Most guitarists have never heard the name Johann Georg Stauffer, yet they encounter his influence every day. The greatest Viennese maker of the early nineteenth century, Stauffer trained a young apprentice named Christian Frederick Martin — the man who would go on to found C. F. Martin & Co. in America. The line from his Vienna workshop runs straight into the modern guitar.
Vienna's leading maker
Stauffer was born in 1778 and worked in Vienna, where he studied under the luthier Franz Geissenhof. He stands alongside Pierre René Lacôte of Paris and Louis Panormo of London as one of the three greatest guitar makers of the first half of the nineteenth century. He was a complete craftsman: he built violins, violas and cellos, and even invented the arpeggione, the bowed "cello-guitar" for which Schubert wrote his famous sonata.
The Legnani model
Stauffer's most celebrated design was the Legnani model, a refined figure-eight guitar developed around 1821 in collaboration with the Italian virtuoso Luigi Legnani. Its elegant shape, adjustable neck and distinctive scroll-shaped headstock with tuners on one side were so admired that makers in and beyond Vienna copied them for decades. That one-sided "Stauffer" headstock will look familiar to anyone who knows certain modern Martin and electric-guitar designs.
The Martin connection
Here is the link that makes Stauffer matter to the whole guitar world. Christian Frederick Martin came to Vienna as a teenager to apprentice in Stauffer's workshop, rising to become a foreman before returning to Germany and then emigrating to the United States, where he founded the company that still bears his name. The earliest Martin guitars carry clear Stauffer fingerprints — the body shape, the headstock, the adjustable neck — proof of how directly the Viennese tradition seeded American guitar making.
His legacy
Stauffer died in 1853. His own instruments are prized by collectors and players of early-Romantic music, and his ideas, carried across an ocean by his most famous pupil, helped shape the guitar as we know it.
FAQ
Who was Johann Georg Stauffer?
The foremost Viennese guitar maker of the early 19th century (1778–1853), known for the Legnani model and for training C. F. Martin.
What is his connection to Martin guitars?
Christian Frederick Martin apprenticed in Stauffer's Vienna workshop before founding C. F. Martin & Co.; early Martins show Stauffer's influence.
What was the arpeggione?
A bowed, guitar-shaped instrument Stauffer invented, immortalised by Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata.
