The second movement of this piece, the "Obstinato" is a wonderfully unique example of modern writing for guitar. Like Stravinsky, Brouwer has a physical approach to the instrument that leads to many original harmonies and textures. His roots in Cuban folk music make his music anything but abstract.
The second movement of this two-movement piece starts with a tricky staccato texture that is unique in the guitar repertoire:
There is no tempo marked in the score and my penciled in eighth note equal to 144 is just a suggestion. I may have gotten that from either the Cuban edition or from a recording--I simply don't recall. Pick your own tempo! This section uses a single chord-shape that moves around. What is tricky is how to create the staccato. It is really a combination of right hand and left. The left hand can stop the sound by releasing the pressure on the frets momentarily and the right hand helps by dropping back on the strings. The bass staccato is just with the thumb, of course. It seems odd at first, but once you get used to the technique it feels quite natural. Then next musical idea uses the same chord-shape, but fortissimo and marcato:
Don't cut these notes short as it makes for more of a contrast with the previous idea. I penciled in 2/4 over the 4/8 because this is really how the measure feels. I mentioned before how the notation of the meter is a bid odd in places and this is another example. I think Brouwer had this music in his fingers and ears first and then had to figure out how to notate it later--not an uncommon situation with composers. This section, with variations of the two basic ideas, repeats and the next section is marked Vivace:
Click to enlarge
Here we have perhaps the most distinctive original idea in the Elogio: the right hand strikes the bridge (I use the middle finger) followed by a left hand slur and then a simultaneous blow to the bridge combined with plucking the sixth string with the thumb. Tricky at first, but again, it comes to feel natural with practice. What I find the most difficult is adjusting the balance of the simultaneous golpe with plucking the sixth string. It is hard to get them evenly audible. Somewhere, again either in the Cuban edition or a recording of the composer, I have seen/heard an additional golpe with the open E at the beginning of the third measure. I don't do it myself, but I believe it would be an option here and similar places. The next motif is a transition to the "stacking" motif that ends the section and it involves symmetrical slurs across the fingerboard:
Pretty straightforward. The left hand index finger has two roles: first it opposes the torque from the third finger in order to make a clean slur, then it changes into the finger executing the slur to the open string. Slow practice will solve the problem, as always. I'm not going to quote the whole "stacking" motif as is goes over three lines of the score. Here is the basic idea:
Like a stretto in a fugue, the idea involves stacking up a single motif at higher pitches: descending 4ths and rising 5ths. These are intervals that have not been heard too often so far in the piece. This is combined with a rhythmic idea that squeezes the motif and then syncopates it. This same passage is later used to end the piece in a satisfactory manner.
Here is an interesting performance by Stephen Chau on a 1991 Friedrich guitar:
It is a tidy performance with fairly good attention to the dynamics. He agrees with me regarding the misprint on page 1. Unfortunately, the Obstinato feels a bit stiff and he simply does not do the staccatos in the upper voices, only in the bass!
Continuing on from last time, page two of this outstanding example of modern guitar repertoire. I have just been re-learning this piece after not having played it for decades. The amenability of guitar repertoire to memorization varies widely so a number of years ago I adopted the policy of only playing those pieces from memory that are well-suited to it. The Segovia repertoire of largely Spanish composers of the 20th century is ideal for performance from memory, as is the Latin American repertoire and a great deal of the 20th century repertoire from other countries. To this we can add the 19th century repertoire from Sor, Giuliani, Mertz, Tarrega and others. As you move outside this window, on either side, memorization becomes more problematic.
For example, some of the most avant-garde pieces are extremely difficult to memorize and others should not be memorized. Examples would include moment-form pieces like the one for alto flute and guitar I posted a few days ago, Night Rain by Anthony Genge. This is written in the form of "moments" or small cells for each instrument. For each movement you play each cell once. This is a piece that has to be read fresh for each performance. You should not play a fixed, memorized version. Another example is the Klavierstück XI by Stockhausen (or pieces by Morton Feldman and Earle Brown) in which a number of fragments or moments are distributed on a single page and the performer selects which one to play next so they can be heard in any order. Much early music is also difficult to memorize and it was usually played from tablature, not memorized.
I bring this up because I found the Elogio tricky to memorize in a couple of ways. First of all, the cellular structure makes it possible for you to interchange two very similar cells inadvertently. This is rectified just by more work, of course. A subtler problem is the meter. More and more I have the feeling that a lot of Elogio was composed on the instrument, improvised and then written down. I say this because I get the sense that the notated meter was imposed afterwards. Incidentally, when I saw Leo Brouwer perform this piece in a concert in Montreal in, I think it was, 1977, he played it from the music!
My first example is mm. 23 and 24 at the top of page 2:
Here we have the repeat of the cluster motif followed by a transitional measure that sets up the following section in a new tempo and with new material. M. 24 is an odd sort of measure, certainly not in 3/4 meter. He could have likely notated it as a measure of 1/4, rest, followed by a measure of 2/4. On the previous page there are a couple of 1/4 measures with rests.
Then we have the Allegro moderato that Brouwer plays with the dotted quarter equal to 96 though this is not marked in the score.
The notation uses some shorthand. The first measure, m. 25, is actually eighth notes which is indicated by the slash in the stem. Each note is played staccato, indicated by the staccato dots underneath the notehead. The next measure changes meter to 12/8. This whole section alternates between 9/8, 12/8 and 6/8 which I found a bit tricky to keep straight when I was memorizing it. The section is a variation on the opening of the piece with the repeated open Es and the arpeggiated chord. That is one of the hardest passages in the piece:
This is almost the same chord as at the beginning, but with the addition of an open G. This takes a LOT of slow practice to get clean, especially at a quick tempo. I think a slower tempo with more clarity is better than a quick tempo that is messy. Notice that he is asking for little crescendos along with everything else. This is one of my favorite passages:
Again, a variation on the basic material. I love the quadruplets going into the quintuplet followed by the plain eighths which are the equivalent of triplets as these are all divisions of the dotted quarter pulse. The last beat of the 9/8 measure is a really difficult (at this tempo) slur passage. You have to keep up the eight note subdivision while subdividing it into triplets meaning that this dotted quarter contains nine notes. I saw something rather comical at a guitar competition once. In one of the qualifying rounds a Japanese guitarist was playing the Elogio and when he got to the Allegro moderato he took a tempo that was so fast that one of the jury (who shall remain anonymous) stopped him and said, "this section is not possible at that tempo!" He looked at her quizzically and then played the passage in slurs flawlessly at the tempo. Guitar technique is always progressing and what was impossible for the juror's generation was not a problem for the young Japanese guitarist. Awkward moment, though. The solution here is, as always, slow careful practice. And never try to play faster than you can control.
This section incrementally becomes fragmented and then returns to the original tempo and material with variations. One thing you have to watch is the dynamics. A lot of guitarists ignore some of the dynamics, but they are all important and integral to the music. In m. 42, you should play sul tasto as well as piano and più lento:
And that's pretty much it for the first movement of the piece. The second movement, titled "Obstinato," we will take up next time.
Here is a good performance by Mexican guitarist Pablo Garibay that is very sensitive to timbral contrasts:
I haven't done too many posts on the practical aspects of guitar-playing lately; this might fill the gap. I studied in Spain in the mid-70s just when Leo Brouwer was starting to become known as an outstanding composer for guitar in a modern idiom. Not a lot of players were learning his music yet and his important compositions, like Elogio de la Danza, were just beginning to be published. That piece was written in 1964 and was published by Schott in 1972. I purchased a copy from Union Musical Española in Madrid in 1974 and I still have that copy.
I first learned the piece in 1976 when I was a student at McGill University. I didn't study it when I was a student of José Tomás in Spain because it seemed too avant-garde at the time. All the students in the international group gathered in Alicante under his tutelage were studying the more conventional repertoire, especially pieces that he had either edited, like the Lute Suite No. 1 by Bach, or ones he or Segovia had edited and fingered by composers such as Moreno Torroba, Joaquin Rodrigo, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Tansman and so on. The most modernist music I recall playing for Tomás was a couple of studies by Stephen Dodgson. So I didn't take up the Elogio until I was an undergraduate at McGill. In fact, I recorded it and the first three movements of the Lute Suite No. 4 by Bach for Radio Canada (CBC) in 1977. Sadly, I don't have a copy of that recording as I would love to hear how I was approaching the piece back then. I had the opportunity on a couple of occasions, once in Montreal and once in Toronto, to play for Brouwer in a master class and I think I played this piece for him in one of them, probably in Montreal.
So that's the background, on to the music. The piece, while largely conventional from a technical point of view, has some interesting musical challenges. What I love about the piece, apart from its cellular sort of structure, is the unique timbres he wrests from the guitar and that starts with the very first harmony:
I have a couple of suggestions before we start. As the printed edition lacks measure numbers I suggest you mark them for reference. Put the measure number at the beginning of each line, counting carefully. All marks on the score, measure numbers, fingerings, etc. should be in pencil only, never pen. You will inevitably want to change them at some point!
For guitarists in the 70s this was a unique and remarkable new kind of sound--remember we had mostly developed our technique with endless scales, slurs and arpeggios and a lot of studies by Sor, Giuliani and Aguado. Our repertoire extended from Bach to Moreno Torroba with just a touch of Rodrigo. This was a whole other world of sound. This is actually pretty tricky to execute. That little grace-note arpeggio has to be handled just right or the notes won't balance. You have to get all four notes to come out evenly with the stress on the high C#. The shape of the chord is unusual so you have to be careful that each string vibrates freely. I use a little different fingering than the one given: piaia instead of pimpa, but you should use whatever gives you the best balance in the chord. You will notice that I have penciled in a different, slower, metronome marking. This comes from the Cuban edition of the music which I had access to at one point. This opening motif is repeated with rhythmic variation and then a new motif is introduced:
This is a written-out accelerando, so the poco accel. is really not necessary. Perhaps he added that to make sure you got the point. I always found the added indication distracting. It makes you tend to lose control in the third little group of notes! So I choose to understand this as meaning that you should not over-emphasize the different subdivisions, but execute the whole gesture smoothly. When you are learning the passage, it is good to be quite strict with the rhythm at first, feel each subdivision. You will notice "f g g flat" penciled in. This is because I think that there is a misprint here. The motif, which appears later on, is always tone, semitone, moving from the first through the second and third strings. F A flat, G is minor third, semitone and does not fit. The whole piece uses symmetrical patterns moving across strings, so I am pretty sure this is a misprint. Play F G G flat instead. One other thing, don't let the low B flat ring, but cut it off as soon as you play the A.
The next new idea, along with a tempo change not indicated in the Schott edition comes in mm 7:
Click to enlarge
The previous section ends with those open Bs, first as harmonics and then the open string. This echoes the open low Es of the beginning and transitions us into the next section. There is no tempo change in the Schott edition, but the Cuban edition says piu mosso with the dotted quarter at 84. This is correct, of course. For Brouwer things like dynamics and timbre are structural so you need to make sudden, crisp contrasts between the f sub and the p stacc. That means "suddenly forte," that is, without any foreshadowing, and he also asks for metálico, meaning with a very bright sound achieved by plucking near the bridge, and then suddenly piano and staccato. The kind of staccato used here is what I call "thumb staccato" which you execute by using the flesh of your thumb to damp the sound as soon as you pluck. This is contrasted with the accented notes played forte which are played just with the nail, quite forcefully.
The sextuplet is a bit tricky so it and all the fast passages need to be practiced many times very slowly and very evenly. If you click on the example you should be able to read my penciled in fingerings. The second time you play the sextuplet, the printed fingering asks you to suddenly shift to third position for the last C in the group. Don't do it! It is needlessly difficult. Instead shift to third position after the F# on the next line. That gives you lots of time to make the shift instead of while you are playing that tricky sextuplet. Next the rubato sextuplet from before is played twice, the second time sul tasto, which means you pluck over the fingerboard to get a very dark sound. Remember, these timbral contrasts are structural, so make them very stark.
The next motif recalls the rhythm of measure 4 with a syncopated figure followed by a triplet. This time, however, it is with a tone cluster:
The notation is just a tad deceptive. This kind of motif Brouwer always wants to ring: laissez vibrar. That little breath mark ordinarily means you would cut the sound, but not in his music. He generally likes chords to ring as long as possible. This motif is then repeated with the stopped notes a semitone higher, heightening the tension and preparing for the next section, the Allegro moderato. Let's stop here and continue with that section in a future post.
For an envoi, let's listen to a performance of the piece. This is Mabel Millán playing in a competition in Bilbao:
There are a few problems with the performance. She simply plays the notes of the grace-note arpeggio across the strings instead of the order as written. She plays the accelerating motif with the printed notes, which I am pretty sure are a misprint. She ignores the staccato and tenuto marks on the repeated G notes in mm 7. Her sextuplet is a bit sloppy, but she uses the fingering I suggest for the shift to third position. Anyway, enough nit-picking!
This is the last of my three posts that are meant to refine my original post on the Top Ten Pieces for Classical Guitar. That one remains the most popular post at the Music Salon. So I decided to fine-tune it a bit by focusing on three types of repertoire: larger pieces over fifteen minutes, shorter pieces up to eight minutes in length and transcriptions. That does leave out those pieces between eight and fifteen minutes in length which include some excellent pieces like Ponce's Sonatina meridional and Rodrigo's Invocation and Dance, so maybe in the future I will do a post on medium length pieces. But today we are going to look at transcriptions.
Transcriptions play a very important role in the repertoire for classical guitar because, as an instrument, the guitar has some awkward gaps in its historical repertoire. In very broad strokes, music for instrumental soloists and ensembles didn't really become important until early in the 16th century. Publishers like Ottaviano Petrucci were among the first to issue sheet music from movable type. Before then, music was disseminated through manuscript copies. From Wikipedia:
A total of 61 music publications by Petrucci are known. By far the most fruitful period of his life for publishing music was the period between 1501 and 1509, during which he published the three volumes of chansons (the Odhecaton being the first), 16 books of masses, five books of motets, 11 anthologies of frottole and six books of music for lute.
You can see that, after vocal music, the most important genre was music for lute, the premiere domestic instrument. The music for lute usually comprised either transcriptions of vocal polyphony or pieces in that style, or instrumental dances. One early exception were the sets of variations we find in the books for vihuela, the Spanish cousin to the lute. The lute dominated solo instrumental music until the harpsichord took over in the later 17th century. The five-course Baroque guitar enjoyed a flurry of interest in the late 17th and early 18th century, but the writing was on the wall: from then on keyboard instruments were completely dominant. The late 18th century composers of music for guitar like Fernando Sor and Mauro Giuliani were completely overshadowed by keyboard composers like Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. The guitar hung on by a thread in the 19th century, but by the end it was relegated to mere local color in the music of Francisco Tárrega. I don't mean to slight his fine compositions, but they are not even close to being in the same league as the great 19th century keyboard composers such as Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt or Robert Schumann. Largely through the efforts of players like Agustín Barrios, Miguel Llobet and Andrés Segovia, the guitar enjoyed a renaissance in the 20th century that saw outstanding compositions from the pen of composers such as Benjamin Britten, Eliot Carter, Steve Reich and many, many others.
But artists like Segovia, in their quest to put the guitar back on the concert stage, encountered some real problems with the repertoire. Apart from a scattering of works by Sor, Giuliani and Tárrega, the only repertoire was being created from scratch by composers like Moreno-Torroba and Ponce who were working directly with Segovia. So he started investigating how the repertoire could be substantially augmented through transcription. The implication of the term "transcription" as opposed to "arrangement" is that the transcription is a version faithful to the original and one that can stand in for the original in a concert performance. An arrangement is often a considerably altered version suitable for particular circumstances.
The big holes in the guitar repertoire were in the Baroque and Romantic eras, so that is where Segovia concentrated. He found excellent potential in the music of the Spanish nationalist composers like Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados whose piano music so evokes that guitar that, if you can manage to fit the notes on the instrument, it sounds entirely natural. These transcriptions have been so successful that pieces like Asturias (Leyenda) by Albéniz are probably played on guitar more often than they are on piano. Another composer who saw his music transcribed for guitar was Chopin, though the effort was not as successful (there is an excellent version of one of the nocturnes by Tárrega). Liszt was not feasible, though a few of the shorter pieces by Schumann have appeared.
The big prize, as far as Segovia was concerned, was Bach. If he could only find some music by J. S. Bach that could be added to the guitar repertoire that would go a long way to proving the instrument's suitability as a major solo instrument. It was here that he really struck gold. One of his most inspired ideas was to transcribe the enormous Chaconne that forms the last movement of the Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin. This, and the other suites for solo violin, are so contrapuntally rich that they are ideal for performance on guitar. Indeed, except for a few added bass notes, Segovia had no work to do in transferring the Chaconne to guitar. It was and is a huge part of the repertoire. Other pieces that proved successful were the Siciliana from the Sonata No. 1 and all of the Partita No. 3 in E major, which Bach himself did a version of for Baroque lute with added basses.
Bach was important because he was the only one of the truly major composers that could easily be included in the guitar repertoire. Transcriptions were attempted of pieces by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but none of them proved very successful. The only other Baroque keyboard composer who has seen a lot of performance on guitar is Domenico Scarlatti whose 555 sonatas for harpsichord were many of them inspired by guitar timbres and textures. Perhaps ten or twelve of them are often heard in guitar concerts.
Another area that is very suitable for transcription is the enormous quantities of music for lute and vihuela, most of which transfers over to guitar with one minor change in tuning. You can even play directly from the original tablature if you want. (Until the 18th century, all music for lute and vihuela was published in tablature.) This is not true of the music for Baroque lute, which uses a different tuning entirely.
In recent years the growth of the Early Music movement and the subsequent appearance of many performers on the lute and vihuela has meant that we are losing a lot of this repertoire back to the original instruments.
Now for the list:
1. Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 in D minor by J. S. Bach. Originally for solo violin. There are innumerable recordings on guitar but the version by Segovia remains a benchmark:
2. Fugue (and Siciliana) from the Sonata No. 1 by J. S. Bach. Originally for solo violin. Ana Vidovic has a quite brisk performance of the fugue:
3. Partita No. 3 in E major (in the version for lute) by J. S. Bach. Originally for solo violin. The guitarist who really put this piece on the map for guitarists was John Williams whose integral version of the lute suites (this is the Lute Suite No. 4) was a revelation. This is the prelude:
4. Suite in D major by J. S. Bach. Originally for solo cello. I called this the "Suite in D major," but it is often referred to just as the "First Cello Suite" because that's what it is! It is usually played in D major due to an early transcription by John Duarte (that Williams recorded). When I played it for José Tomas in Spain when I was studying with him he picked up his eight-string guitar, dug out the cello music and sight read through the prelude. He suggested doing it in A major instead of D to keep it close to the original G major key. Then you wouldn't be tempted to add gratuitous bass notes. Decades later I got around to it and have recorded the whole suite in A major. I think it works quite well. Here is the prelude:
5. Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti: K. 322 and 208. Originally for harpsichord. Out of a host of possibilities I pick these two which are especially popular. Here is Scott Tennant with K. 322:
And here is Leo Brouwer with K. 208:
6. Asturias (Leyenda) by Isaac Albéniz. Originally for solo piano. Again, simply everyone has recorded this piece, which sounds absolutely natural on guitar. Everyone includes me, so here is my version:
7. Granada by Isaac Albéniz. Both this and the previous piece are from his Suite Espagnola and Manuel Barrueco showed everyone how they should be played on an album devoted to Albéniz and Granados. Here is his performance. Blogger can't seem to find it, so follow the link:
8. Valses Poéticos by Enrique Granados. It was John Williams that put this piece on the map for guitarists. Other pieces often played on guitar include Granados' Danzas Españolas. Here is Williams with the Valses Poéticos. He did two transcriptions, the first one of just some of the walzes, the second with all. This is the second version. Again, follow the link.
9. Estudio Brillante by Alard (transcribed/arranged by Tárrega). This is a bit of a surprising choice because it is not a piece played a lot, but I think it is a very successful transcription (or arrangement, I have never seen the original) by Tárrega of a piece originally for violin by Alard. Christopher Parkening does an excellent performance:
10. Suite Española by Gaspar Sanz arranged for guitar by Narciso Yepes. This is standing in for a host of transcriptions of music for Baroque guitar. Here is the last movement, Canarios, played by Yepes:
Of course I could have made a lot of different choices. For one thing, I completely missed out all the Renaissance lute music, but you can play that on guitar without actually doing any transcribing! Just tune your third string to F#.
Continuing my project to create lists of guitar repertoire that refine my original top ten list, today I offer a list of shorter pieces. This follows my list of larger pieces. What I am looking for are pieces written for classical guitar up to around eight minutes in length of outstanding quality. I won't be including obvious pot-boilers, no matter how popular (the Spanish Romance, for example), because, while undoubtedly possessing charm and attractiveness to listeners, they just don't reward repeated hearings. Of course the people that hear them the most often are the performers! So I am aiming for pieces that reward both audiences and performers. I am also avoiding transcriptions which will appear in another list. So, shorter pieces for guitar of high quality, but in no particular order. (I wasn't able to resist making some brief comments on the performances.)
1. Serenade (1960) by Sofia Gubaidulina. I have been playing through this piece for a few months now and it continues to fascinate. Written when she was only twenty-nine, it still shows a remarkable originality.
(A brisk and muscular performance, she seems to have missed the change on page one to a slower tempo.)
2. Nocturno by Federico Moreno-Torroba. While performed quite often, I still think this piece does not receive as much recognition as it warrants. A simply lovely and lyrical meditation with intriguing harmonic gestures and a surprising whole-tone scale, this piece is both idiomatic for guitar and original in its organization.
(Like pretty well everyone, Williams plays this a bit too fast. It's a nocturnal! Not as fast and sloppy as Segovia, mind you...)
3. Fandanguillo by Federico Moreno-Torroba. There are just a bunch of excellent short pieces by Torroba who rather specialized in this kind of thing. This is the first movement of the Suite castellana and the second and even third movements could also qualify. The whole suite is not long enough to qualify as a large piece, so I'm picking out just this movement.
(I really think Pepe has the best version of the piece. He takes the time to enjoy it. In this clip he plays all three movements.)
4. Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco Tárrega. This is one of the great idiomatic pieces for guitar. Everyone would be playing it if only it weren't so difficult! That smooth, liquid tremolo takes years to master. I have avoided putting any of my performances in these lists so far, but I spent a long time working on this piece, with pretty good results. So here you go:
5. Homenaje pour "Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy" by Manuel de Falla. This piece, the only one written for guitar by one of Spain's greatest composers, was composed for inclusion in a special edition of Le Revue Musicale, a tribute to Debussy a couple of years after his death in 1918. It is a unique and original piece, quite idiomatically written, and towards the end it quotes Debussy's piano piece "La soirée dans Grenade."
(Alvaro Pierri, one of the most relaxed performers on guitar, was a student of Abel Carlevaro.)
6. La Catedral by Agustín Barrios. Coming in at just under eight minutes is the three movement piece that for many years was the only piece widely known by Barrios. John Williams uncovered and recorded much more of his music, but for me, this remains the most interesting and original of them.
(Pretty much the definitive performance.)
7. Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart, op. 9 by Fernando Sor. I don't have many pieces on this list that are not from the 20th century, but this one deserves a place. A staple of the repertoire for many years, performances vary between seven and nine minutes so I think it just makes the cut. Some play the slow introduction and some do not. Ana Vidovic's is one of the more leisurely versions.
(This piece is much harder than it sounds as you have to play a lot of tricky passages but make them sound light and effortless! She does a pretty good job.)
8. Chaconne by Robert de Visée. This is standing in for a host of great pieces for guitar from the late 17th and early 18th century by French and Italian masters. This was the first great "renaissance" of the guitar and, sadly, not very well known. This is a performance on modern guitar done with real sensitivity to Baroque style.
9. Fandango by Joaquin Rodrigo. A great virtuoso showpiece that is at the same time a brilliant synthesis of traditional harmonic elements of flamenco music combined with the influence of Stravinsky. I have chosen the very fine version by fellow Canadian Jérôme Ducharme.
10. Elogio de la Danza by Leo Brouwer. Speaking of Stravinsky, an even more evocative homage to Stravinsky's ballets russe is found in this early piece by Brouwer. Influenced by both Stravinsky and Bartók, this piece is superbly idiomatic, making brilliant use of the guitar's resources of timbre.
(I chose this version, out of a host of possibilities, by the Czech guitarist Vladimir Mikulka, largely because he is not as well known as he should be. Very precise player.)
I am doing this new post, one of at least three I am planning, to refine the project a bit. My four year old post on Top Ten Pieces for Classical Guitar has risen to be the most popular post here, so I thought I might have another go. Of course we all know that the Internet just loves lists and they are often little more than clickbait, still, it is an interesting exercise to perform. I am a big believer in qualitative judgements, but it is all in how you go about them. As in most things musical, I am moved by pragmatic estimates of quality. Actually, the inspiration for this particular list was looking at the clips online of the outstanding Polish guitarist Marcin Dylla. He tends to play exactly the larger pieces that I have long regarded as being the best in the repertoire. And why not? After all, any performing artist, unless they are driven by marketing considerations, is going to always be seeking out the most substantial repertoire to perform. Why waste time on the lesser stuff?
So how do I define "large pieces"? While there are lots of exceptions, the guitar repertoire tends to fall into a few categories, just as the keyboard repertoire does, which makes sense as it is mostly modeled after the keyboard repertoire (since the 18th century, at least). Looking just at pieces that have a total duration of at least fifteen minutes (we could set it lower, but that would make me want to create another category of "medium length pieces" and I don't want to do that right now!), we find that there tend to be four sub-categories: the first is pieces that are more or less sonatas for guitar, modeled after the classical and romantic piano sonata. These pieces usually have three or four movements, but are conceived as a single piece. Then there are sets of variations that have a larger number of shorter sections, but these are all based on the original theme. A third category is the suite: a set of several movements that contrast with one another. The model for that is probably the Baroque suite. The other category is the concerto: a three movement work for guitar and orchestra. That pretty much exhausts the large piece category.
One final note, I am trying to pick the ten best pieces in this category, but I am not claiming to be able to order them within the category. In other words, they are not in order of quality. The thing about outstanding pieces of music is that they tend to be unique, i.e. not comparable to one another.
1. "Variations sur Folia de Espana et Fugue" by Manuel M. Ponce. This is a truly outstanding set of variations, certainly one of the very best in the guitar repertoire. It was written for Andrés Segovia and takes nearly half an hour to perform. There is an excellent recording by John Williams and an excellent recent performance on YouTube by Marcin Dylla. There have even been dissertations written on the piece: https://repository.arizona.edu/bitstream/handle/10150/282122/azu_td_9706159_sip1_m.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
2. Nocturnal, by Benjamin Britten. Speaking of variations, the other great variation piece for guitar was written for Julian Bream and it reverses the usual order by putting the theme, a song by John Dowland, last, preceded by the variations.
3. Sonata "Hommagio a Boccherini" by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. I suppose the inclusion of this piece is a bit of advocacy on my part! It does not seem to be very popular these days. The only clip of the whole piece I could find in YouTube was by a guitarist I had never heard of. Still, I think this is a fine piece and, frankly, there are not a lot of capably-written guitar sonatas!
4. Castillos de España by Federico Moreno Torroba. This is a fine example of the suite. There were originally eight short pieces, each inspired by a different castle in Spain. Later he added another six pieces, but it is often played in the original form. Written for Andrés Segovia. There are good recordings by Segovia and Ana Vidovic among others, but it is hard to find a good recording of the complete suite on YouTube! I originally put up a few separate clips. But then I found the complete Segovia recording. You have to skip ahead to the 18:55 mark for the beginning of Castillos de España:
5. Sonata romántica by Manuel M. Ponce. Yes, Ponce gets another one on the list because he, unlike most guitar composers, wrote a lot of larger pieces. This sonata is modeled after the piano sonatas of Franz Schubert and while certainly not in their class has a great deal of charm. There are outstanding recordings by Segovia and Ana Vidovic among others.
6. Five Preludes by Heitor Villa-Lobos. If anything these pieces are over-played! Together they form a kind of suite, always popular with audiences while posing some interesting technical challenges. There are recordings by almost everyone, but the ones that stick in the memory are those by John Williams and Pepe Romero.
7. El Decameron negro by Leo Brouwer. I was torn between this piece and the Sonata by Ginastera and gravitated towards the Brouwer because it seems to be just a bit more popular among guitarists. I was actually the first person to record the piece! There are outstanding versions by John Williams among others.
8. Rossiniana Op 119, No. 1 by Mauro Giuliani. This is the odd-man out on the list. It is a potpourri, a 19th century genre that was popular at the time, but less-so now. This particular piece is a medley of themes from operas by Rossini, set for guitar by Giuliani. It has become popular as a virtuoso display piece because of a really stunning recording by Julian Bream who brings out its insouciant nature.
9. Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquin Rodrigo. This is by far the most popular guitar concerto. In fact, it is probably one of the most popular concertos for any instrument written in the 20th century. It has been recorded by absolutely everyone and by the leading artists, such as John Williams and Julian Bream, at least three times! It is fiendishly difficult, but the spectacular melody of the second movement makes it all worth while. Williams did a lovely performance of it in the Proms several years ago.
10. Guitar Concerto by Heitor Villa-Lobos. There could have been lots of other possibilities for this slot as there are many fine guitar concertos other than the Aranjuez. The ones by Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Leo Brouwer come to mind as well as the others by Rodrigo. But the Villa-Lobos is a perennial and has a unique quality that sets it apart. There are recordings by Bream and Williams, of course as well as a live one of me playing it with the CBC Vancouver Orchestra buried somewhere deep in the CBC archives.
I might add some runners-up in the future!
UPDATE: I just realized that, with the exception of the Castelnuovo-Tedesco Sonata and the Nocturnal by Britten, I have played every one of these pieces in concert! Yes, even the concertos, but I only played the Villa-Lobos on one occasion.
UPDATE: This post is now over four years old, but it has risen to be the most popular post on The Music Salon. So I have decided to update it by doing three new posts that dig down a bit more into the repertoire. I am going to do one post on the Top Ten Large Pieces for Classical Guitar, another on the Top Ten Shorter Pieces for Classical Guitar and, since both those are going to be exclusively on pieces written for guitar, a third on Top Ten Transcriptions for Classical Guitar as quite a bit of the repertoire is actually transcribed from music originally written for other instruments such as the piano, harpsichord, violin and cello. As I do each one of the these new posts, I will link to this one.
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I almost know too much about this to be able to do it easily! When you have played guitar for almost fifty years, as I have, then how do you pick out the ten best pieces?
Well, here goes. There really needs to be two lists: one list of the best pieces written for guitar and the other of the best pieces transcribed from other instruments and played on guitar. This is the case because a great deal of the best guitar repertoire is actually looted from other instruments. For example, probably the first two pieces on any list of great guitar pieces would be the Chaconne (from the D minor Partita for solo violin) by Bach and Asturias by Isaac Albéniz. Both of these are transcriptions.
Ok, so here you go, original pieces and transcriptions, five of each, not necessarily in order.
Top Ten Pieces for Guitar (transcribed and original)
1. Chaconne in D minor, J. S. Bach (transcribed from violin)
2. Asturias, Isaac Albéniz (transcribed from piano)
3. Twenty Variations and Fugue on "Folias de España", Manuel M. Ponce (original)
(Alas, there does not seem to be a really good complete version on YouTube)
4. Cordoba, Albéniz (transcribed from piano)
5. Nocturnal, op. 70, Benjamin Britten (original)
This is just the final passacaglia from the Nocturnal, but it is played by Julian Bream, who pretty much owns this piece.
6. Recuerdos de la Alhambra, Francisco Tárrega (original)
7. Concierto de Aranjuez, Joaquin Rodrigo (original)
8. Five Preludes, Heitor Villa-Lobos (original)
Unfortunately I have to run, so I will complete this list a bit later.
UPDATE: And now for the last two.
9. Sonata K. 213, Domenico Scarlatti (transcribed from harpsichord)
(This fantastic sonata by Scarlatti will have to represent all those great ones that many people have transcribed for guitar.)
10. Fantasia, John Dowland (transcribed from the lute)
(And this will have to represent all that great lute music that guitarists so often play.)
Guitarists have both advantages and disadvantages. It's a hugely popular, much-loved, inexpensive, portable instrument that can play both classical and popular music. But it also does not have a repertoire that compares with keyboard instruments. If you go back far enough, to the 16th century, you find that the lute, a close cousin to the guitar, has a repertoire that easily matches keyboard instruments of the time for both quantity and quality. But from the 17th century on, the keyboard has dominated. It is easier to play complex music on a keyboard because the mechanism makes the production of an individual note much easier. The guitar, however, has much more capacity in terms of color and expression--vibrato, for example. But at the end of the day, the guitar has not received the attention from composers that keyboard instruments have.
There have been brief periods of flourishing. The 16th century in Spain and Italy produced a lot of wonderful music for the lute and vihuela (a double-strung instrument similar to the guitar). Here is a piece by Francesco da Milano, "il divino", lutenist to three popes. This is a fantasia in the style of vocal counterpoint:
Here is a piece for vihuela by Luis Milan. This is in a much more instrumental style with many quick scale passages that are a harbinger to the Baroque toccata:
In the Baroque era the leading composer for guitar was Robert de Visee. Here is a gigue:
The Classical period saw the guitar losing ground badly to the piano. Of the many modestly-talented composers Fernando Sor is the most known. Here is the adagio from his Sonata, op 22:
The Romantic era saw the guitar eclipsed rather thoroughly. But towards the end of the 19th century, Francisco Tarrega wrote a few characteristic pieces making use of typical Spanish colors. Here is the best-known:
The 20th century saw a real renaissance of the guitar, possibly because composers and audiences began to appreciate the kinds of sonorities the guitar can produce. Driving this return to popularity was the performing career of Andres Segovia who took the guitar back to the concert stage world-wide. Here he is playing one of the first pieces written for him by Federico Moreno-Torroba:
Another guitarist who inspired countless composers to write for him was the English player, Julian Bream. Here is a lovely short piece by Hans Werner Henze:
Another important composer who wrote for guitar was the Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos. Here is his Prelude no. 1:
But probably the most famous 20th century composer for guitar is Joaquin Rodrigo, because of his enormously popular Concierto de Aranjuez. Here is the middle movement:
But what are the really significant pieces for guitar? The ones that are important, perhaps even on a level with the big piano pieces. There are a lot of candidates, but only a very few truly important pieces for guitar and they are all from the 20th century. The first one I want to mention is by the Mexican composer Manuel M. Ponce who, inspired by Segovia, tried his best to flesh out the guitar repertoire--even going so far as to create a fake Baroque suite supposedly by Weiss. But he wrote a number of significant pieces under his own name including a concerto and a number of sonatas. But his greatest piece is the 20 Variations and Fugue on Folias de Espana taking nearly 30 minutes to perform. Here is Segovia playing a somewhat abbreviated version:
Another extraordinary piece is the Invocation and Dance by Joaquin Rodrigo
But possibly the greatest piece written for guitar is by Benjamin Britten, for Julian Bream. Here is the final section, the passacaglia and theme (which comes last) from the Nocturnal, op 70, a set of variations on the song "Come Heavy Sleep" by John Dowland:
So you see, the repertoire for guitar does not consist solely of short, easily forgettable pieces...
