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Johann Georg Stauffer (also Johann Georg Staufer; born January 26 1778 in Vienna; died 24 January 1853) was an Austrian luthier and the most important Viennese luthier of his time.

Life

Stauffer was born in the Viennese suburb of Weissberger, the son of Mathias Stauffer, a labourer from Weyregg am Attersee. He studied under the luthier Franz Geissenhof. In June 1800 he took the Vienna oath of citizenship and in May 1802 he married Josepha Fischer in the Schottenkirche, Vienna. He took over the workshop of Ignaz Christian Bartl. Initially he built insturments modeled after the Italian guitar masters Giovanni Battista Fabricatore and Gaetano Vinaccia, he then developed several variants, typical of his own guitar style (see section Instruments).

In 1813/14, he applied for the vacant position of Court Luthier ("Hofgeigenmacher") but Johann Martin Stoss was preferred. From 1830-1836 Stauffer was also active as a music publisher. He devoted more time to his inventions, which is probably the reason for the beginning of his serious finacial problems. In 1829 he made representations to the City Council for an advance of 1,000 guilders. In 1831/32 his financial troubles continued and he was finally arrested for debt. He then worked temporarily in the workshop of his son Johann Anton Stauffer, before settling for a short time in Košice (now in Slovakia). The last period of his life Stauffer spent in Vienna's St. Marx citizens care home, where he could continue to work in a small workshop on his ideas for the guitar and other instruments. There he developed several guitars with completely new concepts (such as guitars with an oval body and double back), which were always labeled "According to the latest acoustic improvement of Johann Georg Stauffer manufactured in Vienna, Highway 572". In 1853 he finally died impoverished, of paralysis of the lungs.

Johann Georg Stauffer had two sons:

• the luthier and musician Johann Anton Stauffer (c. 1805-after 1871), who took over his father's workshop in 1833, but only from 1836 onwards built under his own name;
• and the pianist Franz Stauffer (1803 -?).

Instruments

The "Viennese guitar" as built by Johann Georg Stauffer is a gut string guitar with a curved back, narrower waist and bridge pins. In 1822 Stauffer and Johann Ertl received an imperial commission for improvement of the guitar, focusing on the extension of the fingerboard, above (not attached to) the soundboard, the development of machine heads and the use of embedded metal frets.

By 1825/30, the instruments usually had a headstock in a figure-of-eight shape (similar in shape to the guitar's body). In 1825 Stauffer invented the machine heads named after him: a metal plate with an asymmetrical "scroll" headstock, machine heads with worm gears mounted on the plate, arranged in a single line on the upper side of the head stock (six-in-line). This "Stauffer" headstock and design was reproduced by his son Anton, and copied by many luthiers in the 19th century. The asymmetrical headstock is variously referred to as being shaped like a "scroll" (a violin scroll in profile), a "snail", and a "Persian slipper". As of 2013 such "Stauffer style" machine heads as are still made by the UK company Rodgers Tuning Machines..

In 1823 J. G. Stauffer built his Arpeggione, a string instrument, with characteristics of the guitar and the cello. Composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828), who also had a Stauffer guitar, wrote a sonata for the Arpeggione, an otherwise almost unnoticed instrument (see Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano in A minor (D 821)). Stauffer also built Terz guitars, the Contraguitar, and experimented with new forms of violin. Some of these inventions have been together at the same time with different structural ideas of the later Pest acting instrument maker Peter Teufelsdorfer complained, which led to violent quarrels about authorship.

Stauffer and CF Martin

Martin 00 Stauffer 175th

The founder of Martin Guitars, Christian Frederick Martin, born in 1796 in Markneukirchen, Germany, first studied with his father, Johann Georg Martin, a Cabinet Maker. Markneukirchen was a centre for instrument making. At 15 years of age he went to Vienna to complete an apprenticeship with Stauffer. Christian Friedrich took it to his workshop because of his skill to the foreman. After Martin married Ottilie Lucia, the daughter of another Viennese luthier, his relationship apparently cooled with Stauffer, and Martin returned to work in his father's workshop.

Martin remained in Vienna for 14 years, after which he returned to his hometown and opened his own shop. After a long dispute with the Guild of luthiers, regarding the rights of Cabinet Makers to build guitars, he emigrated to the United States of America, where he introduced the mechanism developed by Stauffer. In 2008, the 175th anniversary of the Martin Company, the company released a tribute guitar: the "Martin 00 Stauffer 175th".

Literature

• Rudolf Hopfner: "Johann Georg Staufer", in: Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Personenteil, Band 15, Kassel, 2006, S. 1350f.
• Erik Pierre Hofmann, Pascal Mougin und Stefan Hackl: Stauffer & Co. - Die Wiener Gitarre des 19. Jahrhunderts, Germolles sur Grosne, 2011 (Editions Les Robins) [1]
• Stefan Hackl: Die Gitarre in Österreich - Von Abate Costa bis Zykan, Innsbruck/Wien/Bozen, 2011