In most professions it is unethical to comment directly on the competence of one's colleagues. In some it is prohibited by law. Since it has been decades since I retired as a performer, I think it might be safe to offer some thoughts. Plus, I have the qualifications. So here are some personal reflections on a number of famous guitarists.
Andrés Segovia is the grandfather and godfather of the classical guitar in the 20th century. His career spanned nearly the whole century, from his first concert in 1909 to his last in 1987. I don't think anyone, even long-lived performers like Arthur Rubinstein, has had a longer career. When I was a young student he was often poo-pooed for his "romantic" approach to composers like Bach. Well, why not, when Segovia was born Johannes Brahms was still alive. But Segovia's strength was the powerful musical character of his interpretations which won over audiences world-wide. He could fill any hall. I only saw him once, in Montreal in 1977 when he sold out the biggest concert hall in town, over 2,000 seats. They even put another two hundred chairs onstage, just leaving him a slim avenue to enter and exit. And he played eight encores! We don't need to discuss the details as they are easily listenable on CD and streaming. The next generation, fine technicians though they were, simply did not have the gift of distinctive interpretive character. Segovia had a small circle of disciples that passed on his influence to following generations.
Julian Bream was not one of those disciples, but hewed his own path. Like myself, he started on a more popular instrument before switching to classical guitar. He was a spectacular performer with a gift for brilliance and inspired many composers to write for guitar. Bream did almost as much for the lute as for the guitar and was also a world-wide artist, though he tended to fill the middle-sized halls, not the biggest ones. I saw Bream several times in concert and met him once. His strength was his ability to inspire and interpret newer works, especially by British composers, and older works for lute. He was not an outstanding concerto performer as I never sensed that he was comfortable interacting with the orchestra.
John Williams is a bit younger than Julian Bream, but certainly the other pillar of that generation. He had the great advantage of having a guitarist father who got him into Segovia's master classes when he was barely into his teens. Williams owes this to his solid technical skills which were superior to any other guitarists of the time. He had a particular gift for the rhythms and timbres of Spanish music and was the greatest concerto player--possibly ever as few guitarists get much chance to perform with orchestras these days. Williams was also the first to do a really capable integral recording of the Bach lute suites. Yes, you can put scare quotes around "lute" if you want, but while we know that they were mostly not written for lute, they are a solid item in the guitar repertoire, so let's just accept that. I only saw him in concert once, the premiere of Leo Brouwer's Toronto Concerto, but was able to chat with him at the after-party.
Narciso Yepes was a great artist of the guitar and a kind of nemesis to Segovia. He broke away from that stream of tradition by playing a ten-string guitar and by being a truly original artist. He excelled in classical repertoire by Sor, in Scarlatti, in concertos and in Spanish music. He had a clarity of execution that few other artists matched. I had the good fortune to hear him a couple of times in concert and to meet him backstage.
Leo Brouwer might not make it onto most people's lists of the great guitarists of the 20th century, but in my view he most certainly was. These days he is more well-known as a composer, but in the 60s and 70s he was a formidable concert artist. I had the opportunity to hear him once as well as to study with him on a couple of occasions. Most unfortunately, his career was cut short by an injury to his right hand index finger. Before then, he was the finest interpreter of Baroque music on guitar. He recorded an album of Scarlatti that is simply unequalled, certainly on guitar. He studied composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen in the 60s but what is less well-known is that he also studied performance practice with Gustav Leonhardt.
Manuel Barrueco came on the scene as a virtuoso hurricane in the late 1970s with an album of etudes by Villa-Lobos that was simply at an extraordinary technical level. The story is that John Williams picked up a copy of the vinyl disc and was so impressed that he took it out to Bream's place in the country to play it for him. I heard Barrueco in concert a couple of times and hung out with him a bit when we had him come to town to give a master class. Like most virtuosos at that level, he wasn't the greatest teacher because I honestly believe he had difficulty understanding why someone might have difficulty with some passages. Fantastic guitarist, he later did an extraordinary album of Albéniz transcriptions. He recorded a lot of Bach and Scarlatti, but I never warmed to it, because what I heard was steely, cold technique and not much else.
Pepe Romero is another great technician, but he also has deep roots in the folk music of Spain. His family emigrated to the US in the 1950s, but they originated in Malaga. Pepe is an outstanding interpreter of any music from Spain and Latin America and recorded an absolutely lovely album of Bach. He has an unrivaled warmth of tone and an extraordinary virtuosity, exhibited in his recordings of the concertos of Joaquin Rodrigo. His only serious rival for best Rodrigo interpreter is John Williams. I had the good fortune to take Pepe's month-long master class in Salzburg and I have heard him play on many occasions.
Oscar Ghiglia, who just passed away this past March, had only a modest career as a performer, but was probably the most influential teacher other than Segovia himself. He was one of that inner circle of guitarists that also included José Tomás and Alirio Diaz. I spent two summers studying with him in Banff and he was the only guitar maestro I met of whom it could be said he really had a deep understanding of the music. On the other hand, he rarely mentioned technique. Oscar said to me once that being a famous guitarist is like being one of the steers in the front of a stampede--at any moment you can be run over and disappear into anonymity.
There are many other guitarists worth mentioning like Vladimir Mikulka, Ida Presti and so on, but while fine players they did not achieve the same level of recognition. I might do another post on them and on the younger generation.
Just one piece to listen to: Segovia's 1959 recording of the Chaconne by Bach.
17 comments:
Heard Barrueco two weeks ago and he played a great recital. He included solo guitar music by Lou Harrison. I don't know if I'd necessarily warm up to Harrison's other non-guitar music but his guitar music sounded fun.
I don't ever plan to be a Marxist or a communist party partisan but Brouwer has been a favorite of mine for decades. His work is a reminder that interests in synthesizing vernacular/popular and "classical" forms and vocabularies has been happening across the Iron Curtain during and since the end of the Cold War.
I admit to being more a Bream fan than a Segovia fan because Bream commissioned or inspired many of the finest works written for the guitar in the 20th century.
Regarding this list, I have been puzzled why classical guitar hasn't caught on more in recent decades given the decline of the heavy preponderance of orchestral music characterizing the still dominant Romantic phase. Even acoustic guitars are ubiquitous in the pop music world unlike most orchestral instruments. Also it is the most portable instrument capable of both melody and chords, leaving aside the accordion. I could understand its neglect when the orchestra was the thing but now that is much less a factor. In addition Baroque music had a certain amount of guitar music and there was even occasional strumming I believe. Is it just the decline of classical music as a whole or is there something more specific going on?
Matanya Ophee used to say the open secret about classical guitar is that nobody in classical music takes the instrument or its repertoire seriously and the extension of that claim was that if classical music is a sideshow then classical guitar is a sideshow of a sideshow (I just can't resist alluding to a line David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia for this particular point). Ophee said that guitarist needed to focus on choosing, performing and at times discussing repertoire that would win them respect from fellow musicians, to pursue chamber music performance, and not just rely on the worn-out warhorses that aren't even bad music most of the time so much as they're over-exposed among guitar recitals.
Ophee said he'd collected a lexicon of anti-guitar invective. He may have been considering a variation on Slonimsky's Lexicon but never assembled all the anti-guitar statements in classical music journalism into a single litany of put-downs.
The Hatchet,
I get the historical context of the guitar and said in my post that the orchestral dominance of the 19th and much of pre WW2 20th C classical music made its neglect understandable. My question relates more to the last say quarter century when the complete supremacy of pop music means that the guitar even in acoustic form is a part of the vast majority of such pieces. This makes it more of a puzzle. I have noticed guitar even in a fair amount of synth pop style music where you would least expect it. So my question is really about the very recent past and the present.
You guys expanded the discussion in some interesting directions. Yes, Bream's great strength was his inspiring of a significant amount of composition from Britten, Walton, Smith-Brindle, Berkeley, and Henze. Segovia also inspired a significant repertoire from Ponce, Castelnuovo Tedesco, Moreno Torroba and others. But Wenatchee, you are correct, this was not enough to make up for the fact that the guitar really has a sideshow repertoire. No great composers wrote for guitar. We came close a few times. Henze and Britten are not to be sneezed at, but nothing from Debussy, nothing from Stravinsky (apart from some minor parts), nothing from Prokofiev. A typical guitar concert is the same tired warhorses leavened with some froth from Latin America. The guitar, in order to be truly taken seriously, would have to be able to stand on stage next to the piano, violin and cello as an important solo instrument. And it simply failed to do so. It rather fell through the cracks. It is less important even in pop music these days than it was in the 60s. About mid-century and well into the 80s, it seemed that the classical guitar might break through. But it didn't happen. In fact, its profile has been shrinking for decades.
These days the only music I work on is by Bach. There is a reason for that.
Bryan,
You say that the guitar is less important now than in the 60s. I don't know if that is true for the acoustic guitar except for the relative demise of folk music. Even the electric guitar's death has been greatly exaggerated except on top 40 synth pop. Rock music is still the second most streamed genre and not far below hip hop/rap. Country music is still replete with guitars. Ed Sheeran prior to The Taylor's apotheosis was an incredible draw strumming his guitar along with drum loops. The Unplugged series has artists and bands playing their amplified songs on acoustic guitars instead.
Again I have no problem understanding why the guitar never made it as an orchestral instrument or even adjunct. What I am talking about is the last 25 years when large orchestras are increasingly confined to large cities except in Europe. The guitar has no problem playing along with other string instruments. The issue with piano is that you have two keyboard instruments which is counterproductive. But guitar and woodwinds or other strings are no problem at all. And even softer brass like the Horn or Alto Trombone can easily be accommodated. So why isn't guitar making a comeback in those circumstances where it is as easily portable as any woodwind, horn, or string apart from double bass? Is it that composers lack confidence in writing for it in ensembles?
Maury, Matanya Ophee had a bluntly memorable zinger about how guitarists would rather play with (ahem, BY) themselves than play chamber music with other people. Repertoire Issues was his call to guitarists to champion chamber music so they'd work with other instruments.
I had a blast writing and playing a duet for guitar and tuba more than a decade ago. I've got a duet for French horn and guitar I hope to play one day and more recently I've been tinkering with two sonatas for trumpet and guitar (one in E minor and the other in B flat major just to make sure both instruments get works in their friendliest keys).
There ARE chamber ensembles out there but you have to go hunt for them and every chamber group only goes so long. d'Amore Duo has at least four albums and Bill Feasley was their guitarist in an oboe/guitar duo. DUo Montagnard is an alto saxophone and guitar duo that has put out several albums. Duo Guitarinet has several albums but you have to go hunt those down in Poland and I think they disbanded ten years ago.
It's almost a half-time job to keep tabs on commercially available albums of chamber music including classical guitar.
For flute and guitar Atanas Ourkouzounov and Mie Ogura have released half a dozen spectacular albums of contemporary music drawing on extended techniques for both instruments.
Ferdinand Rebay's chamber sonatas are slowly and I hope steadily getting more attention. I blogged about the clarinet and guitar sonatas years ago but haven't blogged about Rebay's music in quite some time. I need to get to his seven guitar sonatas, though. His sonatas for oboe and guitar have been getting pretty well-represented in commercial recordings, as have his chamber works for violin and guitar and for viola and guitar thanks to a few releases on Brilliant Classics.
But it's all admittedly obscure repertoire you have to go hunt down.
The Hatchet
Thanks for the explanation. I'll try to look up some of the mentions. So great minds think alike but guitarists say spinach to all that: "i just want to play my guitar." There was a Todd Rungren song: I just want to bang on my drum all day. But I completely agree with Ophee. I think the current orchestral devolution has opened the door for the classical guitar to become a part of small to moderate ensembles of 3 to 12 players for several different reasons.
I feel that similar sentiments have alienated me from classical guitar over the years. One of gifts of being a classical musician as opposed to popular musician is the opportunity to participate in a tradition unmatched in depth and richness compared to even other art music traditions. But that gift seems to be almost negated when confined to such a peripheral role within said tradition. In my opinion, the best bet at reversing this situation would be to attempt a sort of ‘canon catch-up’ where you encourage first-rate composers to write music that incorporates both guitar and traditional orchestral instruments. The challenge with this strategy is that most prominent composers continue to have little to no interest in the guitar and even if they did, the finest composers today still can’t hold a candle to Bach or Haydn. Not to mention, most guitarists that compose seem content with writing chamber and even ‘orchestral’ music for guitar that merely includes more guitars, genres that only become exponentially more marginal with each additional guitar.
One thing that surprises me is why more effort hasn’t been made to incorporate the electric guitar into the classical tradition. It overcomes most of the limitations inherent to acoustic guitar (lack of volume and sustain) and decades worth of jazz, popular music and soundtrack music prove that it is more than capable of blending with traditional orchestral instruments. The wealth of timbres possible depending on the body type, pickup configuration, amp choice, and pedal options provide the electric guitar with a largely untapped gold mine of expressive potential within the classical repertoire. The only pitfall there, seems to be avoiding the ‘gimmick’ factor, but that’s nothing that a discriminating sense of taste can’t overcome.
There are at least two classical guitarists here who still attract big live audiences. Milos on one side, Shibe on the other. Partly, Shibe's appeal is his dual use of electric and classical guitars. Regarding your point M. Alexander, he has said that many composers want to write for the electric, not classical guitar. When I went to a concert of new guitar music at a conservatoire a few months ago, it was nearly all ensemble music with electric guitar.
For repertoire reasons, playing with guitar surely isn't that appealing. Why would a clarinetist, say, play with a guitarist when they have better and greater repertoire they can play in other ensembles.
There are also a number of classical guitarists online with remarkably large followings -- Acker or Whittingham say. But these players tend to be conservative in their repertoire choices, with crossover appeal from more popular styles -- more about the 'guitar' than the 'classical', perhaps.
Wow, when I wrote this post I never imagined it would get such a wealth of comments. Thanks all.
Responding in order: Maury, let me flesh out my observation. The 1960s and even into the 70s was the era of the electric guitar. The guitar gods included B. B. King, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend and Stevie Ray Vaughan. The pop artists who accompany themselves by strumming on guitars today like Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift really are not comparable. And the guitar plays only a minor role in hip-hop where the drum machine is the real core instrument. The guitar never made it as an orchestral instrument because it is a very poor candidate. It might be used in very minor roles for local color, but that's it. Its tone is too soft and too delicate. What the classical guitar really is, is a superb instrument for intimate solo performance. In this it is the heir of the vihuela, lute and Baroque guitar, all of which had huge success in that role. So why not the guitar? The problem really is that the intimate chamber concert is largely a thing of the historical past. It is gone along with the aristocratic class that supported it. It is replaced by the piano recital which is why serious composers write for the piano rather than the guitar.
There is extensive chamber music for guitar by composers like Paganini, Giuliani, Castelnuovo Tedesco, Brouwer and many, many others. But it is all second and third rank music. One area where the guitar could stand out is in the combination of voice and guitar. The repertoire is enormous, much of it historic. Lea Desandre and lutenist Thomas Dunford have been showing us just how good this music is. There is also a considerable 20th century repertoire, much of which I have performed, by Britten, Berkeley, Brouwer, Rodrigo and others. But, and here is the rub: you need a really outstanding singer willing to explore this repertoire. And the vocal recital is itself on life support.
Wenatchee, yes, there is an enormous unexplored repertory of chamber music for guitar. But we need players with chamber music skills and audiences willing to listen to it. And only a small amount of it is really high quality.
Also, the problem with chamber music with guitar sneaking into the gap left by the decline of orchestras is that, for many people, chamber music is boring while orchestral music is exciting.
M. Alexander, I agree. The only lack here is a truly outstanding composer devoting energies to the guitar. And the commissions are simply not there. Gubaidulina has written some significant music for guitars, but there sure have not been many performances.
Steven, thanks for the detail. You know, the simple truth is that there is a lack of high quality creativity both in composers and performers. And I suspect that a significant reason is that there are few rewards.
Thanks Bryan for your comment. It makes sense. Although if orchestral music creates that much excitement audiences don't seem to be that enthused about it currently. My thought was just that to survive outside of a few major cities, classical music needs to become more nimble logistically and guitar is a good solution.
With respect to Mr Alexander's comments / questions about the electric guitar, amplification solves one problem while introducing others. There are two big issues. First amplification introduces other overtones hat are not part of the acoustic guitar spectrum. The sound also can be a bit chaotic in the same way as orchestral bells. So the way electric and acoustic instruments blend is quite variable. Secondly, the variability of sound makes it difficult to predict how an electric guitar will sound like at a particular venue. The guitar, the amplifier, the stage soundboard etc all play major roles in how a written score with electric guitar will sound from site to site. I would suggest discreet amplification of an acoustic guitar as a safer route.
Ferdinand Rebay, after he started composing chamber sonatas for woodwinds and strings with guitar, told a friend that he liked the clarinet/guitar combination better than clarinet/piano and Rebay was a pianist. He wrote hundreds of pieces for guitar and, this was no surprise to eventually learn this, Rebay's niece was a formidable guitarist with an interest in chamber music. Rebay is obviously not 'first rank" and people can hear his stuff and dismiss him as a Brahmsian also-ran but the music is well-made.
IT may be a bit impudent to float this idea but if the grand recital traditions don't have guitar standards retrieving the hausmusik tradition as one worth studying is an option. Nobody's going to claim Christian Dickhut's trios for flute, horn and guitar are "top rate" but musicology and music historiography doesn't need to keep endlessly recycling Beethoven through Brahms ad infinitum. Ophee contended that the chamber repertoire mixing the guitar in with orchestral instruments has been with us for centuries and to not have an inferiority complex about it.
My own musical activity has, for better or worse, been confined to volunteer church music and playing guitar at parties with close friends.
Charles Rosen pointed out decades ago that if you look at the pre-Beethoven piano standards they were generally written for amateurs (women entertaining guests stuff) but also pedagogical works.
WIth that in mind the trouble may be that the pedagogical works for guitar don't rise to even remotely the level of pedagogical works for keyboard. In the guitar literature the gap between "studies" and "concert repertoire" can often feel much firmer and more, for want of a nicer way to put it, impassable. Many studies for guitar feel like they are JUST studies of this or that technical aspect of performance rather than musical utterances. A pianist could play an etude by a pianist composer and it doesn't shout "trill study!" the way a trill study does in guitar contexts. Bach's 2-part inventions don't give this vibe of being what, in a guitaristic context would be, "and this is the cross-string trill study" or "this is the hammer-on and pull-off study" and so on.
When Angelo Gilardino wrote his massive set of transcendental studies he was quick to point out they were compositional studies, not studies in pure technique itself. He wouldn't have felt any obligation to make that clarifying point if it were not understood among guitarists that most studies are technique-for-its-own-sake studies in which musical content has a utilitarian end that overwhelms aesthetic considerations.
Gilardino, Villa-Lobos and Brouwer are the only ones to write etudes of concert quality. And the Villa-Lobos are the only ones anyone plays.
Steven, that's a valid point. Electric guitar has become more of a presence in concert programs and composition recitals and the current trajectory suggests that trend will only increase. Time will only tell if that will translate to electric guitar becoming a common instrument of study within classical performance programs at universities and conservatories. I believe that's likely to happen as long as more repertoire continues to be written and more performers/instructors utilize and embrace the instrument. JIJI is another prominent performer that comes to mind who frequently incorporates both acoustic and electric guitar into her concert programs.
Bryan, one solution could be encouraging more guitarists to pursue commissions and build relationships with composers. I think we could make some worthwhile strides away from the margins of the classical tradition if more of us were willing to network. In my personal experience though, most guitarists tend to be rather introverted in temperament, so that is perhaps easier said than done.
Maury, those are valid concerns. The wide range of timbral possibilities on the electric guitar mean that the performance of the same piece could sound radically different from performance to performance unless composers were willing to include specific hardware requirements and settings in their scoring, but that opens up its own set of problems. Discreetly amplifying acoustic guitars is a great option, especially since great progress had been made in the quality of amplification technology for acoustic guitar in recent years. I did several gigs and recitals myself using my nylon string plugged into an acoustic amp and pedalboard through a piezo pickup a few years ago and was quite happy with the results. At the end of the day I think there's plenty of room for both options. Personally, I think anything can work on a telecaster when placed in the right hands.
The Hatchet
I like your thought about the hausmusik tradition but applied to concerts by professionals and semi professionals in a significantly wider variety of spaces. There are quite a few composers that we might call second rank vs second rate: Louise Farrenc, Giovanni Bottesini, Giuseppe Martucci, Othmar Schoeck, Tomaso Albinoni etc. Even some well known composers have had whole sectors of their music forgotten until recently. The operas of Vivaldi and the symphonies of Glazunov perhaps are the prime examples. So there is a lot of very good quality music out there that is not on the increasingly restrictive standard repertoire list.
The other point I would make is that people are increasingly listening to music on very poor equipment namely the mobile device and the computer. The music biz to compensate has been mastering in extremely aggressive ways for these devices restricting dynamic range and elevating the sound levels. This was a prime factor in the return to vinyl 15-20 years ago since physical limitations of the medium prevent such aggressive sonic rejiggering. It was a relief just to hear some normal sounding pop music for many. If this is true for pop music listeners then the experience of being hit with live acoustic instruments in a satisfying composition can make an aural impact as well at least with a segment of the current music audience. But the classical performers simply have to extend the range of venues they perform in.
I guess you didn't notice that this blog is primarily devoted to classical music? And yes, we are well aware of the contributions of the guitarists you list, they are just not really part of the discussion here. Also, because of the self-serving nature of this comment, due to the inclusion of the link to your website, this really counts as spam, doesn't it? But much more clever spam than usual.
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