The Hagler Gift of Stringed Instruments

A Luthier’s Legacy

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A Luthier’s Legacy

A Luthier’s LegacyThe Hagler Gift of Stringed Instruments

College of the ArtsPortland State University

Catalogue published to accompany the exhibition “A Luthier’s Legacy: The Hagler Gift of Stringed Instruments,” Broadway Gallery, Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, 28 September 2016 through 15 March 2017.

Edited by Sue Taylor

Design by PSU A+D Projects, Shannon Coffey and Dora Litterell

Printed by Cedar House Media, 2016

College of the Arts, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, Ore. 97207-0751

Copyright © 2016 by Portland State University, Ore. All rights reserved.

Cover: Ukule le handcrafted by Mike Hagler (photo by Dan Kvitka)

Frontispiece: Ukule le handcrafted by Mike Hagler (photo by Dan Kvitka)

to Sona Andrews

One of the benefits of our exhibition program in the Broadway Gallery is the participation of students, who work with their respective faculty to realize our immediate practical goals while honing skills that will be the foundation of their future success. Congratulations and thanks are due to the outstanding graphic design students Shannon Coffey and Dora Litterell of A+D Projects for designing this attractive catalogue, and to art history student Ella Ray for assisting with bibliographical research and carefully proofreading the text.

Most of all, we are indebted to Kathy Hagler for her thoughtful gift of these instruments, by which she becomes a significant benefactor to PSU music students and their audiences. Far into the future, these instruments will “sound” in the Portland music community.

—Wm. Robert BuckerDean, College of the Arts

Ukule le handcrafted by Mike Hagler of

bubinga wood, with European spruce top,

ebony fingerboard and bridge, abalone rosette

inlay (photo by Dan Kvitka)

The College of the Arts is pleased to present this exhibition of stringed instruments given to Portland State University by Kathy Hagler of Eagle, Idaho in honor of her longtime colleague and friend, Provost Sona Andrews. These thirty-five instruments in the lute family—ukuleles, guitars, and dulcimers as well as a banjo, mandolin, and Chinese pipa—were either crafted or acquired for careful study and use by our donor’s late husband, Mike Hagler (1948-2014). He was an engineer by profession who became in retirement a dedicated and highly skilled luthier. Some sense of his intense devotion to this pursuit can be gleaned from the remarks of his widow and his doctor in the pages that follow. All of us involved in mounting this exhibition, moreover, have come to admire what must have been his extraordinary talent and enthusiasm for the musical instrument as a work of art, so clearly evident in the objects now passed on to PSU for the instruction and delight of students in the School of Music for generations to come.

Students will be privileged to choose among highly sought after professional-quality guitars such as the prized Martin HD-28 Dreadnought and the Gibson Les Paul Custom, pictured on pages 16 through 19 of this catalogue. They may also learn to appreciate differences among these and instruments by other noted guitar manufacturers Guild, Taylor (pages 20-21), Washburn, and Yamaha. The wonderful range

of ukuleles in the collection includes a charming cigar-box example perhaps assembled from a kit, a Recording King metal-body resonator, and fifteen unique Hagler instruments exquisitely crafted of woods often preferred by luthiers—spruce, maple, mahogany, rosewood, and walnut as well as bloodwood and bubinga. Some feature such fine details as abalone inlay or purfled binding.

Much effort has gone into preparing “A Luthier’s Legacy” for the Broadway Gallery and creating this catalogue to elucidate the Hagler gift. For his expert consultation on this project and for his informative essay on the history of the guitar, its designers, manufacturers, and players, we are grateful to Jesse McCann, Guitar Instructor in the School of Music. Throughout all of our work together, he has given copiously of his time and of his knowledge of the guitar, which is both intimate and scholarly. Similarly, we appreciate the contribution of Rachel Bomalaski, a graduate teaching assistant in music, theory, and composition, whose essay traces the geographical diffusion and reception of the ukulele since its invention in Portugal in the nineteenth century. Sue Taylor, Associate Dean in the College of the Arts, organized the exhibition and edited catalogue, with assistance from Suzanne Gray, Marketing and Communications Manager in the College, and Mary McVein, Visual Resources Curator in the School of Art and Design.

Foreword and Acknowledgments

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imagine, he took on students and transmitted to them all the joy that comes with perfecting a handsome and functioning instrument. His students were special to him and gave him personal moments of deep pride. My hope in offering these cherished instruments to students at Portland State University is that they in turn may learn, teach, and leave an artistic legacy, following in the steps of this inspired guitar and ukulele maker and truly extraordinary Renaissance man.

A Passionate Luthierby Kathy Hagler

Michael Eugene Hagler was a talented engineer with a passion for music and learning and an extraordinary love of life. Driven by a desire to create beautiful objects, he became a luthier, a pursuit that grew naturally out of his early teenaged enthusiasm to play his red Stratocaster Fender guitar. Mike performed in his band at high school dances—after, of course, basketball season had ended! He was an All American player at Meridian High School in Idaho and went to college with a basketball scholarship, diligent and disciplined in everything he did, from practicing hoops to playing sixties songs on his prized Fender. He graduated from the University of Idaho with honors in Civil Engineering and began his career at the Chevron Corporation.

Shortly after we married in 1989, Mike wished for a guitar kit from Martin Guitar Company. Christmas was exciting that year! The parts came with only a one-sided sheet of terse instructions, “How to Build Your Guitar.” A big book on guitar building and eighteen months later, Mike learned how to string his first instrument from Chet Atkins’s luthier in Newport Beach, California. Joining the Guild of American Luthiers, Mike designed and constructed classical guitars for ten years, including those he personalized for his sons, Michael and Jeff. By this time a true master, Mike shifted his talents to the ukulele, whose sweet, gentle music he had come to appreciate years before when he was refinery manager for Chevron in Hawaii. His handcrafted instruments, though of different woods and designs, have a signature sound and feel that reflect the countless hours he spent on them, pouring his spirit and life into each one. The essence of his heart, his desire to enrich the lives of players, saturate each instrument with a lasting imprint.

Mike always wanted to be a teacher; and he was. He loved sharing his ever expanding luthier knowledge and skills. With a workshop well equipped with everything a luthier could ever

Mike and Kathy Hagler, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2008

(photo by Kay Martin)

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today, circulating scores and performing in churches, schools, and other community venues.

Before coming into its present form, the ukulele evolved through several different stages. Its direct predecessor was the Portuguese machete, which itself was a descendant, along with the viola braguesa and cavaquinho, of the Renaissance guitar. The machete differs from the ukulele only in name and in the way the strings are tuned;1 the construction of the two instruments is identical. The machete may originally have developed in mainland Portugal, but was nowhere so popular as on the island of Madeira.2 Madeira, 340 miles off the coast of Morocco, was uninhabited when Portugal claimed it in the 1420s. The island was heavily forested with cedar—“madeira” is Portuguese for “wood”—and as Europeans populated the island, imported trees began to appear alongside the local varieties.3 Madeira by 1500 was a world leader in sugar cultivation, and in wine production two centuries later. Madeiran wine enjoyed an international reputation for its quality and for its hardiness which made it ideal for shipping long distances.

During the peak of Madeira’s wine-fueled prosperity, craftsmen in the capital city of Funchal took advantage of the island’s rich forests to develop a distinctive woodworking practice. Wine barrels and furniture were the products most in demand; there were also at least six musical instrument shops on the island throughout the nineteenth century. The main instrument advertised was the

The ukulele has captivated countless music fans since its invention in the nineteenth century, enjoying wave upon wave of international popularity. The instrument’s

appeal is tied to its simple design and construction (see illustration on page 14). Its small resonating chamber can be

painstakingly fashioned out of rare woods (often Hawaiian koa) for a professional quality, molded out of plastic for

a cheap commodity, or improvised from a cigar box, skateboard, or coffee can. With only four strings

and eleven to seventeen frets, its small range of motion is inviting for children and beginners,

yet the instrument finds complex musical expression in the hands of virtuosi such as Jake

Shimabukuro, whose famous cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” boasts nearly 15

million views on YouTube. Ukuleles are clichéd souvenirs for tourists to Hawaii, some being exquisitely crafted by expert luthiers, others mass-produced in China. They exist in multiple sizes and ranges, including soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, just like the human voice; in fact, ukulele “choirs” can be found in many major cities

Migrations and Fortunes of the Ukuleleby Rachel Bomalaski

Ukule le handcrafted by Mike Hagler

(photo by Dan Kvitka)

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It did not take long for the ukulele to become a favorite in Hawaii. King Kalakaua (r. 1874-1891) learned to play it, and with this royal sanction the ukulele was adopted as a native instrument despite its foreign origins. The wistful music of the islands had long been beloved by tourists. One visitor in 1899 mused that Hawaiian songs “have such a plaintive sadness running through them that it almost breaks the heart of those who listen,” and another opined that “all natives seem to be natural musicians.”5 The Madeiran cabinetmakers who established the ukulele in Hawaii took advantage of tourists’ fondness for the island’s music by promoting the ukulele as an indigenous Hawaiian instrument, despite the fact that they themselves had introduced it from

overseas. The U.S. annexation of Hawaii in 1898 led to an increase in tourism and

in turn to the first massive boost in ukulele sales.

The “roaring twenties” saw a subsequent surge, this time on the U.S. mainland. Vaudeville and Tin

Pan Alley artists had been using the ukulele since the turn of the century, but it became extremely fashionable

after the premier of Richard Walton Tully’s Bird of Paradise in 1911.

The play was set in Hawaii and featured Hawaiian music, including several ukuleles on stage. Popular all over the U.S., especially in Los Angeles, as well as in London, Australia, and India, The Bird of Paradise

grossed over $1 million by 1924.

small, four-stringed machete. The style of playing the machete in the Madeiran countryside was apparently simple, repetitive, and accompanied by humorous lyrics, while in the city it could be very serious and virtuosic.

By the 1840s, Madeira’s population had reached 120,000, an unsustainable number. When multiple famines, epidemics, and crop failures ensued, leaving the island became attractive to many inhabitants. At the same time, Madeira’s overpopulation coincided with a labor shortage on the other side of the world, in Hawaii. Diseases introduced by European and American settlers had cut Hawaii’s native population in half between the 1830s and the 1870s, but agriculture was booming, having replaced whaling as Hawaii’s most important industry. The Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 allowed sugar to be shipped duty-free to the United States, generating large-scale American investment in Hawaiian sugar cultivation. One Hawaiian official, William Hillebrand, thought Madeirans would be up to the task of agricultural work in Hawaii, stating condescendingly, “they are inured to [the island] climate…. Their education and ideas of comfort and social requirements are just low enough to make them contented with the lot of an isolated settler and its attendant privations.”4 The Hawaiian Board of Immigration began to recruit laborers from Madeira in 1876.

Two years later, the first Madeiran contract workers arrived in Hawaii. The machete apparently did not make this first trip, but arrived on a second ship, the Ravenscrag, a year later. Three cabinetmakers, Manuel Nunes, Jose do Espirito Santo, and Augusto Dias, were aboard the Ravenscrag as well; all three opened instrument shops in Honolulu soon after their plantation labor contracts expired. The shops advertised guitars and “taro-patch fiddles,” which were machetes of four or five strings. The Hawaiian name “ukulele” was not applied to the instrument until the 1880s; the word originally referred to a European cat flea. Thus in a humorous twist of history, Europeans not only brought the instrument that became known as the ukulele, but also the flea it was named after. One explanation for how the name took hold is that players’ fingers would jump across the strings like bouncing fleas.

Ukule le handcrafted by

Mike Hagler, with redwood

top, walnut back and sides,

mahogany neck, ebony

bridge and fingerboard,

ve l lum saddle (photo by

Dan Kvitka)

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It was the first experience of Hawaiian music for thousands the world over. Also leading up to the ukulele rage in the 1920s was the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. More than 18 million visitors to the fair were exposed to the sights and sounds of featured Hawaiian bands and orchestras. Henry Ford and Laura Ingalls Wilder were two notables who were deeply impressed by the Hawaiian performances. Ukulele sales skyrocketed during the nine-month fair. Within a few years, ukuleles were staple accessories to the flapper ensemble, and their plinking tones were commonly heard on the radio.

Another major wave of popularity occurred after World War II, when U.S. servicemen returning from the Pacific contributed to a hike in sales. The advent of television played a role as well, particularly the programs of TV/radio host Arthur Godfrey; his shows reached as many as forty million Americans every week throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Godfrey’s on-air ukulele lessons helped the French-American Reeds Manufacturing Company sell over nine million mass-produced polystyrene ukuleles over two decades. The postwar enthusiasm for the instrument came to a close with the televised performances of Tiny Tim, whose campy renditions of Tin Pan Alley tunes including “Tiptoe through the Tulips” were hugely popular in the late 1960s.6

Thanks largely to the Internet, the ukulele is currently experiencing a comeback—witness the viral Shimabukuro

phenomenon. Also at the forefront of this revival is the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain; their brilliant and lively rendition of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” alone has received over ten million hits on YouTube. Today ukuleles can be heard in many musical genres, and as they are available in both acoustic and electric varieties, they prove as suited to pop and rock as they are to traditional Hawaiian songs. Some can be bought for a few dollars, while a vintage Martin ukulele may be worth over ten thousand. The instrument is a must-have for every non-musician who has dreamed of making music; it is also a perfect project for a beginning luthier. Millions continue to draw inspiration from this unassuming little instrument.

NOTES

1. The standard tuning for the machete was D-G-B-D, while tuning for the ukulele was standardized as G-C-E-A.

2. Jim Tranquada and John King, The Ukulele: A History (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012), 10 and passim for this and many other historical facts that follow in this essay.

3. David Hancock, Oceans of Wine: Madeira and the Emergence of American Trade and Taste (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), 7.

4. William Hillebrand, quoted in Tranquada and King, The Ukulele, 34.

5. Nance O’Neil and Mabel Andrews, quoted in ibid., 58-59 and 63, respectively.

6. “The Ukulele and You,” Museum of Making Music, accessed July 22, 2016, https://www.museumofmakingmusic.org/ukulele.

Anatomy of a ukule le

(rendering by Rachel

Bomalaski and

Shannon Coffey)

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A Brief History of the Guitar by Jesse McCann

O ur modern six-string guitar is a direct descendant of the Roman tanbur, an instrument with a long, slender neck and pear-shaped body, and a distant cousin of the lute and the vihuela, a fretted instrument played like

the guitar but belonging to the viola family. The tanbur made its way to the Iberian Peninsula some time during the fifth century C.E. Over the course of about a thousand years, it evolved into the more complex four-course guitar and gained prominence in Spain and Italy around the fifteenth century. The body had a figure-eight shape, and the strings and frets were made from gut. The strings were doubled (called courses) to provide resonance, but despite its intricacies, the instrument didn’t have a large musical range or produce much volume. By the seventeenth century, it was replaced by the five-course guitar. This baroque guitar had a larger body, an increased number of frets, and additional courses, allowing far more compositional flexibility. Masters of this instrument included the Spaniard Gaspar Sanz, and Robert de Viseé, active in the court of French kings.

Martin Dreadnought acoustic guitar (photo by Dan Kvitka)

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The Age of Enlightenment in Europe spurred the adoption of ancient Greek principles of balance, harmony, and reason. Naturally, this era had a great impact on the guitar’s development: The baroque guitar, with its asymmetrical string count and heavy decoration, would have to undergo some dramatic changes to ensure its survival. It is likely that such changes to its construction began in Spain in the late 1700s. By the early nineteenth century, the classical guitar contained most of the elements we recognize today (i.e., six single strings, an open sound hole, permanent frets, and machine tuners), though it was significantly smaller than our contemporary instrument. Music publications for this “modern” guitar began appearing as early as 1780 and culminated in what has been dubbed the first “Golden Age of the Guitar,” a period from about 1800 to 1850. During this time, a handful of gifted guitarists composed numerous works and published instructional methods. The most important of these artists included Fernando Sor and Dionisio

Aguado y García from Spain and Matteo Carcassi, Ferdinand Carulli, and

Mauro Giuliani from Italy. All made names for themselves

in Paris, London, and Vienna, the

musical centers of Europe during this time. Their musical works and methods survive to this day and serve as a cornerstone for learning how to play in the classical style.

By the latter half of the nineteenth century, the guitar was significantly marginalized as a result of the popularity of the piano and the growing public desire for bigger and louder performance experiences with orchestral and chamber music. The guitar was not designed to compete in these arenas. It virtually disappeared from the international limelight but flourished in Spain thanks to several composer guitarists and one important guitar maker, Antonio Torres. Torres improved the guitar in a number of ways. His most significant innovations included increasing the soundboard’s size and string length and creating a fan brace pattern for the soundboard, allowing it to be thinner and to produce a bigger sound. With this updated guitar, Spanish players such as Julian Arcas and Francisco Tarréga gained enough notoriety to usher the guitar into the twentieth century and pass the torch to a number of gifted players, composers, and teachers including one of the most famous of all guitarists, Andrés Segovia.

Segovia elevated the Spanish guitar to new, respectable heights by expanding its repertoire, releasing numerous recordings, and supporting its viability as an instrument of serious study at music institutions. Taking full advantage of the technological innovations of the twentieth century—air travel, recording, radio, and television—Segovia became a household name by the early 1960s. Thanks to him and guitarists that followed, the classical guitar’s popularity is currently at an all-time high.

Gibson Les Paul Custom guitar

(photo by Dan Kvitka)

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Pioneering guitar manufacturers C. F. Martin and Orville Gibson improved the instrument in the late nineteenth century by creating their own louder versions, complete with larger bodies, metal strings, and different bracing systems. Martin created a special “X” brace that ran nearly the entire length of the soundboard, and Gibson relied heavily on traditional violin carving techniques allowing the tops of his guitars to have a more curved shape. Martin and Gibson also departed from the handcrafted tradition and helped establish the mass-produced guitar, a standard model ready to be shipped anywhere in the country at an affordable price. Both companies had a profound influence on guitar makers and inventors during the early 1900s.

By the 1920s, the guitar became a fixture of dance bands and small theater orchestras. As the size of groups grew, the desire for volume propelled guitar makers to develop exciting and diverse features. Important contributions including new construction, hardware, and electronics were made by engineers such as Lloyd Loar, George Beauchamp, Paul Barth, and Adolph Rickenbacker. The culmination of their efforts can be found in Gibson’s ES-150 (1936). The Electric-Spanish guitar was hollow-bodied and fitted with electromagnetic pickups. One of the first players to understand this new electric guitar’s potential was jazz legend Charlie Christian. His unique approach allowed him to play dazzling, melodic solos at volumes unimaginable only years before. Christian’s playing influenced an entire generation of jazz and blues guitarists including T-Bone Walker and B. B. King.

Two of the most influential innovators in guitar design and manufacturing were Lester Polfus and Leo Fender. Their versions of the electric guitar are iconic. The Gibson Les Paul (1952, illustrated on pages 18-

19), a heavy, solid-bodied guitar with hum-bucking pickups, was made popular by talents like Jimmy Page and Peter Frampton. But it was Fender’s Stratocaster (1954) and one monumental guitarist that would change the way the instrument was played forever. Jimi Hendrix was a talented blues guitarist, but he was also able to see the electric guitar as an electronic instrument rather than just an amplified stringed instrument. The result: Hendrix gave stunning performances by creating sonic layers with effects pedals and overdriven amps all stemming from his guitar. His playing was revolutionary and influenced nearly every electric guitarist that followed. Since then, the electric guitar’s popularity has exploded, producing countless talented players.

The guitar’s transformation from a simple, four-coursed instrument to a six-stringed powerhouse relied on cultural changes and the imaginations of both players and craftsmen. Without these factors, the guitar would have likely faded away hundreds of years ago along with other, now obsolete instruments. Instead, the guitar has become one of the most recognizable instruments around the world and continues to inspire creativity and innovation among talented musicians in each new generation.

Taylor 612C guitar, maplewood, spruce, with

ivoroid fretboard inlays, ebony binding with

grained ivoroid purfling, ebony/grained ivoroid

rosette, ebony pickguard (photo by Dan Kvitka)

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Beloff, Jim. The Ukulele, A Visual History. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Backbeat Books, 2003.

Johanson, Bryan. The Guitar: Its Music and History. N.p. [Portland, Ore.]: Self published, 2001.

King, John and Jim Tranquada. The Ukulele: A History. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012.

Lundberg, Robert. Historical Lute Construction. Tacoma, Wash.: Guild of American Luthiers, 2002.

Olson, Tim, ed. Big Red Book of Lutherie. Tacoma, Wash.: Guild of American Luthiers, 2000.

Somogyi, Ervin. The Responsive Guitar. N.p. [Oakland, Calif.]: Self published, 2001.

Summerfield, Maurice J. The Classical Guitar: Its Evolution, Players, and Personalities since 1800. Newcastle: Ashley Mark Publishing, 2003.

Smith, Douglas. A History of the Lute from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Dedham, Mass.: Lute Society of America, 2002.

Turnbull, Harvey. The Guitar from the Renaissance to the Present Day. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; repr. Westport, Conn.: Bold Strummer Ltd., 1992.

“The Ukulele & You.” Museum of Making Music. https://www.museumofmakingmusic.org/ukulele.

Wade, Graham. A Concise History of the Classical Guitar. Pacific, Mo.: Mel Bay Publications, 2001.

Bibliography

Opposite page: Chinese lute or pipa

(photo by Dan Kvitka)

Mike Hagler’s art was informed by his perfectionism, rooted in passion and knowledge. Few equaled him in the fields he practiced, yet he graciously transmitted his skills to others along with the enjoyment and appreciation of the musical instruments he crafted. In his luthier pursuits, his application of engineering principles and mathematical sequencing combined with a keen sense of acoustic, tactile, and visual aesthetics.

His fervor was memorably conveyed to me in the last weeks of his life. One evening as he rested, he had his wife and son bring out numerous guitars and ukuleles that he had designed and built, describing each one to me with its history, significance, and unique features delineated in a fashion only an avid engineer could deliver. The different models, finishes, and inlays Mike created still testify to his inquisitive mind and exquisite taste. Each instrument speaks eloquently of him.

Mike Hagler’s workshop, Eagle, Idaho

(photo by Kathy Hagler)

—David Gee, M.D. Boise, Idaho