Canadian Guitarists on YouTube

• Check out my Canadian Playlist
• Some music from Victoria for the weekend: Myself (Bradford Werner), Michael Gregory Dias, and Douglas Alan Hensley playing a work inspired from a Japanese setting…mixed in photos from my Japan trip….http://youtu.be/gtBRO_TsECI

Links:

• Check out the new page on the site: Popular Posts
• An overview of the six-course guitar
• Concert Review: Daniel Bolshoy in Oliver, BC
• New website for the tantalus quartet
• New recording from Tariq Harb titled From Bach to Barrios
• A worthwhile Tumblr blog to check out: guitarworks.tumblr.com
• Rubato: a definition and word of advice (via The Practicing Musician)
• I’m slowly updating my sheet music site: www.classicalguitarmusic.org
• Check out: Jerome Ducharme – GFA Winner 2005 DVD sheet music by Jerome Ducharme | Sheet Music Plus

Concerts and Events:

I always need help updating this list so let me know what’s happening across Canada

• Check out the big list: Classical Guitar Events and Concerts 2012
• February 24: Guitar Society of Toronto presents Eliot Fisk
• February 23: Douglas College Arts – Duo Joncol (Britta Schmitt and Carles Guisado, guitars)
• February 11: Guitar Society of Toronto presents Jorge Caballero
• February 11:  GuitarWorks – Alexander Dunn
• February 11: Winnipeg Guitar Extravaganza – Showcase Recital and Fundraiser
• February 9: Concert - Matthew Martin ( Wolfville NS)
• February 5: Girls Night Out: Eva Beneke, Tracy Anne Smith, Emma Rush
• February 5: Guitar Society of Brantford: “Girls Night Out” with Emma Rush, Tracy Anne Smith, and Eva Beneke

Festivals – Academies – Competitions

• August 15-18: Sauble Beach Guitar Festival
• August 13 -18: Classical GuitarFest West (Calgary)
• July 16-20: VCM Summer Guitar Academy (Victoria)
• July 13-15: Hamilton International Guitar Festival 
• July 1-14: Le Domaine Forget – International Music Academy (Saint-Irénée, QC)
• February  16-19: Guitar Alla Grande Festival 2012

• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Sheet music, Recordings, Gear: www.classicalguitarmusic.org
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

Daniel Bolshoy recently performed for the South Okanagan Concert Society here in Oliver, BC, in the southern end of the the Okanagan Valley.  The society is a member with the Oliver Community Arts Council.

Daniel Bolshoy (photo via http://www.danielbolshoy.com/)

The solo guitar performance by Daniel Bolshoy was billed by South Okanagan Concert Society’s executive as an event “not to be missed.” And were they ever right about that! It had been 25 years since the concert society last had a classical guitarist on stage. Last Friday night they made up for that “oversight” by bringing us the brightest and best.

There are always potential challenges inherent in planning any concert. For this one, consider this: 200 people in a “substitute concert hall”, a whole program of music by composers that 99 percent of the audience had never heard of, and a single, quiet, unamplified, acoustic guitar. How would it go over?

The short answer: extremely well!

Daniel Bolshoy had us spell-bound throughout the evening. He worked magic on his newly acquired high-tech German-made guitar, of which even the slightest whisper of a strum could be heard at the back of the hall. The audience listened, as with bated breath, not wanting to miss a single phrase, a single note. Rare are performers who perfect the vibrato, slides and changes of tone on the guitar so as to create and maintain a singing quality . Daniel Bolshoy is such a performer. He drew us into to the lyrical world of Sainz de la Maza, Karmon, and Barrios and, after two hours of pure delight, left us on our feet, asking for more.

Daniel’s program began with a musical tribute by the composer, Eduardo Sainz de la Maza, to a series of poems by the Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez, “Platero y Yo”. A man and his donkey: the simple joys of life and memories. Daniel’s gift to us, we were soon to discover, was not just his beautiful playing. He also has the ability to set us up for the music by telling us lively little stories about the composers at the time that each piece came into being. We were fascinated. And we listened. The first half continued with five more compositions by Sainz de la Maza, including a variety of evocative titles. When Daniel introduced “Homage to Toulouse-Lautrec” by referencing the recent hit movie, “Midnight in Paris,” the audience nodded and smiled. The first half concluded with Sainz de la Maza’s best known piece: Campanas del Alba, “Bells at Dawn”. The rapid fire guitar-playing technique called “tremolo”, which allows a guitarist to imitate a singing vocal line, came off so smoothly that the audience sat hushed for a moment, not wanting to break the lyrical spell.

The second half of the program began with “Next Year”, a series of 5 short pieces written for Daniel by the American composer Michael Karmon. Each depicts a different aspect of life in Jerusalem, combining a sense of history, awe and modern realities of the 3,000 year-old city. Unusual, fascinating music, creating a taste for more.

The program concluded with works by arguably the greatest guitarist of the 20th century, the Paraguayan-Guarani Indian composer Augustin Barrios Mangore. Daniel explained how this composer’s music, so popular among guitarists today, languished in obscurity due to the overarching influence of Andres Segovia—the dominant classical guitar recitalist of the time. Out of jealousy, Segovia bad-mouthed Barrios at every opportunity. Barrios, a poverty-stricken, homeless, musical genius spent a life-time traveling all over Latin America, giving concerts and composing, but never getting the financial backing or promotional support he needed to achieve the success he was due. A full, but in many ways also a tragic, life.

Now, just as every pianist knows and admires Chopin, so does every guitarist know and admire Barrios. It feels like a vindication when someone like Daniel shares the music by this genius with audiences far and wide. The last piece in the program, “La Catedral”, presents enormous challenges to any performer. Daniel, with the exceptional powers of concentration and outstanding technical skills needed for the long and difficult stretches in the piece, did full justice to Barrios. A triumphant end to the program.

We were treated to two encores, before the enthusiastic audience finally let Daniel leave the stage. Barrios’ last composition, “An Alm for the Love of God”, was followed by Sainz de la Maza’s arrangement of Steven Foster’s well-known “Swanee River”, which combined shades of Ravel, Django Reinhardt, and Debussy. For me, it was a perfect ending to a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Judging by the strength of the standing ovation and by the record-setting CD sales in the foyer, Oliver concert-goers agreed!

South Okanagan Concert Society has one more concert lined up for this season. Music lovers, mark your calendars! The Penderecki String Quartet will be playing on Friday, Feb.24th at 7:30. Again, the venue will be the Alliance Church, whose support to the temporarily “homeless” SOCS has been tremendous, and is much appreciated by one and all. Early Bird ticket sales for next year will again be available.

Also see:

• Daniel Bolshoy’s Website: www.danielbolshoy.com
• Review: Daniel Bolshoy – Sainz de la Maza – Soñando Caminos: Guitar Works

• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Sheet music, Recordings, Gear: www.classicalguitarmusic.org
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

A big thank you to Clive Titmuss for this excellent post. Make sure to check out his Scarlatti transcriptions on his site. Clive Titmuss is a luthier and player, all photos of guitars are by Mr. Titmuss of guitars he built himself. He mentioned: “I made two of these instruments for my colleague Alan Rinehart and I to play in concert.” You can click on the photos to enlarge them.

This is a guest post by luthier Clive Titmuss

Website: www.clivetitmuss.com

The history of the guitar and its music is like a boom and bust economy–periods of efflorescence followed by fallow. The guitar began its current world domination with a raging start in the 17th century. After a slow beginning in the 1450-1550 period, a series of publications in Italy, Spain, France and England set the guitar on a par with other instruments pursued by connoiseurs, amateurs and professionals.

Raised to the level of high art by Guerau, Corbetta and De Visée et al., by the end of the 17th century the guitar began to be played in all strata of society, depicted in many paintings as the must-have accessory for almost anyone who claimed to be educated or literate, entirely replacing the lute except in Germany by the mid-18th century. But in the latter half of 18th century there was a period of retrenchment. The famous picture of the young Mozart at the keyboard, with the opera superstar Farinelli strumming a guitar, says everything we need to know. In this image the guitar is fit primarily to accompany the voice, having lost its own.

Especially in Spain, where we would expect a large repertoire of printed music, there is very little. This comes as a surprise, since there are plenty of pictures, especially the paintings and drawings of Goya, and many extant instruments. What is puzzling is the shadowy transition from an alto-pitched instrument of five courses to a baritone instrument of six, and thence to an early guitar of the 19th century with six single strings. Eventually this path led to an instrument and a tradition that made international stars of Sor, Giuliani, Aguado and others. But what was the substance of the repertoire of the transitional six-course guitar, and what was the stylistic substance of the transition from five to six-course repertoire?

This lacuna of evidence in printed music is partly explained by the effects of war and the decline in the economy of Spain. Inflation and de-population, agrarian collapse and weak and ineffective government made the country a laggard in a period of industrialization as it was experienced in Northern Europe. Perhaps the publishing of music, the teaching of students and even the manufacture of guitars and other instruments may have suffered. Some of the guitar’s impetus migrated, with the last of the Spanish diaspora, to the new world. Santiago de Murcia’s Mexican book, for example, is a notable late flowering of five-course guitar music consisting mainly of variation forms based on dance rhythms and harmonies but with an unmistakeable guitar idiom.

A checklist of published works that are not primarily intended as tutors, and/or including substantial compositions is very short, and furthermore it is music which is rarely played by today’s performers: Antonio Ballestero–Obra para guitarra de seis ordenes… (1799), Antonio Abreu–Escuela para tocar…la guitarra de cinco e seis ordenes (1799), Fernando Ferandière–Arte de tocar…

Federico Moretti figures prominently, but despite having published methods and a notable book of songs, one of the latest occurrences of the phrase “seis ordenes”, he left no solo music. Undated sources from the late 18th century, largely French or Italian in origin, include sonatas and instrumental music with guitar by Amon, Calegari, Doisy, Gragnani, L’Hoyer, Merchi, Molino, Pleyel, Porro and Sheidler.

The style of this late 18th century guitar music derives more from piano and violin music, rather than a native guitar idiom. In this later repertoire the Boccherini quintets with guitar are exceptional in their originality and interest. These pieces are connected with a powerful figure in the guitar’s history in the 18th century–Padre Basilio (Don Miguel Garcia). He was Aguado and Sor’s teacher, and is remembered in a telling and much-quoted passage in Aguado’s method (1825):

In all this time there have doubtless been good players who, captivated by the sweetness of its voices and the effect reproduced by the combining of its sounds, became aficionados; but the were not successfully able to write down what they played. They can be seen in the compositions of Laporta, Arizpacochaga, Abreu, my teacher the so-called Padre Basilio and others; because of these works it is known that these composers went on to be competent performers, and even recognize in part the genius of this instrument, but they were not so successful at putting on paper what they practised with their hands.

This passage is often cited as a manifestation of Aguado’s quest to reform the pedagogy and notation of guitar music. It may equally well be cited as an inference of the lack of elaboration and compositional sophistication in late 18th Century guitar music as compared with the stellar masterpieces of the early 19th Century.

Another aspect in the quest for the repertoire of the six-course guitar is the success with which the Iberian school of harpsichord composers including Scarlatti, Martin y Soler, Albeniz, Cantallos, Rodriguez and the Portuguese, Carlos Seixas, mined its style and idiom for folkloric or rustic effects in their keyboard music. In a pioneering work in English (The Music of Spain, 1941) on the subject of the influence of the guitar in Scarlatti’s harpsichord music, Gilbert Chase noted:

The influence of the guitar upon Scarlatti’s style is manifested in many details of his music. One of the most prominent of these is the internal pedal point, derived from the practice…of steadying the player’s hands by dwelling on one or two notes while the other notes of the harmony are changed. Throughout Scarlatti’s sonatas there are passages that are strongly reminiscent of the style of the early Spanish guitarists…

This passage may equally well apply to any composers for harpsichord, as many others besides Scarlatti were attracted to the vitality of Spanish dance as way of evoking the immediacy of al fresco music performance. The works of Soler, Cantallos, Rodriguez and Albeniz are particulary full of this kind of guitar reference.

In searching for music to play on a newly-constructed six-course guitar after Pages, my curiosity naturally settled on a now-commonplace practice–the transcription of keyboard music of the period as a way of filling out rather thin pickings in the repertoire. Many sonatas by Scarlatti have found a new home on the guitar since Chase’s observation (and in comments made by Ralph Kirkpatrick in his study Domenico Scarlatti), partly as a result of the championing of his music by Vladimir Horowitz, Violet Woodhouse and Wanda Landowska in the 1940′s and 50′s.

Many of the sonatas of the period provide excellent fodder for transcription, and in many ways they illuminate the question of just exactly how the style and music of the early 18th century guitar was carried into the latter half of the century. But I quickly discovered that transcriptions of the material for modern six string guitar did not reflect either the properties of the six-course instrument or the historical values and idioms as they are observed what does exist of the repertoire.

Modern transcriptions can be literal in their transcription of harpsichord texture. What comes easily to two hands, ten fingers, easily ranging over the five octave range of the harpsichord in use in 18th century Spain is suggested on the guitar only with the greatest effort. Passages involving typical feature of the keyboard style such as trills with moving lower voices, acciacature (simultaneous sounding of seconds), pedal points (repetition of dominant or tonic notes as mentioned in the Chase quote above), freely ranging arpeggios, three-handed effects (figuration of the left hand while the right strikes above and below), rapid toccata-style scales, and characteristic keyboard idoms and effects found in the typical Neapolitan binary sonata form do not necessarily make sense on the guitar, even when they have been conceived as imitative of it. Transcription is in itself an art form which proceeds from making the right selection of what to transcribe, so it quickly became apparent that many pieces which might have been written under the spell of six-course idioms really did not appear to work well in their original form.

Though its resources are considerably greater, I found that simply playing modern transcriptions left me feeling that I was working far too hard for the effect which is achieved. The modern guitar, due to its thick overlayed fingerboard, is very even in its voicing along a particular string, its bass and treble are well balanced; its dynamic range is wide. The six-course guitar, like the contemporary harpsichord and the five-course guitar, is highly registered in its colour; the pairing of its (gut) strings means that notes sounded at in a low, medium and very high position sound very different, and the higher you play on any string, slightly and increasingly out of tune. The dynamic range is not as wide as a modern guitar, but strumming and plucking do not have such a distinct character of loud and soft.

Anyone who has heard the blend of “batteries” (chords played with a downward stroke of the index finger) and plucked ( roughly equivalent to “rasgueado” and “punteado”) playing on a baroque period guitar in music by De Visee or Corbetta (late 17th century composers), for example will not be surprised to find that this effect is not necessarily pleasing when exactly duplicated on a modern six-string guitar. The thinness of texture of the early guitar is usually not duplicated in modern transcriptions of the music. Normally the cadential chords are filled, the profusion of ornaments, easily executed on the low-tension strings of the baroque instrument, is reduced when playing a modern guitar.

The properties of the six-course lie somewhere between these extremes, and it became a challenge for me to discover exactly what texture, ornaments and techniques of chordal playing might translate onto a transitional instrument and sound convincingly as if they genuinely belonged to the idiom of the instrument–all in the absence of really satisfactory models, as I discussed above.

Since so many transcriptions of the music of Scarlatti have appeared, I decided to work on pieces that appeared to have more in common with the native speech of the guitar, less in the keyboard idiom of Scarlatti, and to convincingly demonstrate the obvious features of early guitar music, including typical (Italian alfabeto) chord voicings and plucking technique, thinness of texture, and characteristic ornamentation in order to produce a small series of pieces which might form the germ of a set of six sonatas as if they had been composed for the instrument, rather that arranged for it.

You’ll find these pieces on my website in pdf format.

Website: clivetitmuss.com

This is a guest post by luthier Clive Titmuss

• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Sheet music, Recordings, Gear: www.classicalguitarmusic.org
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

Also, keep an eye on the site tomorrow as Clive Titmuss has written a nice long post titled “An overview of the six-course guitar.”

To be included on these posts simply let me know about news, links, and concert in Canada by emailing:  admin@classicalguitarcanada.ca

Canadian Guitarists on YouTube

• Check out my Canadian Playlist

Links:

• New recording from Tariq Harb titled From Bach to Barrios
• Movie Night in Canada: Vincea McClelland plays Villa-Lobos
• Northwest Guitar Festival 2012 – Cancelled
• A worthwhile Tumblr blog to check out: guitarworks.tumblr.com
• Practicing Well: Positive Success Ratios (via Practicing Musician)
• I’m slowly updating my sheet music site: www.classicalguitarmusic.org

Concerts and Events:

I always need help updating this list so let me know what’s happening across Canada

• Check out the big list: Classical Guitar Events and Concerts 2012
• February 24: Guitar Society of Toronto presents Eliot Fisk
• February 11: Guitar Society of Toronto presents Jorge Caballero
• February 9: Concert - Matthew Martin ( Wolfville NS)
• February 5: Girls Night Out: Eva Beneke, Tracy Anne Smith, Emma Rush
• February 5: Guitar Society of Brantford: “Girls Night Out” with Emma Rush, Tracy Anne Smith, and Eva Beneke
• February 4: Classical Guitar Society of Calgary presents Dale Kavanagh
• February 3: Edmonton Classical Guitar Society presents Duo Aperio

Festivals – Academies – Competitions

• August 15-18: Sauble Beach Guitar Festival
• August 13 -18: Classical GuitarFest West (Calgary)
• July 16-20: VCM Summer Guitar Academy (Victoria)
• July 13-15: Hamilton International Guitar Festival 
• July 1-14: Le Domaine Forget – International Music Academy (Saint-Irénée, QC)
• February  16-19: Guitar Alla Grande Festival 2012

• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Sheet music, Recordings, Gear: www.classicalguitarmusic.org
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

McClelland is a Canadian guitarist living in France. 

Sheet music: Collected Works For Solo Guitar (including the etudes)

Excerpt of Mazurka (Villa-Lobos “Suite Populaire Brésilienne”) performed live on Canadian television by Vincea McClelland in 1993

• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Sheet music, Recordings, Gear: www.classicalguitarmusic.org
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

To be included on these posts simply let me know about news, links, and concert in Canada by emailing:  admin@classicalguitarcanada.ca

Links:

• Northwest Guitar Festival 2012 – Cancelled
• Emma Rush has a new facebook page
• Join Michael Dias, Adrian Verdejo, and myself (Bradford Werner) at the Victoria Guitar Trio on facebook
• Concert Review – Janet Grohovac, Victoria BC
• A worthwhile Tumblr blog to check out: guitarworks.tumblr.com
• Practicing Well: Positive Success Ratios (via Practicing Musician)
• I’m slowly updating my sheet music site…Free Sheet Music

Concerts and Events:

I always need help updating this list so let me know what’s happening across Canada

• Check out the big list: Classical Guitar Events and Concerts 2012
• January 22: Montreal Guitar Society Presents Jean-François Desrosby
• February 3: Edmonton Classical Guitar Society presents Duo Aperio
• February 4: Classical Guitar Society of Calgary presents Dale Kavanagh
• February 5: Girls Night Out: Eva Beneke, Tracy Anne Smith, Emma Rush
• February 5: Guitar Society of Brantford: “Girls Night Out” with Emma Rush, Tracy Anne Smith, and Eva Beneke
• February 9: Concert - Matthew Martin ( Wolfville NS)

Festivals – Academies – Competitions

• August 15-18: Sauble Beach Guitar Festival
• August 13 -18: Classical GuitarFest West (Calgary)
• July 16-20: VCM Summer Guitar Academy (Victoria)
• July 13-15: Hamilton International Guitar Festival 
• July 1-14: Le Domaine Forget – International Music Academy (Saint-Irénée, QC)
• February  16-19: Guitar Alla Grande Festival 2012

• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Sheet music, Recordings, Gear: www.classicalguitarmusic.org
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

I’ve been getting many emails from people regarding the 2012 Northwest Guitar Festival. I have just heard from James Reid that it is cancelled this year. I’m sure it will be back for next year as it has survived for 20 year (I think).

Keep an eye out for it next year and I will see you there!

In the meantime check out:

Festivals, events, and concerts 2012:
http://www.classicalguitarcanada.ca/classical-guitar-concerts-events-2012/

This email might not interest most of you so check out some free music at:
http://www.classicalguitarmusic.org/

…or Lesson Archive:
http://www.classicalguitarcanada.ca/free/lessons-archive/

• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Sheet music, Recordings, Gear: www.classicalguitarmusic.org
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

This is a guest post by: Alexander Dunn

Concert review – Janet Grohovac
St. Barnabas Church Sunday Concert Series
January 8, 2012, Victoria, BC

Guitarist Janet Grohovac performed a beautiful solo recital organized by the Victoria Guitar Society and the St. Barnabas Church series. Ms Grohovac is a ‘daughter’ of Victoria, having studied at the University of Victoria before moving on to graduate studies in Austin. She is now in the midst of her doctoral studies and is successfully teaching in the Austin area. She represents a group of very talented players that have begun their musical training in Victoria, and have gone to various parts of the world to establish excellent performing and teaching careers.

Ms Grohovac began her program with Etude #8 of Jules Regondi, played with great lyricism and accuracy. The etudes are notoriously difficult – and this reading was handled with aplomb. Next was a set of Spanish pieces – Junto al Generalife of Rodrigo, and Leyenda of Albéniz. The Rodrigo forms part of an imaginary suite based on locations in southern Spain, and was played with a rich, dark sound, and beautiful musicianship, handling its tremolo demands with good control. The Albéniz was played very well, but for my taste I find this work to be still far too overplayed. A better programming choice would have been a Rodrigo companion piece such as Tiento Antiguo, Bajando de la Meseta, Pajaros de Primavera etc. A Barrios set of Julia Florida and Un Sueño was very fine indeed, with great attention to detail and good dramatic sweep. After intermission, the prelude and fugato from the Lute Suite BWV 995 formed an appropriate start to the second half. Duarte’s The Swan from The Birds suite, was given am exemplary reading, and proved to be a surprisingly nice piece. Finally, the Turina Sonata ended the program, given good dramatic utterance and pacing. I noticed that the old Segovia edition was used, which is definitely inferior to a newer edition. For example, Segovia contains some wrong notes and has an unnecessary tuning for the second movement. Nevertheless, the performance was strong and convincing. In general, Ms Grohovac is a player with great lyricism and draws a beautiful sound on her Connor guitar. At points, more propulsion or rhythmic drive could have been imparted to passages in the Bach or Turina, but as a whole, the recital was musically rewarding and technically sound. We look forward to hearing again this fine ‘daughter of Victoria’ and watch her career unfold with great interest and admiration.

• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Sheet music, Recordings, Gear: www.classicalguitarmusic.org
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

There is not too much to report from this week but there are some great concerts coming up. I’m looking forward to performing a duo Vivaldi concerto this Friday with Michael Dias and BC’s Sidney Classical Orchestra. We are amplifying which is always a pain but I think the result will be good as we rented some nice mics and speakers/board.

- Bradford Werner

Let me know about news, links, and concert in Canada by emailing:  admin@classicalguitarcanada.ca

Links:

• Panormo Guitars and Vihuelas by Clive Titmuss
• Scenes from GFA Convention 2011 – Columbus Georgia
• A worthwhile Tumblr blog to check out: guitarworks.tumblr.com
• Practicing Well: Positive Success Ratios (via Practicing Musician)
• I’m slowly updating my sheet music site (slowly)…Free Sheet Music

Concerts and Events:

I always need help updating this list so let me know what’s happening across Canada

• Check out the big list: Classical Guitar Events and Concerts 2012
• January 8:  Janet Grohovac plays Victoria’s St. Barnabas Sunday Concert Series 
• January 13:  Quelus Guitar Duo perform with Victoria’s Sidney Classical Orchestra
• January 14: Guitar Society of Toronto presents Remi Boucher
• January 19:  Jean-François Desrosby Concert & Class (Moncton University, New Brunswick)
• January 22: Montreal Guitar Society Presents Jean-François Desrosby

• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Sheet music, Recordings, Gear: www.classicalguitarmusic.org
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

This is a guest post by luthier Clive Titmuss

Website: clivetitmuss.com

Classical period Guitar by Clive Titmuss modelled on Panormo c.1809 built in 2011

This instrument is a near copy of a guitar whose maker was declared by Fernando Sor, the father of the classical guitar, to be his favorite. I created it after playing the original for a number of months and making an accurate drawing and a number of copies. I also included some interior details, especially the barring and timber dimensions from a contemporary guitar by Grobert, made for Paganini, later owned by Berlioz.

For this guitar there are accurate details including fossil ivory frets and ebony pegs, an ebony fingerboard, bindings and head veneer. The neck is pear wood, the head is apple, both stained black and French Polished. The guitar has a pin bridge and gut strings. The principal timber is German figured maple for the sides and back. The rosette is made from holly, ebony and pearwood purfling.

It is perfect for playing any composer of the period, and there are many: Carcassi, Carulli, Giuliani, Sor himself, Legnani, Molino and a long list of others. This instrument has a cognate feel in the hands for a classical guitar player, but there are distinct differences in the sound and articulation. The speech is shorter but more emphatic in the upper partials and the bass is amazingly penetrating and clear for such a small instrument. The early 19th century makers were very clever in their use of minimal material to do the work required and preferred thinly-worked maple over rosewood, which dominated in the Iberian guitar making tradition.

The classical period guitar is a development of two schools of guitar making, the Spanish school of Cadiz and Madrid makers who mainly made six-course guitars, and the northern guitar makers of France and England. Many fine guitars were also made in Italy, but they were mainly in the Spanish style. The Panormo guitar is interesting because the centre of guitar making shifted north when the Napoleonic wars made life difficult for the middle class in Spain. This is one reason that Aguado and Sor moved to Paris. Sor later lived in London, where Panormo was active. Panormo used the profile and size of the six-course guitars and converted it for use in a six-single string configuration. Both Sor and Aguado would have learned their skills on six-course instruments from their teacher, Padre Basilio, whose works are completely lost. His legacy lives on in the six Boccherini quintets, inspired by Basilio’s brilliant Fandango improvisations.

In creating my Panormo-style guitars, I did not make strict copies, but tried to incorporate features of the period. These instruments are in no way inferior to the modern guitar. When they are played with a technique such as that detailed in Sor’s method book, the player will find these instruments are astonishing in their ease of play, their responsive character, bass and treble balance, and their capacity to produce a cantabile line. If you like to play Sor and his contemporaries, the players and composers who define the “Classical” guitar, you enjoy a revelation when playing a period instrument with a sympathetic technique.

For more period instruments, my recordings, photos and information, as well as free guitar, vihuela and lute tablatures, visit me on the web: clivetitmus.com. My vihuela and lute recordings are also available on iTunes.

The guitar comes with a heavy-duty fitted and upholstered custom case with brass hardware. $8500 CAD

Gallery

Click on photos to enlarge image. Displayed are both the above mentioned Panormo guitar and new vihuelas as well.

• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Sheet music, Recordings, Gear: www.classicalguitarmusic.org
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule