Guitar societies have often played a significant role in laying the groundwork for historical and biographical research, because they so often publish news of their activities—the concerts and festivals they sponsor, etc.—in newsletters and magazines. Nowadays they also frequently maintain Web sites, where one can read about which guitarists are performing or have performed where, what they played, and so forth.

Today there are dozens of serious classical guitar societies doing the important work of concert/festival sponsorship and reportage. Most of them are city-based and well represented online. One of the best international indexes to the various guitar societies' home pages on the Internet is linked to the GFA Web site, under "Membership" —>Find a Guitar Society, which takes you to the classicalguitar.org list of guitar societies. It is organized by country or by state/province, then by city.

Magazines and journals aimed specifically at furthering interest in the guitar have been in existence since the 1830s. The first, The Giulianiad (1833-35), was named in honor of Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829) and published by such London-based guitar personalities as Ferdinand Pelzer and Felix Horetzky. Few copies of that work are known to exist; one is at the British Library, another at the Guildhall School in London.

A good example of how periodicals can serve as source material for the history of the guitar is found in Jeffrey Noonan's doctoral thesis, "The Guitar in America as Reflected in Topical Periodicals, 1882-1933" (Washington Univ., 2004). Among its indexes is "Guitar music published in the BMG periodicals," pp. 639-701.

With the online access to cataloging information about guitar magazines that is available today, it has become easy to generate a very large checklist of periodicals devoted to the guitar. For example, one can access the advanced search page of WorldCat online, do a Subject search of "guitar--periodicals," and retrieve about 200 samples of online cataloging of guitar periodicals done by the largest network of libraries in the world, OCLC—surely a good starting point. The list of more or less serious classic guitar magazines that appears below, based largely on OCLC records. Thanks also to Marco Bazzotti and his colleagues for Italian periodical coverage given at the site justclassicalguitar.com.) These references may be of use especially to those researching the social history of the guitar, or curious about its popularity. But please remember, when dealing with guitar magazines, that:

1. Most of them have been personality-driven rather than sponsored by a society. They have rarely outlasted their founding editors, whose personal preferences are usually evident in the tone of the periodical. A delightful example of such a magazine, now seemingly impossible to locate as a complete run in any library, is the once widely-read Guitar News, edited by Wilfrid Appleby (Cheltenham, UK, 1951-ca.1978?). A more idiosyncratic example would be Chelys (1976-79), edited by Walter Spalding.
2. Only one guitar periodical so far lays claim to being refereed: Guitar Forum (2001-); all the rest have (or have had) unique editors as gatekeepers.
3. Most guitar magazines, starting with The Giulianiad, have included pieces of guitar music (notation) along with articles and news. Dorman Smith and Laurie Eagleson undertook to index many of the pieces hidden away in these journals with their publication, Guitar and lute music in periodicals: an index (Berkeley, CA: Fallen Leaf Press, 1990)—a work long out of print but still useful for the older periodicals.
4. The Internet appears to be rapidly surpassing printed periodicals as the everyday "go to" place for news, and at times even for substantive historical studies. See the Guitar Forums & Discussion Groups Online page for an orientation to serious guitar-research-related developments on the world-wide Web.

Titles are listed in chronological order by the date of the first issue. The guitar magazines still being published today are coded in blue below.

Visitors are invited to send suggestions for additions and corrections to Thomas F. Heck.

Back to Archives