The Greatest Guitar Prodigy

Who was the Greatest Guitar Prodigy in the History of the World?

You’re probably thinking Derek Trucks, who was playing with his uncle Butch at the age of nine and was sitting in with Buddy Guy at the age of twelve. Or maybe you’ve heard the stories about Segovia and the great flamenco player Sabicas, both of whom were said to have been able to hear a piece of music played on the guitar and then reproduce it themselves—at the age of five. And to be sure, most great guitarists were prodigies. But with all due respect to Derek, I’m going to have to say that the greatest eight-year-old guitarist of all time was Giulio Regondi.

There’s some uncertainty as to his birth, around 1822, but before he was nine years old he had played at every court in Europe except Madrid, traveling with his father (or possibly his step-father or foster-father), himself a talented guitarist and baritone. Even at the age of seven, little Giulio was getting reviews that leave the word “rave” sounding pallid and limp. No less a genius than Fernando Sor dedicated his Fantaisie “Souvenir d’Amitiè,” Op. 46 (1831) to the young Regondi.

Diminutive Giulio arrived in London in May 1831, and gave his first concert the following month–the same month as Paganini, though Paganini was by now an established wizard of 49 years old. Critics and audiences seem to have been as astounded by the tiny guitarist (who in at least one concert played sitting on a grand piano so he could be seen and heard) as they were by Paganini.

The editor of the most influential music magazine in England described Regondi as:

“A well-proportioned, remarkably fair child, with an animated countenance, whose long flaxen locks curl gracefully over his neck and shoulders, and whose every attitude and action seem elegant by nature…. [W]hen he touches the string and draws forth from it tones that for beauty have hardly ever been exceeded; when his eye shows what his heart feels, it is then that our admiration is at the highest, and we confess the power of the youthful genius. This child is the most pleasing musical prodigy that our time has produced.”

“… To say that he plays with accuracy and neatness is only doing him scanty justice; to correctness in both time and tune he adds a power of expression and a depth of feeling which would be admired in an adult, in him they show a precocity at once amazing and alarming; for how commonly are such geniuses either cut off by the preternatural action of the mind, or mentally exhausted at an age when the intellects of ordinary persons are beginning to arrive at their full strength!”

But hold the presses! Stop the vote count! Another prodigy had also recently arrived in London: Catherina Josepha Peltzer, whose father was a famous guitarist in his own right. She was perhaps a year older than Regondi and she, too, had already played for the crowned heads of Europe. Catherina and Giulio played at least one concert together, with Catherina playing a terz guitar, a small-bodied guitar tuned a third (in German ein Terz) higher than standard tuning.

What happened to these incredible children?

Well, Giulio very rapidly became the first, but by no means the last guitarist we know of who was ripped off by his manager. As his triumphant tour of the U.K. came to an end, Regondi’s “father” reportedly took all the boy’s earnings, supposedly several thousand pounds, handed him a five pound note and scarpered. So much for the supposed wisdom of keeping business dealings within the family.

Oddly enough, both of these prodigies, unlike many, refused to crash and burn. Catherina gave recitals, took on students from the most fashionable levels of society, was taken under the wing of Lady Somerset and married Robert Sidney Pratten, a virtuoso flautist, who sadly died soon afterwards. She kept playing, teaching, compsing and writing guitar method books until her death in 1895.

In the wake of his personal and financial catastrophe, Giulio, too, was embraced by friends and well-wishers, and became a member of the musical establishment, settling in England but regularly touring through Europe on his own or with other virtuosi of the day, until he died of cancer in 1872. Their geniuses weren’t cut off; they didn’t become mentally exhausted. They became adults.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Giulio was what happened when he was befriended by Sir Charles Wheatstone. By day Wheatstone was an eminent scientist and inventor (he gave his name to the Wheatstone Bridge) but as a side-trip in his researches, he invented the concertina. Regondi surprised everyone by deciding to take up the concertina, an instrument that most people regarded as a joke, and tour with it, playing the most demanding music, accompanied by the finest players of the time.

One observer wrote:

“Giulio Regondi quite took the audience by surprise. That an instrument hitherto regarded as a mere toy…should be capable of giving full expression to a brilliant violoin concerto of De Beriot’s, was more than even musicians who had not heard this talented youth would admit. The close of every movement was greeted with a round of applause in which many members of the orchestra joined. The performer…hangs over and hugs his little box of harmony as if it were a casket of jewels, or an only and dearly loved child. His trills and shakes seem to vibrate through the frame, and occasionally he rises on tip-toe, or flings up his instrument as he jerks out its highest notes, looking the while like one rapt and unconscious of all outward objects, in the absorbing enjoyment  of the sweet sounds that flow from his magical instrument.”

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