Instrument / history / repertoire / practice
Knowledge about the Brahms Guitar is dispersed across interviews, instrument documentation, recordings, scores, dissertations and practice-based research. This page brings those materials together and distinguishes between published scholarship, public documentation and archival sources.
Giacomo Copiello, The Eight-String Brahms Guitar: New Solo Repertoire and Instrumental Identity (PhD thesis, University of Surrey, 2026).
A practice-based study of the instrument’s history, design, identity, repertoire, transcription practice and emerging community. It provides the principal research framework for this archive. [to be published]
Paul Galbraith in conversation with Graham Wade (1994).
An early public account of the instrument’s conception, its relationship with David Rubio and Galbraith’s developing performance practice.
Julia Crowe, “Letter from New York: Paul Galbraith’s Eight-String Brahms Guitar” (2011).
A journalistic profile situating the instrument within Galbraith’s concert practice and public reception.
Redmond O’Toole, J. S. Bach: Sonata No. 2, BWV 1003 (2004) and The 8-String Brahms Guitar (2016).
An arrangement and a public presentation documenting the instrument through performance and repertoire.
Spyros Kaniaris, “La Guitarra Brahms” (2017).
A Spanish-language study of the instrument and its playing practice.
Wilson Burnham, “Building an Eight String ‘Brahms’ Classical Guitar” (2018).
A maker’s account of construction decisions and technical solutions.
Luiz Mantovani (2020) examines editorial strategies for instrumentation issues in Ferdinand Rebay’s Großes Duo in A minor. Katalin Koltai (2023) studies altered guitar space, arrangement and new technology. Stephen Goss (2000) considers transcription and the guitar’s relationship with the musical canon.
Further studies by Adkins, Betancourt, Clark, Fabrikant, Fierens, de Souza and Mermikides provide wider contexts for extended-range guitars, transcription, notation, physical setup and contemporary practice. These works are included when they help explain the musical and technical questions raised by the Brahms Guitar.