Andrei Sychra

Sychra holds a prominent position within Russia, where he is often referred to as the patriarch of the seven-string guitar, and also as its inventor, disputed though that may be.

He was a major force in the development of Russian guitar music and one of its most prolific composers, as well as an important teacher who trained a number of students.

Sychra initially played the harp and possibly the torban on which he was reputed to have been a great virtuoso, before dedicating himself to the seven-string guitar.

Sychra wrote a large number of pieces for amateurs, including studies, folk song settings, operatic transcriptions and arrangements of Viennese waltzes by Johann Strauss, Carl Maria von Weber and Josef Lanner, an output that may explain his dismissal by Soviet-era musicologists as a mediocre composer.

His magnum opus, the Praktičeskie pravila igrat' na gitare [Practical rules for playing the guitar] (St. Petersburg, 1817), which has long been esteemed by Russian guitarists, is only now beginning to attract international attention.