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Søffren Degen
Inspired by Hans Kockelmans I'm adding this photo of the danish guitarist and photografer Søffren Degen. He became a close freind with his teacher, Napoleon Coste and stayed in France for a long period. Returning to Denmark the popularity of the guitar had declined and he had to make a living in some other way and thus started as one of the first photografers in DK
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Comment by Lars Hedelius-Strikkertsen on April 8, 2011 at 23:39
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Its ok. Nothing nasty about it. It simply says that the piece is a celebration/festive march on the occasion of 4. of december 1876. What happened that day I dont know, it could be something in Denmark. So now You know some danish, next thing is the pronunciation ( not sure of the spelling) ;-)
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Comment by Scot Tremblay on April 8, 2011 at 23:19
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No, I don't know what it says but something tells me I'd better be careful...better not to ask...;)
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Good point regarding the left hand thumb damping the floating strings. I know a guy that actually plays a 7 string guitar just like the one on the picture, maybe he has an opinion on the subject.
I can see that you, Scot, has copy/pasted the title of the piece. It's in danish. Do You know what it says :-)
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Basically the only music by Degen that I've seen (actually, I've seen a couple others) is the piece in the Boije collection "Festmarsch med anledning af 4 December 1876". It's a pretty rough copy that needs to be reconstructed. Might make an interesting rainy afternoon project...
Another use for the left hand thumb (since the topic has been introduced here as well as in our discussion on the other thread) is to damp the floating bass string on multi string guitars, where needed. It works better on the 7 string than on 8 or more strings for a couple reasons that I have found. One is that the 7th string is usually closer to the fingerboard on 7 string guitars (for some reason, I'm not sure) than 8 and up string guitars and related to that is that the more strings the further they get away from the fingerboard as the notes decend...after 8 strings damping with the left hand thumb gets impossible, at least for me.
Seeing this photo and Hans pointing out Degens thumb peeking over the neck reminded me of this technique. He's got his thumb poised ready to pop up and damp the 7th string, it looks like to me.
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I'm sorry too for not making my self clear :-) I did read it like you meant Degen. What I meant was, if Degen was a pupil of Coste dont You think that Coste would have advise Degen not to use the thumb. I dont mind using my thumb, I'm actually fond of doing it. But I think it depend of the shape of ones thumb.
Regarding Degens music, the danish royal library has some handwritten manuscripts of him. Some pieces for guitar and cello and some soloworks. I dont find his soloworks that good but the music with cello is ok. Here's the link if you dont have the site. https://rex.kb.dk/F/-?func=file&file_name=find-b&local_base... search for Degen
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I dont know when the picture was taken. But judging by his clothes it looks to me somewhere after 1860's. Did Coste use his left hand thumb, I dont recall seeing it anywhere, and beeing a pupil of Sor that didnt use his thumb it's more likely to think that Coste didnt use his thumb.
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looks like 7 to me. like the one Coste played I think
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Comment by Rob MacKillop on April 8, 2011 at 10:48
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7 or 8 strings?
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