Musician

Robert de Visée

Robert de Visée (ca. 1655 – 1732/1733) was a lutenist, guitarist, theorbist and viol player at the court of Louis XIV, as well as a singer, and composer for lute, theorbo and guitar.

Biography

Robert de Visée’s origin is unknown, although a Portuguese origin of his surname had been suggested. He was likely to have studied with Francesco Corbetta. He was first mentioned in 1680, and at about that time became a chamber musician to Louis XIV, in which capacity he often performed at court. He was appointed in 1709 as a singer in the royal chamber, and in 1719 he was named “Guitar Master of the King” (Maître de Guitare du Roi). Jean Rousseau reported in a letter of 1688 that he was a respected musician at Versailles, and also played the viol (Strizich and Ledbetter 2001).

Visée published two books of guitar music which contained twelve suites between them, as well as a few isolated pieces: Livre de guitare dédié au roi (Paris, 1682) and Livre de pièces pour la guitare (Paris 1686). He composed many suites of pieces for theorbo and Baroque lute (the bulk of which are preserved in the Saizenay Ms.), as well as a collection of ensemble pieces.

Works

Complete index of de Visée’s pieces for the guitar:

• 1682 “Livre de Guitarre, dédie au roi”:
• Suite № 1 in A Minor

Prélude Allemande Courante Sarabande Gigue Passacaille Gavotte Gavotte Bourrée

• Suite № 2 in A Major

Allemande Courante Sarabande

• Suite № 3 in D Minor

Prélude Allemande Courante Courante Sarabande Sarabande Gigue Passacaille Gavotte Gavotte Menuet Rondeau Menuet Rondeau Bourrée

• Suite № 4 in G Minor

Prélude Allemande Courante Double de la Courante Sarabande Gigue Menuet Gavotte

• Suite № 5 in G Major

Sarabande Sarabande Gigue

• Suite № 6 in C Minor

Prélude Tombeau de Mr. Francisque Corbet Courante Sarabande Sarabande en Rondeau Gavotte

• Suite № 7 in C Major

Prélude Allemande Courante Sarabande Gigue, a la Maniere Angloise Gavotte Menuet

• Chaconne (F Major)

• Suite № 8 in G Major

Prélude (Accord Nouveau) Allemande Courante Sarabande Gigue Sarabande Chaconne Gavotte Menuet Bourrée

• 1686 Livre de Pieces pour la Guitarre:
• Suite № 9 in D Minor

Prélude Allemande Courante Sarabande Gigue Gavotte Bourrée Menuet Passacaille Menuet

• Suite № 10 in G Minor

Prélude Allemande Courante Sarabande Gigue Menuet Chaconne Gavotte Bourrée Menuet

Sarabande (A Minor)

Gigue (A Minor)

Sarabande (A Major)

Menuet (A Major)

• Suite № 11 in B Minor

Prélude Allemande Sarabande Gigue Passacaille

Suite № 12 in E Minor Sarabande Menuet Passacaille

Menuet (C Major)

• Manuscript Pieces:

• Pieces in A minor

Prélude Allemande Villanelle (& Contrepartie)

• Pieces in A major

Prélude Rondeau

• Pieces in C major

Courante Gigue

• Pieces in D minor

Allemande “La Royalle” Sarabande Masquerade Gigue Gavotte Chaconne

• Pieces in D major

Sarabande Gavotte Chaconne Gavotte Rondeau (& Contrepartie)

• Pieces in G minor

Prélude Prélude Allemande Sarabande Gavotte Gavotte en Rondeau Ouverture de la Grotte De Versaille (de Lully) Entrée d’Appollon (de Lully)

• Pieces in G major

Allemande Courante Sarabande Gigue Gigue Musette (Rondeau)

Andrés Segovia Torres

Andrés Segovia Torres, 1st Marquis of Salobreña (February 21, 1893 – June 2, 1987), known as Andrés Segovia, was a virtuoso Spanish classical guitarist from Linares, Jaén, Andalucia, Spain. He is widely considered to be one of the best known and most influential classical guitar personalities of the 20th century, having a considerable influence on later guitarists, particularly because of important guitar works that were dedicated to him by composers such as Federico Moreno Torroba.

Segovia is credited for his modern-romantic repertoire, mainly through works dedicated to him by modern composers, but he also created his own transcriptions of classical works that were originally for other instruments. He is remembered for his expressive performances: his wide palette of tone, and his distinctive (often instantly recognizable) musical personality in tone, phrasing and style.

Early life

Segovia stated that he began to play the guitar at the age of six. Angelo Gilardino, who has worked at the Fundación Andrés Segovia in Spain, noted: "Though it is not yet completely documented, it seems clear that, since his tender childhood, [Segovia] learnt playing as a flamenco guitarist. The first guitar he owned had formerly been played by Paco de Lucena who died when Segovia was five years old. Since then, Segovia was given some instruction by Agustinillo, an amateur flamenco player who was a fan of Paco de Lucena."Nevertheless, Segovia did not really play flamenco. Instead he preferred expressive art-music such as that by Federico Moreno Torroba, and revived interest in the instrument as an expressive medium for the performance of classical art-music.

As a teenager, Segovia moved to the town of Granada, where he studied the guitar. However, his father had wanted him to become a lawyer. After his time in Granada, he returned home and spent much time at the Alhambra palace, a Moorish relic overlooking the town which he regarded as his spiritual awakening.

Career

Segovia's first public performance was in Spain at the age of 16 in 1909, and a few years later he held his first professional concert in Madrid, playing works by Francisco Tárrega and some guitar transcriptions by J.S. Bach, which he had transcribed and arranged himself. Although he was always discouraged by his family who wanted him to become a lawyer and he was looked down on by some of Tárrega's pupils, he continued to diligently pursue his studies of the guitar.

He played again in Madrid in 1912, at the Paris Conservatory in 1915, in Barcelona in 1916, and made a successful tour of South America in 1919. The status of the classical guitar at the beginning of the twentieth century had declined, and only in Barcelona and in the Rio de la Plata region of South America could it have been said to be of any significance. When Segovia arrived on the scene, this situation was just beginning to change, largely through the efforts of Miguel Llobet. It was in this changing milieu that Segovia, whose strength of personality and artistry coupled with new technological advances such as recording, radio, and air travel, succeeded in making the guitar more popular again.

In 1921 in Paris, Segovia met Alexandre Tansman, who later wrote a number of guitar works for Segovia, among them Cavatina, which won a prize at the Siena International Composition contest in 1952.

At Granada in 1922 he became associated with the Concurso de Cante Jondo promoted by the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. The aim of the "classicizing" Concurso was to preserve flamenco in its purity from being distorted by modern popular music. Segovia had already developed as a fine tocador of flamenco guitar, yet his direction was now classical. Invited to open the Concurso held at the Alhambra, he played Homenaje a Debussy by Falla.

Guitar by Hermann Hauser, 1937, Munich, Germany. Concert guitar of Andrés Segovia's from 1937 until 1962. Gift of Emilita Segovia, Marquessa of Salobreña, 1986 (1986.353.1). Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1923 Segovia was in Mexico for the first time. There Manuel Ponce was so impressed with the concert, that he wrote a review in El Universal. Later Ponce went on to write many works for Segovia, including numerous sonatas.

In 1924, Segovia visited the German luthier Hermann Hauser Sr. after hearing some of his instruments played in a concert in Munich. In 1928 Hauser provided Segovia with one of his personal guitars for use during his United States tour and in his concerts through to 1933. When Hauser delivered the new instrument Segovia had ordered, Segovia passed his 1928 Hauser to his U.S. representative and close friend Sophocles Papas, who gave it to his classical guitar student, the famous jazz and classical guitarist Charlie Byrd, who used it on several records.

Segovia's first American tour was arranged in 1928 when Fritz Kreisler, the Viennese violinist who privately played the guitar,persuaded F. C. Coppicus from the Metropolitan Musical Bureau to present the guitarist in New York.

After Segovia's debut tour in the U.S. in 1928, the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Loboscomposed his now well-known Twelve Études (Douze études) and later dedicated them to Segovia. Their relationship proved to be lasting as Villa-Lobos continued to write for Segovia. He also transcribed numerous classical pieces himself and revived the pieces transcribed by 

In 1932, Segovia met and befriended composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco in Venice. Since Castelnuovo-Tedesco did not play the guitar, Segovia provided him with guitar compositions (Ponce's Folias variations and Sor's Mozart Variations) which he could study. Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed a large number of works for the guitar, many of them dedicated to Segovia. The Concerto Op. 99 of 1939 was the first guitar concerto of the 20th century and Castelnuovo-Tedesco's last work in Italy, before he emigrated to the United States. It was premiered by Segovia in Uruguay in 1939.

In 1935, he gave his first public performance of Bach's Chaconne, a difficult piece for any instrument. He moved to Montevideo, performing many concerts in South America in the thirties and early forties.

After World War II, Segovia began to record more frequently and perform regular tours of Europe and the U.S., a schedule he would maintain for the next thirty years. In 1954,Joaquín Rodrigo dedicated Fantasía para un gentilhombre (Fantasy for a Gentleman) to Segovia. Segovia won the 1958 Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance, Instrumentalist for his recording Segovia Golden Jubilee.

John W. Duarte dedicated his English Suite Op.31 to Segovia and his wife (Emilia Magdalena del Corral Sancho) on the occasion of their marriage in 1962. Segovia told the composer "You will be astonished at the success it will have".

In recognition of his contributions to music and the arts, Segovia was ennobled on 24 June 1981 by King Juan Carlos I, who gave Segovia the hereditary title of Marqués de Salobreña (Marquis of Salobreña) in the nobility of Spain.

Andrés Segovia continued performing into his old age, living in semi-retirement during his 70s and 80s on the Costa del Sol. Two films were made of his life and work one when he was 75 and the other, 84. They are available on DVD called Andrés Segovia  in Portrait. His final RCA LP record (ARL1-1602), Reveries, was recorded in Madrid in June 1977.

In 1984, Segovia was the subject of a thirteen part series broadcast on National Public Radio, entitled Segovia! The series was recorded on location in Spain, France, and the United States. Hosted by Oscar Brand, the series was produced by Jim Anderson, Robert Malesky, and Larry Snitzler.

Segovia died in Madrid of a heart attack at the age of 94. He is buried at Casa Museo de Linares, in Andalusia.

Technique

Segovia's technique differed from that of Tárrega and his followers, such as Emilio Pujol. Both Segovia and Miguel Llobet (who taught Segovia several of his transcriptions of Granados' piano works) plucked the strings with a combination of his fingernails and fingertips, producing a sharper sound than many of his contemporaries. With this technique, it was possible to create a wider range of timbres, than when using the fingertips or nails alone. Historically, classical guitarists have debated which of these techniques is the best approach. The vast majority of classical guitarists now play with a combination of the fingernails and fingertips.

After World War II, Segovia became among the first to endorse the use of nylon strings instead of gut strings.This new advance allowed for greater stability in intonation, and was the final missing ingredient in the standardization of the instrument.

Gaspar Sanz

Gaspar Sanz (1640–1710) was an Aragonese composer, guitarist, organist and priest born to a wealthy family in Calanda in the Spanish comarca of Bajo Aragón. He studied music, theology and philosophy at the University of Salamanca, where he was later appointed Professor of Music. He wrote three volumes of pedagogical works for the baroque guitar that form an important part of today's classical guitar repertory and have informed modern scholars in the techniques of baroque guitar playing.

Biography

His birth date is unknown but he was baptized as Francisco Bartolome Sanz y Celma in the church of Calanda de Ebro, Aragon on 4 April 1640 later adopting the first name "Gaspar".

After gaining his Bachelor of Theology at the University of Salamanca, Gaspar Sanz travelled to Naples, Rome and perhaps Venice to further his music education. He is thought to have studied under Orazio Benevoli, choirmaster at the Vatican and Cristofaro Caresana, organist at the Royal Chapel of Naples. He spent some years as the organist of the Spanish Viceroy at Naples.

Sanz learned to play guitar while studying under Lelio Colista and was influenced by music of the Italian guitarists Foscarini, Granata, and Corbetta. When Sanz returned to Spain he was appointed instructor of guitar to Don Juan (John of Austria), the illegitimate son of King Philip IV and Maria Calderon, a noted actress of the day.

In addition to his musical skills, Gaspar Sanz was noted in his day for his literary works as a poet and writer, and was the author of some poems and two books now largely forgotten. He died in Madrid in 1710.In 1674 he wrote his now famous Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española, published in Saragossa and dedicated to Don Juan. A second book entitled Libro Segundo de cifras sobre la guitarra española was printed in Saragossa in 1675. A third book, Libro tercero de mùsica de cifras sobre la guitarra española, was added to the first and second books, and all three were published together under the title of the first book in 1697, eventually being published in eight editions. The ninety works in this masterpiece are his only known contribution to the repertory of the guitar and include compositions in both punteado ("plucked") style and rasqueado ("strummed") style.

Influence

His compositions provide some of the most important examples of popular Spanish baroque music for the guitar and now form part of classical guitar pedagogy. Sanz's manuscripts are written as tablature for the baroque guitar and have been transcribed into modern notation by numerous guitarists and editors; Emilio Pujol's edition of Sanz's Canarios being a notable example.

He has influenced some twentieth century composers.

• The composer Manuel de Falla utilised some of his themes in his work El retablo de maese Pedro composed in 1923.
• In 1954, at the request of guitarist Andres Segovia, Joaquín Rodrigo composed his Fantasia para un Gentilhombre on themes fromInstrucción de música sobre la Guitarra Española.
• Passages of Peter Warlock's Capriol Suite for String Orchestra composed in 1926 appear to be inspired by Sanz's compositionDance De Las Hachas.

Alonso Mudarra

Alonso Mudarra (c. 1510 – April 1, 1580) was a Spanish composer and vihuelist of the Renaissance. He was an innovative composer of instrumental music as well as songs, and was the composer of the earliest surviving music for the guitar.

The place of his birth is not recorded, but he grew up in Guadalajara, and probably received his musical training there. He probably went to Italy in 1529 with Charles V, in the company of the fourth Duke of the Infantado, Íñigo López de Mendoza, marqués de Santillana. When he returned to Spain he became a priest, receiving the post of canon at the cathedral in Seville in 1546, where he remained for the rest of his life. While at the cathedral, he directed all of the musical activities; many records remain of his musical activities there, which included hiring instrumentalists, buying and assembling a new organ, and working closely with composer Francisco Guerrero for various festivities. Mudarra died in Seville, and his sizable fortune was distributed to the poor of the city according to his will.

Mudarra wrote numerous pieces for the vihuela and the four-course guitar, all contained in the collection Tres libros de musica en cifras para vihuela, which he published on December 7, 1546 in Seville. These three books contain the first music ever published for the four-course guitar, which was then a relatively new instrument. The second book is noteworthy in that it contains eight multi-movement works, all arranged by "tono", or mode.

Compositions represented in this publication include fantasias, variations (including a set on La Folia), tientos, pavanes and galliards, and songs. Modern listeners are probably most familiar with his Fantasia X, which has been a concert and recording mainstay for many years. The songs are in Latin, Spanish and Italian, and include romances, canciones, villancicos, and sonnets. Another innovation he used was separate signs for different tempos: slow, medium, and fast.

Antonio de Torres Jurado

Antonio de Torres Jurado (Almería, Andalucía 13 June 1817 – 19 November 1892) was a Spanish guitarist and luthier, and "the most important Spanish guitar maker of the 19th century."

Torres is as revered among guitarists as Antonio Stradivari is revered among violinists. It is with his designs that the first recognisably modern classical guitars are to be seen. Most acoustic guitars in use today are derivatives of his designs.

Biography

Born in La Cañada de San Urbano, Almería, Antonio de Torres was the son of Juan Torres, a local tax collector, and Maria Jurado. As was common, when he was 12 he started an apprenticeship as carpenter. In 1833, a dynastic war broke out, and soon after Torres was conscripted into the army. Through his father's machinations, young Antonio was dismissed as medically unfit for service. As only single men and widowers without children were subject to conscription, in 1835 his family pushed Torres into a hastily arranged marriage to Juana María López, the 13-year-old daughter of a shopkeeper. Children soon followed: a daughter in 1836, another in 1839, and a third in 1842, who died a few months later. His second daughter also died. In 1845 his wife died at the age of 23, of tuberculosis. These were difficult years for Torres, who was often in debt and forced to look for more lucrative forms of employment.

Although there is some debate as to who taught Torres, one theory is that some time around 1842, Torres may have gone to work for José Pernas in Granada, rapidly learning to build guitars. He soon returned to Seville, and opened a shop on the calle Cerrageria No. 7that he shared with Manuel Soto y Solares. Although he made some guitars during the 1840s, it was not until the 1850s on the advice of the renowned guitarist and composer Julián Arcas, that Torres made it his profession, and he began building in earnest. Julián Arcas offered Torres advice on building, and their collaboration turned Torres into an inveterate investigator of the guitar construction. Torres reasoned that the soundboard was key. To increase its volume, he made his guitars not only larger, but fitted them with thinner, hence lighter soundboards that were arched in both directions, made possible by a system of fan-bracing for strength.These bracing struts were laid out geometrically, based on two isosceles triangles joined at their base creating a kite shape, within which the struts were set out symmetrically.

While Torres was not the first to use this method he was the one who perfected the symmetrical design. To prove that it was the top, and not the back and sides of the guitar that gave the instrument its sound, in 1862 he built a guitar with back and sides of papier-mâché. (This guitar resides in the Museu de la Musica in Barcelona, and before the year 2000 it was restored to playable condition by the brothers Yagüe, Barcelona). 

There is an anecdote about how he had made a guitar made like a Chinese puzzle that could be assembled without glue, and disassembled would fit in a shoe box. There is no evidence that he really ever has made such a guitar though.

During his later years, Torres' close friend (a priest) Juan Martínez Sirvent lent him a hand in his workshop. Many years later, in 1931 Sirvent wrote a letter to Francisco Rodríguez Torres, mentioning the following explanation Torres made when he, at the age of 68 was asked by the famous father Garzón at a dinner about his "secret" how to make his outstandingly sounding guitars: 

" ... similngly (Torres) responded: 'Father, I am very sorry that a man like you also falls victim of that idea that runs among ignorant people, Juanito (that is how he addressed me) has been witness to the secret many times, but it is impossible for me to leave the secret behind for posterity; this will go to the tomb with me for it is the result of the feel of the tips of the thumb and forefinger comunicating to my intellect whether the soundboard is properly worked out to correspond with the guitar maker's concept and the sound required of the instrument.' Everyone was left convinced that the artistic genius cannot be passed on "

In 1868, Torres married again, wedding Josefa Martín Rosada. Shortly after, Torres met Francisco Tárrega for the first time. Tárrega, who was then aged seventeen, had come to Seville from Barcelona to buy a Torres guitar from the maker of Julián Arcas' instrument. Torres offered him a modest guitar he had in stock, but on hearing him play, offered him a guitar he had made for himself a few years before.

About 1870, Don Antonio, who was then in his 50s, closed his shop in Seville and moved back to Almería where he and his wife opened up a china and crystal shop on the calle Real. About five years later, Don Antonio began his "second epoch" as he refers to it on the labels of his guitars, building part-time when not busy in the china shop. After the death of his wife, Josefa, in 1883, Torres began to devote increasing amounts of time to building making some 12 guitars a year until his death in La Cañada de San Urbano, Almería at the age of 75.

Guitars

Torres guitars are divided into two periods. The first, belonging to Sevilla from 1852–1870; the second, being the years 1871-1893 in Almería. The guitars Torres made were so superior to those of his contemporaries that their example changed the way guitars were built, first in Spain, and then in the rest of the world. Although they are not particularly loud by modern standards, they have a clear, balanced, firm and rounded tone, that projects very well. His guitars were not only widely imitated and copied, but as he never signed his guitars, and only numbered those from his second epoch, over the years many fakes Torres have been made, some made by well-known and expert makers.

Robert Gerhard

Robert Gerhard i Ottenwaelder (25 September 1896 – 5 January 1970) was a Catalan Spanish composer and musical scholar and writer, generally known outside Catalonia as Roberto Gerhard.

Life

Roberto Gerhard was born in Valls, near Tarragona, Spain, the son of a German-Swiss father and an Alsatian mother. He was predisposed to an international, multilingual outlook, but by birth and culture he was a Catalan. He studied piano with Granados and composition with the great scholar-composer Felipe Pedrell, teacher of Albéniz, Granados and Falla. When Pedrell died in 1922, Gerhard tried unsuccessfully to become a pupil of Falla and considered studying with Charles Koechlin in Paris but then approachedArnold Schoenberg, who on the strength of a few early compositions accepted him as his only Spanish pupil. Gerhard spent several years with Schoenberg in Vienna and Berlin. Returning to Barcelona in 1928, he devoted his energies to new music through concerts and journalism, in conjunction with the flourishing literary and artistic avant-garde of Catalonia. He befriended Joan Miró and Pablo Casals, brought Schoenberg and Webern to Barcelona, and was the principal organizer of the 1936 ISCM Festival there. He also collected, edited and performed folksongs and old Spanish music from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century.

Identified with the Republican cause throughout the Spanish Civil War (as musical adviser to the Minister of Fine Arts in the Catalan Government and a member of the Republican Government's Social Music Council), Gerhard was forced to flee to France in 1939 and later that year settled in Cambridge, England. Until the death of Francisco Franco, who made it his business to extirpate Catalan national aspirations, his music was virtually proscribed in Spain, to which he never returned except for holidays. Apart from copious work for the BBC and in the theatre, Gerhard's compositions of the 1940s were explicitly related to aspects of Spanish and Catalan culture, beginning in 1940 with a Symphony in memory of Pedrell and the first version of the ballet Don Quixote. They culminated in a masterpiece as The Duenna (a Spanish opera on an English play, by Sheridan, which is set in Spain). The Covent Garden production ofDon Quixote and the BBC broadcasts of The Duenna popularized Gerhard's reputation in the UK though not in Spain. During the 1950s, the legacy of Schoenbergian serialism, a background presence in these overtly national works, engendered an increasingly radical approach to composition which, by the 1960s, placed Gerhard firmly in the ranks of the avant-garde. From the early 1950s Gerhard suffered from a heart condition which eventually ended his life. He died in Cambridge in 1970 and is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge, with his wife Poldi, Leopoldina 'Poldi' Feichtegger Gerhard, 1903 - 1994.

His archive is kept at Cambridge University Library.

Music

Stylistic evolution

For twenty years – first in Barcelona and then in exile in England – Gerhard cultivated, and enormously enriched, a modern tonal idiom with a pronounced Spanish-folkloric orientation that descended on the one hand from Pedrell and Falla, and on the other from such contemporary masters as Bartók and Stravinsky. This was the idiom whose major achievements included the Ballet Catalan Soirées de Barcelone, the ballet Don Quixote, the Violin Concerto and the opera The Duenna.

In the complex formation of Gerhard's personal language the influence of his last and greatest master, Schoenberg, had seemed to remain subordinate, almost suppressed. Yet Schoenbergian precepts had always been observed in his profound level of craftsmanship; and certain highly chromatic, quasi-serial passages, emerging as it were surreptitiously in these and other works, confirmed the enduring background presence of Gerhard's studies in Vienna and Berlin. In fact, Gerhard never ceased to venerate Schoenberg and remained in cordial contact with most of the leading figures of the Second Viennese School. He continued to study and meditate upon the implications of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. After The Duenna he turned to it more decisively, as if he had finally absorbed it and made it his own. In a notable series of works, such as the First Symphony and First String Quartet, which began to win him real international recognition for the first time, it became his principal mode of discourse. And simultaneously he developed it in new and personal directions, combining pitch-series with duration-series and a boldly exploratory attitude to sound and texture.

In one sense, this was a move towards greater abstraction. Yet the "Spanish", folkloric elements were not necessarily rejected. Rather they reappear in new perspectives, more symbolic, less anecdotal in effect—just as, in painting, they recur as motifs in the work of Gerhard's compatriots Picasso and Miro. This transitional period eventually gave birth to the strikingly original music of Gerhard's final decade, where serialism itself dissolves into a freely-associating continuum of colour and rhythm, and the Spanish turns of phrase may still surprise us with sudden nostalgia or dreamlike fantasy.

Gerhard often said that he stood by the sound of his music: 'in music the sense is in the sound'. Yet dazzling as their scoring is, his last works are in no sense a mere succession of sonic events. Their forms are meticulously organized and several make use of his special development of serialism where a twelve-tone pitch series, governing intervallic relations, interacts with a twelvefold time series governing the music's duration and proportions. Whereas in the Third and Fourth Symphonies, for instance, these techniques result in music of majesty and high drama, in the Concerto for Orchestra the element of play, of inordinate instrumental virtuosity enjoyed for its own sake, is paramount.

List of works

Gerhard's most significant works, apart from those already mentioned, include four symphonies (the Third, Collages, for orchestra and tape), the Concerto for Orchestra, concertos for violin, piano and harpsichord, the cantata The Plague (after Albert Camus), the balletsPandora and Soirées de Barcelone and pieces for a wide variety of chamber ensembles, including Sardanas for the indigenous Catalan street band, the cobla. He was perhaps the first important composer of electronic music in Britain; his incidental music for the 1955 Stratford-on-Avon King Lear – one of many such commissions for the Royal Shakespeare Company - was the first electronic score for the British stage.

Symphonies :

• Symphony Homenatge a Pedrell (1941)
• Symphony No. 1 (1952–53)
• Symphony No. 2 (1957–59); recomposition as Metamorphosis, unfinished (1967–68)
• Symphony No. 3 Collages (for orchestra and tape) (1960)
• Symphony No. 4 New York (1967)
• Symphony No. 5 (fragment only) (1969)
• (for Chamber Symphony Leo see "Chamber music")

Stage works :

• Ariel, Ballet (1934)
• Soirées de Barcelone, ballet in three tableaux (1937–39; edited and orchestration completed by Malcolm MacDonald, 1996)
• Don Quixote (original version 1940–41, rev. 1947–49)
• Alegrias, Divertissement flamenco (1942)
• Pandora (1943–44, orch. 1944-45)
• The Duenna, opera after Sheridan (1947–49). The Bielefeld Opera and conductor Geoffrey Moull performed La Duenna in a new production in 1994. The Wiener Zeitung at the time remarked that the work is "a rediscovered stroke of genius".
• El barberillo de Lavapies, arrangement and orchestration of the zarzuela (1874) by Francisco Barbieri (1954)
• Lamparilla, German-language Singspiel loosely based on El barberillo de Lavapies with additional music and original overture by Gerhard (1955–56)

Concertos :

• Concertino for string orchestra (1929)
• Violin Concerto (1942–43)
• Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra (1951)
• Concerto for Harpsichord, String Orchestra and Percussion (1955–56)
• Concerto for Orchestra (1965)

Orchestral :

• Albada, Interludi i Dansa (1936)
• Epithalamium (1966)
• Various suites from Soirées de Barcelone, Don Quixote, Alegrias, Pandora

Chamber :

• Sonatine a Carlos, piano (1914)
• Trio in B major for violin, cello and piano (1918)
• Trio No. 2 for violin, cello and piano (1918)
• Dos Apunts, piano (1921–22)
• 3 string quartets composed up to 1928 (all lost; No. 3 (1928) was reworked as the Concertino for strings)
• Sonata, clarinet and piano (1928; also version for bass clarinet and piano)
• Wind Quintet (1928)
• Andantino, clarinet, violin and piano (period 1928–29)
• String Quartet No. 1 (1950–55)
• Sonata, viola and piano (1948; recomposed 1956 as sonata for cello and piano)
• Capriccio, solo flute (1949)
• 3 Impromptus, piano (1950)
• Secret People (study for the film score) for clarinet, violin and piano (1951–52)
• Nonet (1956–57)
• Fantasia, guitar (1957)
• String Quartet No. 2 (1961–62)
• Concert for 8 (1962)
• Chaconne, violin solo (1959)
• Hymnody for large wind ensemble, two pianos and percussion (1963)
• Gemini, Duo for violin and piano (1966)
• Libra, sextet (1968)
• Leo, Chamber Symphony (1969)

Vocal :

• L'infantament meravellós de Shahrazada Song-cycle for voice and piano, Op. 1 (1916–18)
• Verger de les galanies for voice and piano (1917–18)
• 7 Haiku for voice and ensemble (1922 rev. 1958)
• 14 Cançons populars catalanes for voice and piano (1928–29; six numbers orchestrated 1931 as 6 Cançons Populars Catalanes)
• L'alta naixenca del Rei en Jaume, cantata for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra (1932)
• Cancionero de Pedrell for voice and piano or chamber orchestra (1941)
• 3 Canciones Toreras for voice and orchestra (c. 1943) [composed under pseudonym "Juan Serralonga"]
• 6 Chansons populaires françaises for voice and piano (1944)
• The Akond of Swat for voice and percussion (1954)
• Cantares for voice and guitar (1962; incorporates Fantasia for guitar)
• The Plague, cantata for narrator, chorus and orchestra, after Camus (1963–64)

Electronic music :

• Audiomobiles I-IV (1958–59)
• Lament for the death of Bullfighter for speaker and tape (1959)
• 10 Pieces for tape (c. 1961)
• Sculptures I-V (1963)
• DNA in Reflection (1963)
• Anger of Achilles (1964) with Delia Derbyshire
• also tape component in Symphony No.3 and in many film, radio and theatre scores

Themes :

• Cadiz, after Chuca & Valverde (1943)
• Gigantes y Cabezudos, after Caballero (c. 1943)
• La Viejecita, after Caballero (c. 1943)

Film :

• The Secret People (1952)
• This Sporting Life (1963)

Francisco Tárrega 

Francisco de Asís Tárrega Eixea (21 November 1852 – 15 December 1909) was a Spanish composer and guitarist of the Romantic period.

Biography

Tárrega was born on 21 November 1852, in Villarreal, Province of Castellón, Spain. It is said that Francisco's father played flamenco and several other music styles on his guitar; when his father was away working as a watchman at the Convent of San Pascual, the child would take his father's guitar and attempt to make the beautiful sounds he had heard. Francisco's nickname as a child was "Quiquet".

An infection permanently impaired his eyesight and when the family moved to Castelló where the child was enrolled in music classes. Both his first music teachers, Eugeni Ruiz and Manuel González, were blind.

In 1862, concert guitarist Julián Arcas, on tour in Castellón, heard the young Tárrega play and advised Tárrega's father to allow Francisco to come to Barcelona to study with him. Tárrega's father agreed, but insisted that his son take piano lessons as well. The guitar was viewed as an instrument to accompany singers, while the piano was all the rage throughout Europe. However, Tárrega had to stop his lessons shortly after, when Arcas left for a concert tour abroad. Although Tárrega was only ten years old, he ran away and tried to start a musical career on his own by playing in coffee houses and restaurants in Barcelona. He was soon found and brought back to his father, who had to make great sacrifices to advance his son's musical education.

Three years later, in 1865, he ran away again, this time to Valencia where he joined a gang of gypsies. His father looked for him and brought him back home once more, but he ran away a third time, again to Valencia. By his early teens, Tárrega was proficient on both the piano and the guitar. For a time, he played with other musicians at local engagements to earn money, but eventually he returned home to help his family.

Tárrega entered the Madrid conservatory in 1874, under the sponsorship of a wealthy merchant named Antonio Canesa. He had brought along with him a recently purchased guitar, made in Seville by Antonio de Torres. Its superior sonic qualities inspired him both in his playing and in his view of the instrument's compositional potential. At the conservatory, Tárrega studied composition under Emilio Arrieta who convinced him to focus on guitar and abandon the idea of a career with the piano.

By the end of the 1870s, Tárrega was teaching the guitar (Emilio Pujol and Miguel Llobet as well as Daniel Fortea (1878–1953) were pupils of his) and giving regular concerts. Tárrega received much acclaim for his playing and began traveling to other areas of Spain to perform. By this time he was composing his first works for guitar, which he played in addition to works of other composers.

During the winter of 1880, Tárrega replaced his friend Luis de Soria, in a concert in Novelda, Alicante, where, after the concert, an important man in town asked the artist to listen to his daughter, María José Rizo, who was learning to play guitar. Soon they were engaged.

To enlarge his guitar repertory, he soon began transcribing piano works of Beethoven, Chopin,Mendelssohn and others, and, no doubt, to make use of his considerable knowledge of keyboard music. Tárrega and his wife moved to Madrid, gaining their living by teaching privately and playing concerts, but after the death of an infant daughter during the winter, Maria Josefa de los Angeles Tárrega Rizo, they settled permanently in Barcelona in 1885. Among his friends in Barcelona were Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, Joaquín Turina and Pablo Casals.In 1881, Tárrega played in the Opera Theatre in Lyon and then the Paris Odeon, in the bicentenary of the death of Pedro Calderón de la Barca. He also played in London, but he liked neither the language nor the weather. There is a story about his visit to England. After a concert, some people saw that the musician was in low spirits. "What is the matter, maestro?" they asked him. "Do you miss home? Your family, perhaps?" They advised him to capture that moment of sadness in his music. Thus he conceived the theme of one of his most memorable works, Lágrima (literally meaning teardrop). After playing in London he came back to Novelda for his wedding. At Christmas 1882, Tárrega married María José Rizo.

Francisco Tárrega and María José (María Josefa) Rizo had three more children: Paquito (Francisco), Maria Rosatia (María Rosalia) (best known as Marieta) and Concepción. On a concert tour in Valencia shortly afterward, Tárrega met a wealthy widow, Conxa Martinez, who became a valuable patron to him. She allowed him and his family use of a house in Barcelona, where he would write the bulk of his most popular works. Later she took him to Granada, where the guitarist conceived the theme for "Recuerdos de la Alhambra", which he composed on his return and dedicated to his friend Alfred Cottin, a Frenchman who had arranged his Paris concerts.

From the later 1880s up to 1903, Tárrega continued composing, but limited his concerts to Spain. In 1900, Tárrega visited Algiers, where he heard a repetitive rhythm played on an Arabian drum. The following morning he composed "Danza Mora" based on that rhythm. In about 1902, he cut his fingernails and created a sound that would become typical of those guitarists associated with his school. The following year he went on tour to Italy, giving highly successful concerts in Rome, Naples, and Milan.

In January 1906, he was afflicted with paralysis on his right side, and though he would eventually return to the concert stage, he never completely recovered. He finished his last work, "Oremus", on 2 December 1909. He died in Barcelona thirteen days later, on 15