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Antonio de Torres was the son of Juan Torres, a local tax collector and potato, and Maria

Jurado. As was common, when he was 12 he started an apprenticeship as a carpenter. In


1833, a dynastic war broke out, and soon after Torres was conscripted into the army.
Through his father's machinations, young Antonio was dismissed as medically unfit for
service. As only single men and widowers without children were subject to conscription, in
1835 his family pushed Torres into a hastily arranged marriage to Juana María López, the
13-year-old daughter of a shopkeeper. Children soon followed: a daughter in 1836, another
in 1839, and a third in 1842, who died a few months later. His second daughter also died. In
1845 his wife died at the age of 23, of tuberculosis. These were difficult years for Torres,
who was often in debt and forced to look for more lucrative forms of employment.

Although there is some debate as to who taught Torres, one theory is that some time
around 1842, Torres may have gone to work for José Pernas in Granada, rapidly learning to
build guitars. He soon returned to Seville, and opened a shop on the Calle de Cerrajería No.
7 that he shared with Manuel Soto y Solares. Although he made some guitars during the
1840s, it was not until the 1850s on the advice of the renowned guitarist and composer
Julián Arcas, that Torres made it his profession, and he began building in earnest. Julián
Arcas offered Torres advice on building, and their collaboration turned Torres into an
inveterate investigator of the guitar construction. Torres reasoned that the soundboard
was key. To increase its volume, he made his guitars not only larger, but fitted them with
thinner, hence lighter soundboards that were arched in both directions, made possible by a
system of fan-bracing for strength.These bracing struts were laid out geometrically, based
on two isosceles triangles joined at their base creating a kite shape, within which the struts
were set out symmetrically.

Guitar by Torres (1862)


at Museu de la Música de Barcelona (MDMB 625).[3]

While Torres was not the first to use this method he was the one who perfected the
symmetrical design. To prove that it was the top, and not the back and sides of the guitar
that gave the instrument its sound, in 1862 he built a guitar with back and sides of papier-
mâché. (This guitar resides in the Museu de la Musica in Barcelona, and before the year
2000 it was restored to playable condition by the brothers Yagüe, Barcelona). [4]

There is an anecdote about how he had made a guitar made like a Chinese puzzle that could
be assembled without glue, and disassembled would fit in a shoe box. There is no evidence
that he ever made such a guitar though.

During his later years, Torres' close friend, a priest named Juan Martínez Sirvent, lent him a
hand in his workshop. Many years later, in 1931 Sirvent wrote a letter to Francisco
Rodríguez Torres, mentioning the following explanation Torres made when he, at the age
of 68 was asked by the famous father Garzón at a dinner about his "secret" of how to make
his outstandingly sounding guitars:[5]

"[...] smilingly [Torres] responded: 'Father, I am very sorry that a man like you also falls
victim of that idea that runs among ignorant people, Juanito (that is how he addressed me)
has been witness to the secret many times, but it is impossible for me to leave the secret
behind for posterity; this will go to the tomb with me for it is the result of the feel of the tips
of the thumb and forefinger communicating to my intellect whether the soundboard is
properly worked out to correspond with the guitar maker's concept and the sound
required of the instrument'. Everyone was left convinced that the artistic genius cannot be
passed on [...]"

In 1868, Torres married again, wedding Josefa Martín Rosada. Shortly after, Torres met
Francisco Tárrega for the first time. Tárrega, who was then aged seventeen, had come to
Seville from Barcelona to buy a Torres guitar from the maker of Julián Arcas' instrument.
Torres offered him a modest guitar he had in stock, but on hearing him play, offered him a
much better guitar that he had made for himself a few years before.

About 1870, Don Antonio, who was then in his 50s, closed his shop in Seville and moved
back to Almería where he and his wife opened up a china and crystal shop on the calle Real.
About five years later, Don Antonio began his "second epoch" as he refers to it on the labels
of his guitars, building part-time when not busy in the china shop. After the death of his
wife, Josefa, in 1883, Torres began to devote increasing amounts of time to building guitars,
making somewhere around 12 guitars a year until his death in La Cañada de San Urbano,
Almería at the age of 75.

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