Charles Besnainou

Charles Besnainou is a French luthier and lute player, inventor, material acoustics engineer, musicologist, organologist, professor of musical acoustics at Conservatoire National Supérieur De Musique Et De Danse De Paris, Honorary Research Engineer at CNRS, and volunteer researcher at Sorbonne's Jean LeRond d'Alembert Institute (IJLRDA). He's best known for innovative research of composite materials in bow instruments in 1984–2009, first at Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie and later at CNRS. As a practicing luthier, Besnainou built over 150 instruments in his career. In 1961–'63, Besnainou studied classical guitar with Alberto Ponce (2). He mastered "Elizabethian era" lute under Alfred Deller and Robert Spencer (2) (1973–1980) and continued to study XVII-XVIII-century composition with Antoine Geoffroy Dechaume from 1976 till 1990. Charles Besnainou authored numerous articles on Italian Renaissance, Early Modern, and XVII-century music, new composite materials in luthiery, and innovative methods of calculating/optimizing the instrument's vibration properties.