lacote on certain other details regarding the guitar's sound, however. |
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Coste, born in France in 1805, moved to Paris in 1830, where he quickly established himself as the leading French virtuoso guitarist. |
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| Two accounts (Bone and Marlat) list Ferdinando Carulli as
the instigator of the decacorde, Lacote's 10-course version, patented in
1826. This, of course, predates Coste's arrival in Paris.
Additional (and sometimes contradictory) information is presented at Early Romantic Guitars here. Clearly, there is much to uncover about this remarkable and important luthier! I would dearly love to see a monograph on Lacote's guitars. Besides my obvious fascination with the harp guitars, there are a host of other Lacote innovations - including his custom, enclosed tuners, a double soundboard, and adjustable micro-frets for each string (true!...on a specimen in the Cité de la musique, or see Guitars: From the Renaissance to Rock). Who would like to help!? |
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