The Guitars of Steve Kahn

Santos Hernández was born in Madrid. According to Rene Vannes' Dictionnaire Universel des Luthiers, he was the son of a tinsmith, who hoped that he would enter that trade. At the age of 10 he spent two years as an apprentice making gold wire (or, by some accounts, in a shop selling ceremonial dress for the Catholic liturgy) before becoming an apprentice with a guitarrero called Viudes, part of a well-known Madrid instrument-making family. He worked for several other makers, becoming an accomplished craftsman, joining Manuel Ram’rez in the 1890s, after army service. He was to become Ramírez's chief craftsman, staying with him for 20 years or more.

In 1912, Santos Hernández won his place in the history of the classical guitar when Ramírez gave an instrument Hernández had built to a young man called Andrés Segovia, who was to play it for the next 25 years. Years later, Hernández decided he wanted credit for his creation. While he was repairing the instrument he tried to persuade Segovia to allow him to remove the Ramírez label and replace it with one of his own. Segovia refused, but said he could sign over the Ramírez label: “Reparada por Santos Hernández [Repaired by Santos Hernández]''. Hern‡ndez did not do this immediately, but in 1922 he inserted his own label and added that inscription.

Ramírez died in 1916, and for a while Hernández (and Domingo Esteso) built guitars for his widow to sell under a “Viuda de Manuel Ramírez” label, as was the custom. Several of these exist, with the initials SH or DE in the corner of the label. At the same time he established his own premises, first at Place Nicholas Salmeron and then, from 1921, at Aduana 27.

There he set about building on his reputation, especially in the flamenco community. His relationship with Segovia, however, had become rather difficult. Visiting Madrid in the mid-1920s, Segovia invited Hernández to admire a new instrument he had just had made in Switzerland. It proved to be an exact copy of the Hernández guitar he had been given in 1912. But Hernández was more insulted by Segovia's lack of interest in the new instrument he had been building for him. He decided to keep it himself. Called La Indita, “the unpublished”, it remained in the possession of Santos Hernández's widow until sold for one million pesetas in the late 1970s.

Hernández guitars were built with high quality materials for a discerning clientele, including flamenco artists such as Ramon Montoya and Niño Ricardo and concert artists such as Regino Sainz de la Maza (1896-1981), dedicatee and first performer of the Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez. The concert guitars are firmly within the Torres tradition, externally. Inside they often use a downward sloping harmonic bar beneath the soundhole to stiffen the treble side of the soundboard. Hernández's seven fan-struts also tend to run more parallel to the grain of the soundboard than do those of Torres. The object was to improve the guitar's treble response.

The flamenco guitars were designed for strong attack and power, using the standard combination of spruce top and cypress body. Internally, the lower harmonic bar was normally placed straight across the body in traditional fashion rather than being sloped. Hernández shop became a meeting place for the flamenco players of his day, it was sometimes called “the Parnassus of the guitar”.

Despite that, Hernández was a secretive individual who left neither pupils nor heirs. It is said that at any one time he employed only a boy to sweep up. As soon as the boy arrived at an age to show interest in making guitars he was dismissed. When Santos died, in 1943, his widow took over the shop, employing Marcelo Barbero (1904-1956), who worked for Jose Ramírez II, to finish the uncompleted guitars and do repairs. He subsequently became a celebrated maker in his own right. Later he took on Arcángel Fernández as an apprentice, ensuring that some of Hernández's knowledge was passed on to subsequent generations of builders.

Domingo Esteso was born in San Clemente de Cuenca, east of Madrid, in 1882. He joined Manuel Ramírez in the 1890s, staying with him until his death, and then establishing premises of his own at Calle Gravina from 1917. Originally he produced guitars for Ramírez's widow, who in turn supplied them to Romero y Fernández of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Esteso's concert guitars have no great innovations, but they use high quality materials and have a softer more mellow tone than those of Hernández. The same characteristic marks his flamenco guitars, which were highly rated by aficionados during his life and have been sought after by collectors ever since. After the death of Domingo Esteso in 1937, his premises were taken over by his three nephews, Faustino, Julian and Mariano Conde, who operated for a while as Viuda y Sobrinos de Domingo Esteso [widow and nephews of Domingo Esteso]. Since the death of Esteso's widow in the 1960s they have traded as Conde Hermanos [Conde brothers] and today produce a range of factory guitars.

John Moorish