Beethoven re: guitar

“The guitar is a miniature orchestra in itself.”

― Ludwig van Beethoven

Does anyone know the origin of this?

My Google-fu is weak. I only find circular references to various listings.

Not going to argue the point, though! :wink:

From my searching, the origin of this seems to be an interview by Segovia printed the the now defunct magazine The Etude in May 1930. I found a site with the text of the article:

May need a Beethoven scholar to track that actual source down, or it may just be that Segovia was passing on something he heard.

As a vaguely related fun fact, Johannes Brahms was a fan of the banjo, having encountered it late in life. There are various claims that he intended to write something for banjo orchestra but these appear to be largely spurious.