Voice and guitar

A Concert by Lorenzo Costa

One of my favorite ensembles is voice and guitar. Due to an enlightened voice teacher, my very first public concert was a performance of Benjamin Britten's Songs from the Chinese in 1972 at the University of Victoria (British Columbia, not Australia). And by the way, the guitar part is quite difficult so I don't recommend it as your first voice and guitar repertoire!

The combination of voice and some guitar-like instrument is probably thousands of years old, though evidence is scarce. The first notated repertoire is for voice and vihuela in 16th century Spain and after that is a flood of music from Italy, France and especially England where we have the wonderful and extensive repertoire for voice and lute from John Dowland, Thomas Campion, Philip Rosseter, Thomas Morley and others.

Due to the collaboration of Peter Pears and Julian Bream, England saw an efflorescence of music for voice and guitar post-WWII with the previous mentioned cycle by Benjamin Britten and another by Lennox Berkeley. Britten also did some lovely folksong arrangements with guitar.

This post is prompted by a review by Jay Nordlinger of a concert by Karim Sulayman, an American tenor, and Sean Shibe, a British guitarist in New York. The concert was very well-received but ironically, my favorite section from the review was:

Speaking of sounds, I heard a dog not barking in this recital: Sulayman and Shibe did not talk. They did not lecture. They did not recite the program notes from the stage. What a blessing this was. It preserved the musical ambience of the evening. The program was ripe for pontification, and the musicians refused to indulge.

Yes, please let's lay this need for commentary from the performers to rest. In Europe it never happens.

Now let's have a listen to some of the songs by Lennox Berkeley from the cycle Songs of the Half-Light because we rarely get to hear them. None of the recent live videos are very accomplished so here is Pears and Bream with the first song.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47nMbO4evr8 

And Ian Partridge and Jukka Savijoki with the second and third songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuq7IPJhEW0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukw6lPdS13g

Marianne Crebassa and Thibaut Garcia

Just released today is this lovely performance of a piece by Massenet--newly transcribed I assume. From a new album that I hope will include some original music for voice and guitar.

Welcome-Bienvenido-желанный-Willkommen-Bienvenue

I was just looking over my monthly statistics and I noticed an interesting thing: out of the top ten countries that visit this blog, six of them are non-English speaking. Here are the top ten in order of number of page views:

• United States
• Russia
• United Kingdom
• Mexico
• France
• Canada
• Germany
• Australia
• Japan
• Sweden

I don't think that we can assume that everyone is reading the posts in English either as I installed a handy translation gadget on the right hand side of the page. If you haven't noticed it, give it a whirl. You can translate the whole blog into most languages with one click, thanks to Google Translate.

So I just want to say "welcome" to all those non-English speakers out there. Apparently we all speak the 'language' of music!

I have some news for you as well. I just found out that my song cycle Songs from the Poets for voice and guitar will be receiving a double premiere in January. On January 18, 2013, it will be premiered at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City in the Sala Manuel M. Ponce, and the next day will be premiered (deuxiemed?) at St. Paul's Church in San Miguel de Allende, part of the Pro Musica winter concert series. The artists are the duo Cherie Hughes, voice and Roberto Limón, guitar. I want to thank these gifted artists in advance for what I'm sure will be a great performance.

UPDATE: If you don't know the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, this is what it looks like:

I'm also going to start preparing some of my own recordings of guitar repertoire for occasional posting on the blog. In the world of performers there is a tendency to keep people you meet on 'probation' until you have actually heard them play--only then can you judge what sort of musician they really are. So I will put up some of my own recorded performances so you can do the same.

But in the meantime, let's hear a bit of the voice and guitar repertoire. In this clip, the beginning of the song is cut off, but I like the performance. "The Herd Boy" from the cycle Songs from the Chinese by Benjamin Britten:

Originally for soprano and eight cellos, this arrangement of Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 is by the composer, Villa-Lobos:

This lovely song is by the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, performed by Maria Farantouri and John Williams. It is from a 1974 album loooong since out of print. The sound quality of this clip is far from perfect, but I think the music is worth it:

Just some samples from the huge repertoire for voice and guitar.