Among Senor Obregon’s list of ‘Effects on the Spanish Guitar’ (1904): When I posted this on Facebook, Mark Delpriora commented that Pascual Roch used these same descriptions in his method book, published 17 years later. Both Roch and Obregon were students of Francisco Tarrega, and so perhaps we can surmise that they learnt these ‘effects’…

By the eccentric poet, writer, and guitarist John Roberts, who studied with Pujol for many years. This was written in 1972, when Pujol was 86 (though he would in fact live another 8 years). I think it is a beautiful tribute:

This is something I could never have predicted — that I would be part of a Mexican documentary on Wagner! It’s a superb documentary covering the Mexican premiere of Parsifal, which occurred only last year. My recording of Miguel Llobet’s 1899 guitar arrangement of a fragment from the overture is played over the end credits,…

A rather amusing summary from Arthur Froane’s 1898 method. Nothing changes, apparently!

[I found this in my notes from some years ago. I had forgotten that I had written about this extraordinary experience and thought it worth posting. It really happened, though it was so like a dream that I remain in slight disbelief about it.] Today I heard the most wonderful busker. She was performing in…

In the Middle Ages, church music mostly used a 3:1 metre. Music with a 2:1 metre — indicated by a ‘C’ symbol (actually a half circle) that we today confusingly refer to as common time, but was then known as tempus imperfectum cum prolatione imperfecta — was rather less common. As the Latin title indicates,…

I’ve tried most string brands at some point — usually several times — so I thought I’d comment on the different strings I can remember, in the hope that it might be of use to some. If not, it is at least useful for me, helping to clarify my thoughts about strings. In terms of…

From his book of essays, Finding the Key. A painfully beautiful paragraph:

The most obvious instrument is the piano — the keyboard being central to the development of the Western musical tradition. Unfortunately, years of guitar-playing has made the piano, for me, an impossible instrument. I get this vertiginous feeling when sitting behind the instrument — there is some kind of figurative chasm between myself and the…

Korngold was a formative composer for me. When I was first discovering classical music, two works by Korngold were an obsession: his symphony and violin concerto. I remember I often used to listen to them on bus trips in and out of Norwich during my final year at university. The violin concerto was always the…