Did Sor Use Rest Stroke?
To support his claim that Sor used rest stroke, Ophee offers the following quote and illustration from Sor’s Mthode pour la Guitarra: …this induced me to establish as a principle from which I should never depart, to keep my fingers as little curved as possible, for the following reasons: by supposing point A to be the thickness of the string (Fig. 18), the index finger, in moving it communicates the impulse towards point B. The reaction must take place towards point C, and…the roundness of the finger-tip will compel it at the same time in the direction of F. If this is illustrating rest stroke, as Ophee believes it is, then there are obvious problems. First, Sor doesn’t say which string appears in the illustration. For all we know, it could be the sixth string, in which case there’s no adjacent string for the finger to come to rest against. Ophee ignores this possibility. Second, Sor doesn’t describe the movement of the finger after it departs the string. Ophee recognizes this prob
