Schrammel Guitars

What became known as the Schrammel guitar has a particular shape and style. It is a nylon strung harp guitar but wasn't used for classical music but for folk music. The body is normally wider than the modern classical guitar as well as being slightly deeper, depending on the maker. My Hubert Heerbeck Schrammel guitar to the right has a lower bout width of 400mm (15,3/4"). The neck and support neck shares the same heel. The guitar part was in the Spanish style and quite often had fret position markers on the face of the fingerboard. The support neck that carried the extra bass strings was not fretted but did have a fingerboard to strength it as truss rods were not being used. Although two separate fingerboards they were joined at the treble end, as well as the heads being joined together. The bass head was in the Staufer flat scroll shape design, which carried up to nine extra bass strings.

The name Schrammel comes from two brothers, Johann (1850-1893) and Josef (1852-1895) Schrammel. Their father was a clarinetist and their mother was a folksinger, so music was always going to be in their blood. The brothers studied the violin at the Viennese conservatorium. Austrian folk music already had quartets and trios for many years before the Schrammel brothers. These bands would normally consist of two violins, a clarinet, a harp and a Linzer double bass. From around 1830s the Viennese button-accordion (sometimes called the button-harmonica) was making an entry into folk music.

They Schrammel brothers first formed a trio called the ‘Nussdorfers’. The brothers were on violins and together with Anton Strohmayer, a ‘contre-guitarist’. The trio then became the Schrammel-Quartet, when Georg Dänzer a well-known clarinettist at the time joined. Anton Strohmayer must have been quite an accomplished player to become part of the Schrammel-Quartet. The use of a harp guitar makes sense because it could take place of both the harp and the double bass that was used in the traditional folk music. The harp section could be plucked like a bass or the whole instrument used as a harp.

A couple of the biggest fans of the Schrammel band were Vienna’s Johann Strauss II (1825-1899) and Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). The Quartet made many of Strauss’s dances and waltzes very popular. The quartet lasted for thirteen years (1877-1890), with huge success first in Vienna and then the rest of Europe. Once source says that the Quartet were invited to perform at the International Exposition in Chicago in 1893. There is no mention of the Schrammel Quartet going, but the death of Johann Schrammel in the same year would suggest due to poor health or death that the band did not play in Chicago. If they had gone then it could have lead to a new branch or harp guitars and harp guitar music in America.

With such popularity in Austria many other bands copied the Schrammel Quartet and thus other Schrammel orchestras and ensembles formed to play Schrammel music. These other orchestras sometimes had a different arrangement of instruments with variations that include violin, guitar, clarinet and an accordion. There are still rare concerts by traditional Schrammel ensembles in Vienna. These are normally formed with musicians of the Vienna Philharmonic and other Viennese orchestras, who have specialized themselves to the traditions and the authentic Schrammel style.

The famous German guitar maker, Hermann Hauser Ser (1882-1952) made a couple of Schrammel guitars that have come to light. Hauser was the first luthier outside of Spain to be acknowledged as a great Spanish guitar maker. He met the 20th century’s most famous classical guitarist Andreas Segovia in 1924 when Segovia brought his famous Ramirez guitar in for repairs. Hauser studied the design of this Ramirez guitar and of other Spanish makers, most notably the guitars by Antonio de Torres. His most famous guitars are based on Torres’ with seven fan struts. It was not until 1937 that Segovia bought a guitar he liked from Hauser. The now famous Hauser guitar was used for over twenty-five years, before Segovia went back to having a Ramirez guitar.