Publications
Music for Guitar, Lute and Vihuela
Through the Ages
Volume 5 - The Guitar from Later Days
Little would those guitarists from the Classical era have guessed that in the wake of their bountiful repertoire, the instrument was fated to lapse. Weathering this downturn it retained a slender presence through the remaining days of the 19th century, and the first decades of the 20th. Then spread-eagling from the mid-years, music for the guitar resurged with literally global dimensions- Echoes extended from the borders of Europe to the Americas, Australia, Japan and elsewhere. These contributions widened the instrument’s reaches with exotic strains, national idioms and spearheads into the untried.
Entering the final strait of these narratives on music for the guitar
through the ages, the forthcoming pages take in stride later harmonies within the instrument’s grasp, approaches to contemporary compositions and the motivations behind them. Yet for all the breakthroughs that guitarists have since undertaken, inherited resources and structures abide. Triadic components, tonal centres, discernible melodies held fast in familiar and novel guises. Strains of the Classics are detected, residues from the Romantic age, and alongside are all manner of exploratory ventures. At the periphery are those compositions that could be described as sound spectrums harnessing the guitar’s acoustic and percussive effects.
After scanning modern musical movements at large from later times, the guitar comes into its own, reflecting these trends amid innumerable individual departures that amount to a stylistic diversity unsurpassed in the history of the instrument.
145pp PDF Format
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