Bach: Cello Suite No. 1 on Guitar

Many years ago when I was studying with José Tomás in Alicante, Spain, I brought in a new piece I wanted to play. I wasn't quite ready, technically, to launch into one of the lute suites so I had started on the Cello Suite No. 1 by Bach in the arrangement by John Duarte. The original suite is in G major and mostly lies in the baritone range. Duarte had arranged it in D major, up a fifth, and to make up for the higher tessitura had added a bass line. In the same series he had also arranged the Cello Suite No. 3, originally in C major, up a sixth to A major.

I don't recall exactly, but I think I played the prelude for Maestro Tomás. He looked over the music briefly, then dug out a copy of the original cello suites and picking up his guitar read through the prelude in the original key. It sounded very rich and resonant in comparison. Now how could he do that? Tomás is well known for being the main advocate of the 8-string guitar which is the normal 6-string but with two additional bass strings. He adopted it to be able to play the lute suites of S. L. Weiss with the original bass notes, though it is also very useful in playing the later Renaissance lute music such as that by John Dowland as well. His two lower strings were usually tuned to D and C so he could easily play the Cello Suite as the lowest string on the cello is also a C.

When he came to the end of the prelude Tomás suggested that, since I had a 6-string I might try transcribing it in A major and tuning the sixth to D, a common scordatura. Somewhat chastened I went away and learned a different piece, but years later I set out to try the idea and transcribed the whole suite in A. After learning it, I found quite a few passages lay rather awkwardly where they did not in D major. As I had been playing a lot of lute music tuning the third string in F# I tried that and it worked perfectly. What that actually does is move the interval spacing of the strings down a 4th so the left hand fingering is much like it is in D major. But now I had a piece with the rather unusual scordatura of both sixth in D and third in F#, something unique in my experience. But never mind, it works perfectly so that is the key I play the suite in and I even published my transcription in a book of Bach.

When I played it for Oscar Ghiglia in Banff he was at first scornful, mainly I think because Segovia plays it in D major, but came round after a while and offered some excellent suggestions for an improvement to the gigue.

Everyone else is still playing it in D major which, to my ear, sounds feeble compared to the richer resonance of the cello key.

But now, someone is finally playing the Cello Suite No. 1 by Bach in the right key on guitar! This is Waldemar Kerner playing the suite, originally in G major, in A major. 

Two things I don't like about this version is the added bass lines (not in the prelude, but in later movements) which seem un-Bachian and arbitrary and the lack of slurs. One of the reasons I went to the F# tuning is that it facilitates slurs in the appropriate places. Here is my transcription of the prelude:

The Face of Solo Guitar

This might be a controversial post, but that is something I do occasionally. Reading the New York Times this morning I ran across this article: The Face of Solo Guitar Is Changing. It’s About Time.

Williams’s radiant sound and adventitious origins have made her a key figure in a diverse dawn for the solo guitar. Long dominated by much-mythologized white men like John Fahey, the form’s demographic is slowly broadening to include those who have often been omitted, including women, nonbinary instrumentalists and people of color. These musicians are paying little mind to the traditional godheads. They are, instead, expanding the fundamental influences within solo guitar, incorporating idioms sometimes deemed verboten in what was once a homogenized scene.

Let me first of all outline what I am not doing here: I have absolutely nothing against this kind of music--like all musical genres it contains more interesting and less interesting examples. I also have nothing against any of the artists talked about. My attitude is more power to them and let a hundred flowers bloom. But what I do find irritating is the little threads of ideology that seem to be required to be woven in--and to actually be the basic stimulus behind the article. Are white men like John Fahey "much-mythologized" or simply fine musicians of an earlier generation? Have musicians of color "been omitted" and if so by whom and with what means? It seems to me that great black guitarists like B. B. King and Jimi Hendrix loom very large in the guitar's recent history. Also, what idioms were "deemed verboten"? I don't even know what that means. Also, again, deemed by whom?

As this music moves beyond the realm of obscure collectors, its audience and attention have grown, prompted by the possibilities of players who sound as different as they look.

This brings us back to what really bothers me: this story is really about how a group of musicians look more than how they sound, because, to my ears, there is a whole lot less of interest here than is promised. I find this over and over in the way popular music is covered in the mass media: articles are written that wildly rave about what is fairly ordinary music.

I keep coming back to that headline: The Face of Solo Guitar. But it is a misnomer. This is all about the face of the performer, not the instrument. As long as that face is non-binary, female or of a person of color, then the music is somehow sacralized by this. If a young white, Jewish male guitarist were to come along, I guess that's just tough luck for him! Too bad dude, you just are not "diverse" in the right way.

Here is a track from the article: "Urban Driftwood" by Yasmin Williams:

Bach: Prelude in E, BWV 1006a

In my last post, on John Williams, a tricky little passage in the Prelude to the E major lute suite came up. This passage, an arpeggiated chord sequence, is tricky for guitarists because they have a tendency to let the thumb move the downbeat from the G#, where it belongs, to the E, where it does not belong. This becomes particularly evident at the end of the passage where, when the scalar passages return, it sounds as if the downbeat is in the wrong place. Here is the beginning of the passage:

What happens, as commentator Steven just confirmed, is that the passage starts fine as the previous measure had the thumb sounding each downbeat. The arpeggio starts fine, but over a measure or two, the feeling of where the downbeat is migrates from the first G# to the last E, on the third string played by the thumb. Even when you are aware of the problem the tendency is still there. I played it this way for years, even after a violinist friend pointed it out to me.

I have made the claim that everyone plays it wrong, including John Williams, so let's do a quick survey on YouTube to see if I'm right. Just think, a few years ago, this would have taken a long time to assemble the recordings. But now, we can do it in a few minutes. Ok, first up is Andrey Lebedev and the passage starts around the 30 second mark:

Nope, same problem. He covers the "bump" at the end when we would have two sixteenth notes, both as the beginning of the beat, with a little "luftpause." Next, Sean Shibe:

Nope, same thing. He tries to cover both the entrance into the shifted beat placement and the exit at the end with a diminuendo so we aren't quite sure what we heard. Next Mateusz Kowalski:

Extra points for cool camera angles, but no, same problem. Again, he tries to cover the transition by playing a couple of notes very softly. Next Andrea González Caballero:

Aha! She actually does keep pretty strictly to the beat placement throughout as is particularly evident from the ending of the passage which transitions into the scalar passage with no "bump." Mind you, in other respects the performance isn't great, but she gets this right. Next, fellow Canadian Drew Henderson:

He does a little rubato just before the arpeggio section which obscures things a little bit and, again, a little luftpause at the end, but for the whole section, the thumb determines the beat placement. Why am I picking just on guitarists? Ok, let's listen to Arthur Grumiaux on violin:

Uh-oh, same problem but for a different reason. In this case it is because of the change of bow, but again, the beginning of the beat migrates to the lowest note in the arpeggio. Plus, his tempo wanders around and I'm not crazy about his tone. Next, Rupert Boyd.

Good job! He keeps the beat securely in the right place, so no "bump" or need for a diminuendo or pause at the transition. How about Itzak Perlman?

Nope, same problem, but he almost sells the transition to us by ignoring the problem completely! No weak-ass diminuendo or luftpause for him! One more? How about Ana Vidovic:

Nope, same problem with a diminuendo to hide the transition. I'm almost afraid to put up Hilary Hahn as she is my favorite violinist and she even makes a specialty of the solo violin suites. Oh, what the heck.

I had to listen to that three times and I'm still not exactly sure how she does it. She starts the arpeggio section by slightly extending the first G#. For much of the section it is hard to tell where the beat is exactly, so at the end, the transition seems to come quite naturally. It works. I think that this passage is really much easier on guitar if, that is, you have good control over the thumb.

I know, I know, someone is going to say, "yeah, buddy, well just put your thumb where your mouth is! Let's hear you do it!" Fair enough, but I would need a couple of weeks to get the piece back in my fingers. And I'm not going to play the whole thing because there is some stuff later on that just kills my left hand these days. But that opening couple of pages I find quite easy, yes, even with the correct beat placement.

So, was this an interesting exercise?

Guitar Obsessions

I should have realized early on that I was not like most other guitarists. I'm not quite as obsessed with the instrument as some players are. The Wall Street Journal has a case study: When Your Husband’s Hobby Takes Over the House. That is probably behind the paywall, so here are some quotes:

I have been battling the guitar problem for years—guitars on the sofa, guitars in the kitchen, guitars on the bed, guitars in the bathroom. Guitars tripping me when I walk through a room. And now, despite all efforts to contain them in the garage, they are multiplying like Tribbles.

I'm an eccentric. Way back in 1983 a friend called me up to alert me to a guitar builder named Robert Holroyd in Vancouver. He built just three or four guitars a year, each one a meticulous masterpiece. And since they were spoken for even before he built them, it was rarely possible to try one out. But my friend informed me that he had just finished one and I could go over and try it. After five minutes of sitting down with the instrument, I asked him for his next one. I am still playing that same guitar, one of the finest I have ever seen and I have seen and played instruments belonging to Manuel Barrueco, Pepe Romero and Andrés Segovia. But for many guitarists, owning one is not enough. Pepe in particular has a large collection that thirty years ago was approaching a hundred instruments. But back to the WSJ:

“I just want to sit on my sofa in peace,” I said to psychologist Susan Krauss Whitbourne, an emerita professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst whom I called for advice. “But my husband’s guitars are taking over the furniture. This can’t be good for our marriage.”

“Without knowing anything about your husband, I don’t know if this is a phase or if he plans to keep them forever,” she said.

“He’s joined a dad band,” I said darkly.

You know you have a problem when your husband's guitar collection makes you go into counseling! I remember hanging around outside a masterclass in Salzburg when I was there as a student waiting for Pepe Romero's class to begin when his wife came up and asked where Pepe was. I said he was inside trying out a guitar by an Italian builder. She rolled her eyes and exclaimed "oh no, he's buying another guitar!"

Actually, reading on in the article, it seems that the husband only has a few guitars. Perhaps no more than five or six. He's a piker. Imagine Pepe's wife's problem. Some of his guitars are so famous they have names. Not only that, but Pepe jr has become one of the leading builders of the next generation. I think they are going to need, not an extra room, but perhaps an extra house.

Here is Pepe Romero playing a piece by Sebastian Yradier:

Buying a Guitar

I try to post on a variety of topics and from a variety of perspectives here, but sometimes one area or another gets neglected. I haven't put up much for budding guitarists lately, so let's talk about buying a guitar.

If you are a beginning guitar student you should buy a student guitar, of course! With online retailers this is easier than it used to be. Look at this student guitar from Amazon, for example:

https://www.amazon.com/Classical-Acoustic-Beginners-Strings-Waterproof/dp/B07FHZC61S/ref=zg_bs_11971281_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=649785WBG8C0ZNCNP2W7

Without trying it out, I can't give it much of a review, but this is the kind of instrument you want if you are a young beginner. Seven or eight is a good age to start and you will certainly need a smaller size instrument. This one is a 3/4 size which will suit a lot of beginners. But younger ones might need a 1/2 size guitar. You need an instrument small enough so that your fingers can, with a bit of reaching, span the first four frets.

I haven't played any student guitars for a long time, but one of the most reliable brands has been Yamaha. Here is that same bundle from that company. Notice that the price is higher.

https://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-CGS103A-Classical-Instructional-Polishing/dp/B00F3T36DG/ref=sr_1_10?keywords=yamaha+student+guitar&qid=1557924010&s=gateway&sr=8-10

These bundles include odd things like picks and a strap, which a classical guitarist won't need, but a folk guitarist will. The Yamaha bundle does not include a case. You can get by with a "gig bag" which is a soft canvas case, but that offers little protection for the instrument. As soon as you move up in quality you will need a sturdy hard case.

If you are an adult beginner you will want a full size guitar and a little higher quality. Here is a Yamaha model with a cedar top in the low 200s:

https://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-CG122MCH-Classical-Guitar-Bundle/dp/B07FXXZ6ZD/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1LLXQ2R76D427&keywords=yamaha+classical+guitar+full+size&qid=1557924261&s=gateway&sprefix=yamaha+classical+guitar%2Caps%2C197&sr=8-2

The same is also available with a spruce top:

https://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-Spruce-Acoustic-Classical-Guitar/dp/B07G8P7NGV/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1LLXQ2R76D427&keywords=yamaha+classical+guitar+full+size&qid=1557924364&s=gateway&sprefix=yamaha+classical+guitar%2Caps%2C197&sr=8-3

Yamaha makes guitars at various levels. This is one in the mid-400s with a spruce top:

https://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-CG182S-Natural-Acoustic-Classical/dp/B07FY37XHP/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?crid=1LLXQ2R76D427&keywords=yamaha+classical+guitar+full+size&qid=1557924449&s=gateway&sprefix=yamaha+classical+guitar%2Caps%2C197&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

Once you get past that level, you will want to start visiting music stores to see what they have. There are a few very simple things to look for.

• the "action" is the relationship of the strings to the fretboard. This is critically important. If the strings are too high, it will take too much effort to press them down to the fret. If the action is too low, the strings will buzz on the frets as they vibrate. The action can be adjusted, but if it is really far from correct, it is a sign the music store doesn't know or doesn't care too much about their product!
• the neck needs to be straight, not warped. Hold the guitar up to your eye and sight along the length of the neck to see if it is straight.
• the instrument should not be too heavy. One quick way to sort out instruments is to simply go along the row and lift each one. Try out the lightest one!
• Tap on the body to see if it is resonant and responsive
• Finally, sit down and play it!

Just a few thoughts to get you started. Send me questions in the comments.

Defective Strings

Turning to more practical matters, one of the issues that one has to deal with as a string instrument player is, of course, strings. A while back I gave some simple advice to guitar players about how to improve and it boiled down to three suggestions:

1. Change your strings!
2. Either buy a better guitar or have the action gone over on yours
3. Practice a lot slower!

Unfortunately, because of the frets, guitar strings have to be changed a lot more often than bowed instrument strings. When I was an active professional soloist I played around thirty hours a week and my strings would only last a couple of weeks before they became unusable. What goes wrong is the treble strings get dented by the frets and their pitch starts to become ambiguous. The bass strings start to go dead and the 4th string winding wears through on the second fret. There are guitar players who keep their strings on for a very, very long time, but this is why they sound so bad!

As you are constantly replacing your strings, you are also looking to find the best strings for your instrument and individual approach to tone color. A very popular string for many players that is consistently good and well-priced is the basic Pro Arté brand:

They also have some higher-priced sets that I tend to prefer such as:

A while ago I mentioned trying some new Italian strings that I really liked. I just put another set of their strings on, these ones are called "Rubino" and the trebles are colored red:

Alas, these ones are not working out as the second string (and also the third, to a lesser extent) is defective. We used to run into this problem very frequently with Augustine strings. The frequency or pitch of a string depends on three things: the length of the string, the tension and the mass per unit length or linear density. So:

• the shorter the string, the higher the frequency of the fundamental
• the higher the tension, the higher the frequency of the fundamental
• the lighter the string, the higher the frequency of the fundamental

On the guitar the strings are all the same length so the difference in pitch is achieved through changing the tension with the tuning mechanism and by each string having a different mass, which means that the thinner strings are a higher pitch than the thicker ones.

The problem arises with the mass of the string. With the wound strings, this is pretty easy to control, but it is different with the treble strings. If they are not exactly the same diameter throughout, the pitch will not be clear and defined. Nowadays most trebles are reliably consistent, but you can still get a defective string. Amazingly, some guitarists don't even notice but just struggle a bit with tuning until they replace the string. But it is easy to detect a defective string. Just pluck it and watch closely how it vibrates against the dark background of the sound-hole. A good string will show a smooth band of vibration that grows narrower as the vibration ceases. A bad string will have a jerky, jagged vibration because it is trying to vibrate in more than one frequency due to the variation in the mass or diameter. It will not sound good and you will never get it in tune!

The solution (which I am going to apply this morning): take off the string and replace it with a new one! Luckily, I have a number of sets of extra trebles because sometimes I just replace the basses as they usually go dead before the trebles start sounding bad. With the old Augustine strings, about a third of them were defective. Nowadays it is pretty rare. But now you know what to do.

For our envoi today, the Carora-vals venezolano by Antonio Lauro played by me on a pretty good set of Pro Artés:

Guitar Apps!

Time for something satirical, I think! This might be behind the paywall, but if you google the title, it will probably come up: These Guitar Apps Will Teach You to Shred Like Slash. Here is an excerpt:

Mastering the guitar is a classic fantasy. But if you’re wary of hiring a teacher who’ll only show you the simplest chords while reminiscing about the time he opened for Sugar Ray, consider going digital. This might be the best time in history to learn (or relearn) the instrument from home. Whether you’re a rookie or a rusty old hand, new online tools and apps could fast track you to guitar demigod status, provided you put in the practice.

Yes, it certainly was my fantasy way back in the 1960s.

Dave Isaacs, a 20-year music veteran who instructs students in Nashville and across the internet via Skype, said much has changed since he first picked up a guitar as a cash-starved teen. “To learn a song, I used to have to go to a music store, open a book and sneakily write the chords down on my palm,” he said. Now you can scour sites like ultimate-guitar.com for chords of more than a million songs—even indie obscurities like Ween’s “Spinal Meningitis Got Me Down”—and find countless tutorials on YouTube, all free.

But there’s a catch. Most of that information is created by amateurs, for amateurs, so your melodic rendition of that Bon Iver anthem might not ring true with the real version. “Since anyone can post anything, there are a lot of inaccuracies,” Mr. Isaacs said, warning that beginners can get lost in an online maze of data and quickly lose interest.

The article goes on to describe several online courses and apps offered by Fender and Berklee.

Now for the critique! I know I have mentioned before Crichton's Rule. I can't find the quote online, but the famous author said something like this: "If you read articles in the mass media on a topic where you have professional expertise, you will notice that about 80% of the information is wrong. Now extend that to all the other fields!" I find this to be quite true. Any time I read an article about music in the popular press, I do indeed see that it is about 80% wrong. And so it is with this piece.

The truth is, and this comes from forty years of teaching music, that the learning process is really in the hands (and ears and mind) of the student. Course materials and high quality personal instruction can certainly help, may indeed even play a crucial role, but learning happens within the student and only their energy, curiosity, initiative and capacity for concentration and work will advance them. Yes, a good instructor, or well-crafted materials can certainly save the student some time and help them to find the right path. But only the student can walk that path.

A typical experience teaching is the feeling that, like Sisyphus, you are pushing a stone up a hill, only to have it tumble down as soon as you stop. No-one in the professional music teaching business wants to say this, but it is still true. There are a few gifted students that hardly need any help at all, a few massively untalented students that nothing will help and a bunch in the middle that, with a lot of work and a bit of help, will make some progress.

Dave Isaacs lets the cat out of the bag a bit when he describes going to the music store and copying down some chords out of a book. He was showing some initiative there. But I'm sure that, a bit later in his progress, he was figuring out those chords just by listening to the recording.

I guess there are three stages or levels here. First of all you go find the information you need, chord progressions out of a book maybe (and by the way, the Ultimate Book of Chord Progressions has been in print, and available for a modest price, since the 18th century (though it seems they have put it into two volumes recently):

Or perhaps it is a music teacher in your area. In any case, you find what you need because you are motivated by some fantasy or vision. Second, you absorb the material and develop the skills necessary to play. It is the third stage that is the interesting one: you forget all that and hew your own path and this is what the really fine musicians and composers do.

They don't have an app for that...

Guitaring the Goldbergs

I ran into some wild stuff on YouTube the other day. A couple of years ago I did one of my patented retro record reviews of three different recordings of the Goldberg Variations of J. S. Bach, none of them by Glenn Gould and none of them on piano. Follow the link for that post. But I just noticed some pretty unusual versions of the piece. Years and years ago a couple of friends and colleagues of mine did a pretty nice recording of the Goldbergs on two guitars (one of them an eight-string) and were kind enough to give me a copy. Sadly, that, along with all my other vinyl has disappeared in the mists of time. The last time I was talking to Pepe Romero a few years ago he mentioned that he and his brother Angel were going to record a two-guitar version. I can't find it on Amazon, so if they did do it, it must be no longer available.

The Goldberg Variations are one of the great virtuoso keyboard pieces so you would expect that it would take a guitar duo to perform them. And a pretty accomplished guitar duo at that. But we live in surprising times. Here is a performance of the Aria, the Canons and the Quodlibet from the Goldbergs on solo guitar by Marco Salcito:

Ok, pretty impressive. But that is surpassed by this recording by Jozsef Eotvos of ALL the variations:

Now as we don't have a video it is possible, I suppose, that portions were double-tracked, but it doesn't sound like it to me. Notice that he is playing an eight-string guitar which makes the bass lines a lot easier. Of course he takes the tempos considerably slower than we hear on piano or harpsichord. But as there are no tempo markings in the original, this doesn't seem an indictable offense!

I am reminded of a story I heard about Canadian/American jazz guitarist Lenny Breau who met one of his idols, Chet Atkins, backstage one day and mentioned to him that he, Lenny, had struggled a long time to master this one particular solo on one of Chet Atkins' records. Chet Atkins looked back in amazement and said, "hey, I double-tracked that solo!"

Townsend: Sigüenza by Moreno Torroba

I have something a little different for you today. I ran across this video that a friend shot a few years ago. At the time I was playing all eight movements of Federico Moreno Torroba's Castles of Spain, a lovely set of pieces named after different, yes, castles in Spain. This movement is called "Sigüenza" which is a castle in northern Spain in the province of Guadalajara. This is a picture of it:

The somewhat impromptu performance was shot in one take in my studio and has a couple of minor flaws. But I hope you will enjoy it nonetheless!

Collectible Guitars

The Wall Street Journal had a mildly interesting article yesterday on collectible guitars. I say "mildly interesting" because the focus is very narrow, just on electric guitars of the last sixty years. Oddly enough, only a couple of guitars are actually worth more than the one I have been playing for the last thirty years, my Robert Holroyd guitar built in Vancouver in 1983. The big exception is Eric Clapton's cobbled together Stratocaster from the 1970s which sold for $959,500. But supposedly really special instruments like a 1962 Gretsch sold for under £3000.

What all the instruments in the article have in common is that they were made in a factory. There are lots of classical guitars, mostly student models, that also come out of a factory. But all the serious concert guitars are hand-made. In the case of my guitar, the builder made a guitar about every three months. With each one he changed the design a bit so there are no two alike. That's why it is worth five figures. If you look here, you will see that concert guitars commonly sell for from $2000 at the low end to $20,000 at the high end. An average is probably around $6000.

Of course, compared to the prices of violins and cellos, this is a trivial amount! 

Guitar by Robert Holroyd, 1983

Townsend: Suite No. 1, Finale

This piece seemed to just pop into my head while I was in the shower. I like to think of it as equal parts Jimi Hendrix and Dmitri Shostakovich. The basic pitch structure comes from the so-called "Hendrix" chord which he used in "Purple Haze". The chord contains both a major and a minor third. But I chose to understand it as containing a minor third and a diminished fourth, one of Shostakovich's favorite intervals. The rhythmic structure is just me. But it took Ken, my recording engineer to point out that the 'lick' does bear a family resemblance to the lick from "Day Tripper" by the Beatles (actually, John Lennon). I never really noticed, but he may be right! "Day Tripper" is one of my favorite Beatles tunes.

This is a fun ending to the suite so I have put in some photos from the session of myself and Ken and one of my beautiful assistant, grabbing a snack in between takes. I hope she will forgive me!

Ken, by the way, is a really super recording engineer. The last guy he was working with was Donald Fagan from Steely Dan, so I should be quite flattered he is helping me out.

Enjoy!

Townsend: Suite No. 1, Chant

This movement, the fourth of the suite, is the most original, I believe. It is certainly influenced by earlier music, Gregorian chant and Chopin in particular, but I don't think anyone has used those influences in quite this way, and certainly not for the guitar. Ken, my recording engineer, kept saying that the guitar was sounding like a cello and I see what he means. I wrote this quite quickly. It just seemed to come to me. Then I played it many times in different ways because I realized that while the notes were important, in this piece the tone-colors and dynamics were equally important. Finally, I went back to the score and tried to add in indications of how the music should be played.

In the middle of the piece there is a direct quote from one of the oldest chants, the Pange Lingua, which dates from the 6th or 7th century AD. Those little flurries of grace notes are the Chopin influence. But I think it is safe to say that this is my music and it uses the capacities of the guitar in a unique way.

One of the oddest things about the piece is the way I have notated it. It looks really strange because I have used whole notes for most of the pitches. What I wanted was a piece with no pulse. In the 17th century lutenists had a clever way of writing pieces like this, called unmeasured preludes. Since in lute tablature the notes and the rhythms are notated independently. If you don't want to specify any rhythms, just don't write them down. But modern notation, and especially music software, doesn't allow this. So I wrote everything (except the grace notes) in whole notes. That's why you get odd time signatures like 5/1 or 16/1. Those aren't measures, they are phrases! Anyway, I think the effect of the piece justifies the odd notation.

Townsend: Suite No. 1, Air

The third movement of the Suite No. 1 was actually the first written. It was the beginning of my attempt to re-invent harmony. I was quite fascinated with the Neapolitan sixth at the time as you will hear. In D major, the Neapolitan harmony is a chord of E flat, G and B flat. In traditional harmony it precedes the dominant, but I used it more freely here.

An air is a light melody. As Wikipedia informs us,

Lute ayres emerged in the court of Elizabeth I of England toward the end of the 16th century and enjoyed considerable popularity until the 1620s. Probably based on Italian monody and Frenchair de cour, they were solo songs, occasionally with more (usually three) parts, accompanied on a lute. Their popularity began with the publication of John Dowland's (1563-1626) First Booke of Songs or Ayres (1597). His most famous ayres include Come again, Flow my tears, I saw my Lady weepe, and In darkness let me dwell.

 But look for no Dowland influence in this air. It is just a charming tune. But I was fascinated with sudden harmonic shifts at the time so there is a lot of that.

Townsend: Suite No. 1, Elegy

This is the second movement of the Suite No. 1 for guitar that began with this post. The first movement, Bagatelle, was written because I originally thought I was going to write several bagatelles. As time went on, a series of contrasting movements took shape that I decided to call a suite. In the Baroque era, the suite had a certain form, consisting of several dance movements in a certain order. Mind you, the French often departed widely from the usual, while the Germans stuck pretty close. Nowadays the suite often seems to be a series of excerpts from a ballet or other larger piece: the Nutcracker Suite, for example. My suites are simply a set of contrasting movements in different tempos that create some kind of progression of mood.

Today we are listening to the second movement, which is slow. It is an Elegy, which is traditionally a kind of lament for the dead. This one started as a simple piece for a student of mine. But a friend of mine, an elderly violinist, passed away and so I took the simple theme and expanded it into something larger which I played at his memorial service. I wanted a contrasting coda at the end with a bit of bite to it and tried stealing chord progressions from Mozart and others before giving up and coming up with my own!

The main influences are probably Beethoven and Chopin.

And on a lighter note...

Quarter-note, that is! Here are some listing photos from real estate in the Seattle area. All with a "strategically placed guitar".

http://seattle.curbed.com/archives/2013/04/seattle-real-estate-listing-photo-trends-the-strategic-guitar.php

I don't know about you, but in my experience people who leave their guitars out on little stands like that may not even own guitar cases and probably never actually practice. I just thought these photos and accompanying commentary were really funny.

Stradivarius Guitars

I'll bet you didn't even know there was such a thing as a guitar built by Stradivarius. The late 17th and early 18th centuries were a particular golden era for the guitar and it was a hugely popular instrument in the royal courts of Europe so it was inevitable he would have built some. There are four guitars by Stradivarius still in existence and here is an excellent website with lots of photos.

There are some modern copies that are played by performers specializing in historical performance, but the Stradivarius guitars occupy a tiny position in the modern musical world, compared to their violin and cello cousins. Why is that?

Here is an interesting thing about guitars and violins. The violin top (and bottom, though that is less important) is vaulted as you can probably see in this photo of a Stradivarius violin:

This gives the top a great deal of structural integrity, making for a long life. The top of the guitar, however, is flat. This top, moreover, is twisted by the tension from the bridge. In a modern instrument this amounts to some 125 lbs of torque. After twenty to thirty years, the acoustic integrity of the top starts to go and significant loss of sound is the result.

But the vaulted top of a violin, with a different sort of bridge entirely and supported internally with a bass bar, is far stronger.

True, the guitar also has internal strutting, which does help, but the flat top makes for a short lifespan compared to the violin.

UPDATE [Oct. 28, 2012]: This post keeps being popular so I am updating it by including a musical clip of Baroque guitar. Here are the first four movements of the best-known suite by Robert de Visée (1655 - 1733) including the Prelude, Allemande, Courante and Sarabande. The guitarist is Rob MacKillop and the guitar looks quite a bit like a reproduction of a Stradivarius.

History of a Composition

I've been a composer nearly all my life, but for most of that time composition has had a distinctly secondary role. Often I composed simply because I needed repertoire for a certain combination of instruments. I have a good friend who is a fine violist and there is absolutely no good repertoire for viola and guitar so I have written a couple of pieces. I used to coach guitar ensembles and discovered that even after months or years of rehearsal, it is extremely difficult to get multiple guitars to play exactly together. Just listen to a recording of Julian Bream and John Williams. I wrote one piece that was an etude in ensemble, but that succeeded more in demonstrating the problem than in solving it. Finally I decided to write a piece for guitar ensemble that would pose no ensemble problems: the guitars would simply not be required to play together! Here is the piece:

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Let me explain how this works: there is a conductor who cues the beginning and the progress through the piece. The score is a flow-chart. You start at the top and follow the lines, therefore everyone plays the top box, but then you have a choice of one of the two boxes below. That top box is a rather odd effect where, by crossing the 6th and 5th strings over one another and holding with the left hand and then by playing rasgueado (a kind of flamenco strumming) you get a nicely noisy, chaotic sound. I premiered this with an ensemble of ten guitars and having all ten start with that is a nice shock to the audience. With the next level down, all the guitars are either playing Bartok 'snap' pizzicatos or harmonics. As we move through the piece, pitched notes gradually predominate until at the ending we hear only melody. The way I conduct it, I keep going back to that opening chaotic gesture which I bring back in by cuing one or more guitars to return to that box, threatening to overwhelm whatever is going on. I end the piece by having a few guitars move to the final box, #10, while most stay with the chords on #9. Then I mix in more and more of box #1 until the melody is lost in the chaos. Then I chop off everyone except the guitars playing the melody and let it just float around and trail off...

It is actually pretty effective in concert and, since no-one has to worry about ensemble, they can, theoretically, be more creative.

The music obviously has flamenco influences as we can see from the chords of #6 and #7. I have never analyzed the piece, it was written purely from instinct.

The original title was "Forms" which is quite appropriate as the piece can have many different forms and will be different every time you play it. It is really a kind of toolbox for building a piece from scratch with the contents laid out, but with the flow determined completely by the conductor and players. I changed the title when it was published together with two other pieces for guitar ensemble because I had this great title and the piece it was supposed to be the title of never got past the sketch stage. It was originally going to be a 'string quartet' for mandolin, guitar, harpsichord and double bass.

I have a recording of this piece and if I get a chance to convert it to a digital file I will update this post with it.

But in the meantime, comments?

Programming

After some forty years as a musician, I am finally pretty sure about what counts as good music! When I think of some of the pieces I subjected poor, innocent audiences to over the years, I weep.

Don't get me wrong, Henze has written some great pieces, but this arrangement, by Leo Brouwer from El Cimmaron isn't one of them. Then there is this piece:

It is not bad, but compared to the equivalent piano music it is dull, dull, dull. Now here is a fine piece for guitar:

Sorry for the sound quality of these clips...

Discipline and Joy

When I switched from electric guitar and bass and acoustic steel string guitar to classical guitar around age 19 it was as profound a change as a Buddhist suddenly deciding to become Jewish or an Amish becoming a hip-hop artist. I described it in terms of a change in instruments--a small one, really from steel string guitar to nylon string--but it was really a profound aesthetic and philosophical one. I decided, over a period of a few months, to learn to be a classical guitarist and to stop being a guitarist who played popular music. I say 'popular' music--what I mean is "all that music that is not classical". I stopped buying popular records--I didn't even buy Abbey Road when it came out. Instead I started buying records of Dvorak, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Faure, Tchaikovsky and more Bach. I taught myself to read music by learning how to write it. I took classical guitar lessons. Before then I didn't really study music. Oh, I had a couple of lessons right when I started on bass guitar, but they didn't amount to much. How I learned to play was by listening and by forming a band. We learned together. Sort of. But as soon as I discovered classical music I realized this was a whole new ball game. No violinist learned how to play the Tchaikovsky concerto without studying. Big time. So after I had gone to two or three teachers and found out that they themselves hadn't actually studied the instrument seriously, I finally went to Spain early in 1974. At that time in Canada, believe it or not, there was hardly a single guitar teacher in Canada that was truly qualified.

I spend nearly a year in Spain, in the medium-sized town of Alicante, where there lived a fellow named Jose Tomas that you have probably never heard of. The greatest classical guitarist in the world at that time was Andres Segovia and there was a small circle of--could we call them disciples?--around him. Alirio Diaz from Venezuela, Oscar Ghiglia from Italy, John Williams from the UK, Michael Lorimer from the US and Jose Tomas from Spain. These guitarists were the second generation, at least counting from Segovia. The least well-known of them was probably Jose Tomas. But he was selected to be Segovia's assistant at the big annual master class in Santiago de Compostella. Jose Tomas lived in Alicante, surrounded by his own group of students from the US, Japan and Europe. It was this group I joined. I spent about six hours a day practicing guitar, doing technique, learning new repertoire. The rest of the time I went to lunch with some fellow students and read Russian novels. That's it. When I went to Spain I was a hack classical guitarist. When I got back, about a year later, I was a real classical guitarist. A few months after getting back I decided to continue my formal music education and auditioned to enter the performance program at McGill University in Montreal--then, and now, the finest music school in Canada. I played the best audition they had ever seen (which included the Theme and Variations by Lennox Berkeley).

What is the point of telling you all this? Just fond reminiscences? No! As my mother often reminded me, I don't have a lick of common sense. But there are some things I just know intuitively. One of them is the importance--and joy--of discipline. What I did in that year in Spain, during which I really learned how to play, was discipline. Every morning I would get up, have churros y chocolate across the street, then come back to my room and practice. I would start with simple exercises: slurs, arpeggios, scales, playing them in different ways at different speeds, until they were absolutely automatic. Then I would take up the new piece I was working on. Section by section I would memorize it. Then I would play over some older repertoire. This would take three hours. Then I would go for lunch. In the late afternoon, I would do it all again. And I did this day after day, week after week, month after month. A set of strings would be worn out in less than two weeks.

A very fine flute-player (who became principle flute in an orchestra) I used to perform with once said that everyone who really learned how to play did the core work in about a year of absolute total effort. Everything else is just refinement and trimming the edges. Don't know if that is true for everyone. But my point here is that mastery demands discipline. It can come in different ways. The way I did it is certainly not unusual. For the Beatles, it was probably the couple of years they spent playing clubs in Hamburg.

What drives people to this level of discipline? It might come naturally to some, but to others it is something they adopt because they have to. I think for me it was the vision that I talked about in this post. I don't remember the moment of epiphany--and that probably means it wasn't a moment. It was probably a phase of gradually clearing vision, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. It might have taken months. All I know is that at the time the Beatles White Album came out, in November 1968, that was all I was interested in, musically. But by the time Abbey Road came out, in October 1969 (in Canada), I was barely interested in it at all and didn't even buy a copy. Sometime between fall of 68 and fall of 69 I became a classical musician. It took me several more years to learn how to play like one, but the allegiance was clear and unquestioned. I didn't even think about any of this. It was just as obvious as falling into the ocean meant you got wet.

The vision was one of joy. The ineffable joy of music. And the road to that joy was through discipline. You could write a book: The Joy of Scales. But it wouldn't be a best-seller.

A Light Touch

I'm re-learning a Bach Gigue right now. I have always found them to be particularly challenging from a technical point of view. The tempo is quick and the texture can be complex, at least for guitar! Here is John Williams playing both the Bourree and the Gigue, which starts at around 1:52:

I haven't played this Gigue for about thirty years, but it seemed to come back into my fingers fairly quickly. Accent on "seemed", because then it bogged down. The usual solution to most technical problems, especially with Bach, is to practice very slowly, which I did, but it still was just not coming together. Then I tried something fairly new for me: practice very, very quietly. It is all about control, after all, and very quiet practice puts all the focus on control. This proved to be the answer. For too many years, ever since a trombonist said I didn't have a strong enough forte on one of my graduation recitals, I have just played the guitar too loud. I'm not alone, a lot of classical guitarists hammer away. But I think I finally shook that demon. These days, you don't have to whale on it, just amplify as needed. The virtues of the classical guitar lie more in the piano end of the spectrum, not the forte... It sounds like Williams is playing loud, but I don't really think he is. If you watch closely while he plays the prelude from this same lute suite, you can see he is very relaxed:

The incisiveness comes from the right hand position, I believe. With a high wrist, the nails are pointed into the strings at a sharper angle. You have to be relaxed to play this prelude--trust me! And I think he is. Also, with a little studio magic, you can punch up the sound as you wish. The one time I heard John Williams in a live concert, he used amplification for both the solo and concerto halves of the program. In conversation afterward, I learned that he has done a lot of research into how to get the best sound when amplifying classical guitar. So I don't think he ever plays heavily--or needs to.