Publications
Music for Guitar, Lute and Vihuela
Through the Ages
Volume 4 - The Guitar in the Classical and Romantic Eras
Slipping into shadow as the 18th century dawned, the guitar came again to light in the century’s mid-decades, kindled by a surge of beginners’ manuals. Attuned to popular ears, drawing room ballads, poems set to songs and simple instrumental inducements reeled from the presses.
Those chord thrusts from the guitar that invigorated dance settings from the Baroque era, and rounds of variations spun from given themes left not an echo. Dispatched to the wayside were those errant discords, topsy-turvy tunings, the peculiarities that endowed guitar music then with its unique character. It is as though the pioneers of rasgueado sequences and the
refinements of their successors never existed. Musical tastes in the years approaching the 19th century were for pleasing harmonies and lucid melodies. Even the imagery alone of guitarists from bygone days and those of late bear witness to this turn of events. Where Baroque guitarists are captured in sway with communal entertainments, later visions now show sitters reposing in curtained drawing rooms and finished gardens.
Gaining in content and breadth, accomplished works for the guitar then welled up as the 19th century got into stride. This juncture marked a heyday for the instrument with a repertoire of offerings running to thousands. Within its grasp are fully-fledged sonatas, studies galore, effervescent variations, sonic depictions and ever-widening opportunities for guitarists to participate in ensembles. In all then, this period yielded an unsurpassed outflow of guitar music for all tastes and abilities. Moreover its legacy endures as staples in present-day teaching and concert programmes.
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