How to play guitar like a tipsy person…
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’…
Keep readingPoem for Emilio Pujol
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:
Keep readingIn a Mexican documentary on Wagner
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,…
Keep readingCommon weak points in guitar playing… according to a 1898 method
A rather amusing summary from Arthur Froane’s 1898 method. Nothing changes, apparently!
Keep readingEncountering Beauty
[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…
Keep readingTake Three
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,…
Keep readingStrung Out
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…
Keep readingGoehr on Messiaen
From his book of essays, Finding the Key. A painfully beautiful paragraph:
Keep readingIdle thoughts on what other instruments I might like to learn
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…
Keep readingErich Korngold — The Dead City
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…
Keep readingThe Side Show
There is nought else I feel like doing this evening, so I thought I’d write a brief post about a very brief song. The Side Show is a mere thirty-seconds long and is one of Charles Ives’s especially jokey pieces. Ives discovered that a popular comic song and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 share a common melodic theme and…
Keep readingJustifying obscure repertoire
Often when programme note writers, broadcasters, players etc. introduce ‘unknown’ or ‘rediscovered’ music to an audience they go through great pains to say how it is the product of neglected genius etc. This almost always leads to disappointment. Similar lines are sometimes used when introducing premieres by contemporary composers. I like to listen to this…
Keep readingJuvenilia
About a decade ago I made a number of heavy metal recordings under the name of Caligula (in retrospect I am curious why so many of us felt and feel compelled to make an intentionally and overtly evil kind of music). I released two of them, Rust I and II, as an EP in 2015,…
Keep readingSome thoughts regarding Fernando Sor’s Fantaisie elegiaque op. 59
Fernando Sor’s fantasias are among his best works. Even when they are less successful they are still among his most interesting. Like many other nineneeth-century fantasias, they often use a theme-and-variation form wherein there is an extended introduction, followed by variations that eventually break from the structure of the theme, and finally a novel, and…
Keep readingCharles Ives – Autumn
In his Memos, Charles Ives recounts instances where musician-acquaintances would criticise his more radical works. ‘I’d have periods of being good and nice … until I got so tired of it that I decided I’d either have to stop music or stop this.’ His sensitivity to criticism and almost neurotic self-doubt (contrary, or perhaps in addition,…
Keep readingRecordings of Reginald Smith Brindle’s non-guitar works
During his lifetime Reginald Smith Brindle was a prominent British composer. Many of his works were broadcast on BBC radio and performed in major British concert venues. For example, his twenty-minute Creation Epic for orchestra was performed in the 1964 BBC Proms. He was equally well-known known as a teacher and critic, and headed the…
Keep readingEmilio Pujol Gallery
While researching Emilio Pujol I seem to have accumulated a lot of photos of the great guitarist, so I thought I’d make a gallery. I’ll add to this as I find more.
Keep readingWorks Dedicated to/Premiered by Emilio Pujol
A great interest of mine is the guitarist Emilio Pujol, who was a student of Tarrega and became one of the leading performers, pedagogues, scholars and editors of the 20th century. One of my current projects is researching the works either dedicated to or premiered by Pujol. Nearly all the works are of a high…
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Steven Watson 