"It is fascinating, if sometimes frustrating, but always instructive, to play an instrument from the period of the composition. One discovers a deeper instrumental value - for example the wealth of colour - and one tries to use it to the optimum. One comes up against imperfections - the playability of the instrument or its capacity to project the sound - and one searches for new possibilities of overcoming them. In this way there develops a new approach to the music. It is clear that the instruments were designed to be very functional. A different instrument creates a different world. In short, with an historical instrument one feels like a time-traveller."

Raphaella Smits

• about the maker
• about this guitar
• about playing this guitar

About François Roudhloff

This instrument is typical of the work of the French builder Fran�ois Roudhloff from about 1830. The signature stamp F. Roudhloff-Mauchant refers to the time he shared his Paris workshop with the violin/guitar builder Nicolas Mauchant. Possibly the two were related. Marriage between the members of individual instrument-making families, and the resulting double names, were commonplace in 18th and 19th century Lorraine.
Other members who worked in the atelier were the brothers Christian and Dominique. The "Roudhloff Brothers" in London should also be mentioned.

About the Roudhloff 6-string guitar

Stylistically most of the Roudhloff guitars can be clearly distinguished from the elegant ivory and mother-of-pearl decorated instruments of his Parisian colleagues. Inlays round the edge and double-ringed roses are of a simple elegance and a plain aesthetic.

The sound of F. Roudhloff's instruments is impressive with a dark velvet but very powerful tone of unusual substance. I think F. Roudhloff as a guitar maker should absolutely be rated alongside his famous colleagues such as Stauffer, Panormo and Lacote.

This instrument was restored in my atelier in 2002. Bernhard Kresse

About why this guitar for recording Giuliani & Mertz

"For the recording of my latest Mertz-Giuliani album I choose to work with two instruments: the 7-string Mirecourt and the 6-string Roudhloff.
The sounds which the Roudhloff guitar offers to the Haydnesque Giuliani Sonata or the more aggressive Tarantella of Mertz, with the typically compact bass sound and great contrasts, are difficult to achieve on the Mirecourt instrument of about 1827." Raphaella Smits