A Manuel de Falla double bill: when my guitar met two operas

This April, The Neemrana Music Foundation put on two operas by Manuel de Falla – La Vida Breve and El Retablo de Maese Pedro. As I mentioned on on my blog some time ago, I had the privilege of playing with the opera company in both productions. I had a conversation the other day with the Indian Guitar Federation’s director, Veda Aggarwal, who asked me some questions about the project. She very kindly invited me to share something of my Manuel de Falla opera double bill experience with IGF’s online magazine readers, so below is the result of a short interview she put to me via email.

VA: Could you give us a background into the two operas?

YP: I’ll begin with La Vida Breve, because it’s something we are familiar with as pertaining to the guitar, and yet the original work is so much more than the short piece that we guitarists know so well, and aspire to play in many cases. Though only a little over an hour long, La Vida Breve is a full opera, and happens to be among the most technically demanding operas commonly staged. The story is a tragedy in two acts, and closely mirrors a scandalous and heartbreaking real life event or situation that Falla witnessed. A well-born youth had a romantic affair with a young woman from a different (and less privileged) social class, and then left her to marry someone more ‘appropriate’ from his own class. The jilted young lady protested her fate very publicly, and then took her own life – though in the opera, Falla softened the details of her suicide, instead portraying her as dying of a broken heart. Apparently this was a news story that shocked Spanish society quite considerably at the time – it seems to me that Falla’s intent through the opera was to capture the tragedy of it, and through this portrayal of unrequited love soured further by the realities of class inequality, a perhaps to make a rather pessimistic statement on the cruelty with which humans are capable of treating one another.

El Retablo de Maese Pedro (which translates to Master Peter’s Puppet Show) is quite the opposite of La Vida Breve, in that it’s a much lighter fiction upon a fiction, and shows us a story of a beloved figure of Spanish culture, Don Quixote, essentially being himself. It’s a much shorter opera, running only about 30 minutes, and as the name suggests, it takes the form of a puppet show. In the opera, a traveling puppeteer puts on a theatrical production, aiming to tell heroic stories from the time of Charlemagne. Among the audience is Don Quixote, a greying old warrior who is given to spending his days thinking about and living amongst his memories of a life spent tilting at windmills. As the puppet show goes on, Don Quixote confuses the puppet theatre’s on-stage derring-do with real life events, and gets stirred up – he draws his sword and leaps on stage to take on the puppet ‘bad guys’ and save the puppet damsel in distress, in the process bringing the whole puppet theatre setup crashing down around him. The opera (and the puppet theatre) conclude with Don Quixote taking centre stage, and musing on the glory of chivalry and errant knights like himself, while in intended comedy, the puppeteer, Maese Pedro, laments the destruction of his puppet theatre.

VA: Classical guitar is for the most part, a solo instrument. Even when we perform with orchestra, it’s usually for a guitar concerto – where guitar is the featured instrument. What was your role like in these two operas?

YP: This was very far from a concerto-type experience, because rather than being something written especially with the guitar in mind, both operas belong to the wider realm of classical music, one of which (La Vida Breve) happens to use a guitar as a purely functional musical and dramatic device in service of the story at large.

My role in La Vida Breve was a pretty cut-and-dried guitar cameo that Falla wrote into the drama of the opera, in that I played the kind of traveling musician who would turn up at an event like a wedding, and accompany a singer (who would also be an itinerant musician like myself) on wedding-appropriate songs – much like a wedding band might do today, in many parts of the world, including here in India. Apart from the song linked above, and one other quite crucial narrative punchline that the baritone soloist I accompanied, Sherry Mathews, delivered, there were sundry little bits that I would play rhythmic chords for, in support of celebratory dramatic action happening on-stage during the wedding party. And if you have watched the video and are wondering, yes, I did improvise the start of Falla’s unrelated guitar composition Danza del Molinero (The Miller’s Dance) at the start of that song, because I thought it would set a nice tone, and work as a little extra homage to the composer on the occasion of his opera’s Asian debut.

In El Retablo de Maese Pedro, my role was to play the orchestral part Falla wrote for the harp-lute, so I was in the ‘pit’, with all the other instruments.

VA: Were the parts you played originally for guitar? If not, how did you transcribe them?

YP: In La Vida Breve, as I mentioned and linked to above, Falla actually wrote a baritone & guitar aria as part of the opera, along with a few other lines for the guitar, so really my role as a guitarist was to create a bit of culturally accessible musical ‘disruption’ on stage. In El Retablo de Maese Pedro, my part was a transcription of the harp-lute part, so even though it was mostly chords to add colour to the harpsichord part, and some rhythmic lines at various points, it took some transcribing to a) turn the harp-lute’s two clefs into one, and b) some editing to reduce passages with arpeggiations that were impossible or impractical on the guitar to meaningful chord progressions or a single line.

Transcribing is not that unfamiliar of a process for me, as I have done it in the past for some solo pieces I play, so it was really a question of sitting down over a few evenings and writing it out by hand the old fashioned way. What I thought was remarkable though, speaking of transcribing, was that Falla wrote even the bespoke guitar parts in La Vida Breve in the bass clef. I have no idea why he did that, considering guitar music has been written in treble since long before his time. If the transcribing aspect of the whole project made any particular impression on me, it was probably that by the end of some 90 pages for one opera and 300 for the other, I was probably the most proficient I’ll ever be at reading music in the bass clef!

VA: When we play in ensemble, it is usually with other guitarists or maybe one other chamber musician. What was it like performing with the entire orchestra?

YP: In a word? Humbling, and on so many levels! As a guitarist, I am naturally a little leery of reading at real tempi in rehearsals and performance, and to be surrounded by musicians who did that exceptionally well, as they all did, was quite something. Of course, as many have done before me, I also first spent some serious time alone with the score by myself. Also, I should clarify – this wasn’t a whole orchestra, so much as an ensemble playing a reduction whose members (2 violins, a cello, a flute, a clarinet, a double bass, timpani, piano, and guitar) represented sections of an orchestra.

In our performances, I found that sometimes the imperative of contributing to the orchestral sound in tempo and rhythm dictated that I edited my part more with the objective of carrying the musical idea forward intact, rather than with the objective of playing the maximum possible number of harp-lute notes in time. It was interesting to hear how tonic notes in a single line, when burbling along under the output of all the other instruments, added to a pretty complete musical effect, in spite of being unaccompanied by some higher arpeggiated notes that were not practical to play along with the tonic notes on the guitar. On a related note, it was also an interesting philosophical exercise to be a cog in such a big machine, so to speak, where no one line of music was the only important sound most of the time (except the piano perhaps, which took on the lion’s share of the orchestral reduction) – it was a very outside-the-ordinary discipline for me to devote myself to sounds that were meaningful to a greater whole, even though musically speaking, they were not particularly meaningful or even aesthetically pleasing by themselves. On perhaps a slightly cheeky note, let me add that as someone who usually plays solo, it was also a bit of a humbling experience because being the softest instrument in the pack, and playing behind two violins, a flute, a clarinet, and a cello, and next to a double bass, I was barely heard most of the time, unless I were to play either out of time or discordantly!

VA: Do you have any photos of yourself during the performance?

YP: I sure do! Both the Delhi performance of La Vida Breve and the one Serenade Magazine organised at Welham Boys’ School in Dehradun were memorable experiences, so first here is a picture of the principals, soloists, and musical director after our performance in Dehradun, followed by one of baritone soloist Sherry Mathews and myself performing the wedding song at the opening of Act II on stage at the Lotus Temple here in Delhi. You’ll notice in the first picture that I am standing beside flamenco maestro Paola Santa Cruz – in addition to an unaccompanied guitar aria, Falla wrote two flamenco dance interludes into the opera, which she rendered breathtakingly in both productions.

Also, here is one taken from the audience during our final performance of El Retablo de Maese Pedro – you can see the ensemble at work in our improvised pit beneath the stage at the Lotus Temple auditorium here in Delhi.

 

Need to play standing up?

This is a how-to for temporarily attaching a strap to a classical guitar. It’s a DIY job and not particularly elegant, but it’s cheap, it doesn’t require much assembly, and I’ve tested it through a number of operatic performances that additionally required people other than myself to handle the guitar on stage. If you need to put a strap on a guitar for an unusual performance, or perhaps if you have back trouble and want to experiment with playing standing up without first committing your guitar to ‘surgery’ to have pegs installed, this is for you.

Some time ago, I had the fabulously good luck to join an opera, namely The Neemrana Music Foundation’s production of Pablo Luna’s zarzuela (Spanish ‘pocket opera’) El niño judío – as a guitarist of course, but as a guitarist in costume, on stage, and singing with the chorus a couple of times! Needless to say, it was a thrilling experience that taught me a lot, introduced me to a number of wonderful and phenomenally inspiring people, and allowed me to address aspects of being a musician that predominantly solo-playing classical guitarists seldom have to – or get to – think about. But much more on that in my next few posts, because as you will know from my title and opening description, this one is about a relatively small – and yet quite essential – logistical aspect of the whole experience.

When I joined the production early in April, I learnt that I would have to play standing up. Not wanting to install pegs on any of my classical guitars, I spent some time looking for alternative solutions. After waiting for suction cups that never arrived in the mail, and talking to a couple of luthiers, here’s what I came up with – it allows you to wear your guitar with a normal guitar strap, you can set it up and remove it yourself, and it will leave no trace on your precious instrument. I should mention at the outset, though – you should only try this with guitars finished in PU, lacquer, or nitrocellulose, as it involves adhesives that would very likely damage a french polish finish.

To do this, you’ll need the guitar you have in mind, of course, and all of this:

…which is to say, the guitar strap you’ll use, some ordinary velcro (2 standard-sized lengths, or about 2′ in total), 3M or similar double sided rubberized tape of the sort you’d find in a car accessories store, Super Glue-style quick drying adhesive (as pictured, in India that would be Fevi kwik), and a bit of plastic sheet.

Here’s what you’ll need to do: the double sided tape goes on the guitar, the plastic sheet sticks to it, and you use the quick drying glue to stick the fuzzy side of the velcro to the plastic sheet. (Glue the velcro to the plastic before sticking it to the tape on the guitar, so as to minimize the risk of messing up the guitar finish with the glue) Create two approximately square patches like this, one on the bottom of the guitar (where the two sides meet), and the other on treble the side of the upper bout. You should end up with something like the photo below.

Note that I have stuck these two patches a little below the guitar top, so that they’re not conspicuous on the instrument when you’re playing it. Here’s a closer look at the two patches, for positioning:

Use the same glue to stick the side of the velcro with the hooks in it to the ends of the guitar strap, with the velcro strips going along the length of the strap ends.

While standing, hold the guitar in an ergonomic playing position to figure out how it would rest against you, and make a note of the approximate angle at which the strap would leave the guitar from the two velcro contact points to wrap around you. Stick the strap’s velcro ends on the guitar’s velcro patches at this angle. It should look something like this:

And you’re done! You’re ready to sling it over your shoulder, stand up, and start playing. Here’s a shot of my strapped-up guitar (and me!) doing just that, accompanying soprano Shireen Sinclair on De Espana Vengo.

Before I let you go, it’s important that you note a few details:

1. The velcro attachment is easily strong enough to hold up the guitar, but directionality is very important. The velcro’s grip is sound really only when force (gravity, usually) is applied along the direction in which the ends of the strap are attached to the guitar. If the strap is attached so the ends want to twist the velcro attachment sideways or pull up and away from the guitar, the velcro might give way.
2. If you’re holding the guitar by the strap, say if it isn’t slung over your shoulder, it’s important for the reasons I mentioned in the previous point to not lift the strap so the guitar is pulling directly away (downwards) from the nearest velcro contact point between guitar and strap. An example of what not to do would be grabbing the strap at one end and lifting it, so the nearest contact point faces upwards, and the weight of the guitar is pulling directly away from the velcro.
3. When detaching the strap from the guitar, always lift the velcro strap end from the tip, peeling it off the guitar in the direction of the strap. Also, it’s a good idea to hold down the velcro patch on the guitar while doing this. This will minimize the force applied to the adhesives attaching the velcro to the strap end and the patch to the guitar.

Good Advice from Great Artistes – Volume 1

Here, in no particular order, is the first of a series of compilations of other people’s wisdom that I’d like to pass on to anyone trying to get better at their art. Some of this advice I have had the privilege of receiving first-hand, other bits I have seen, heard, or read in interviews, articles, books, instructional videos, and the like. All of these tips have helped me to advance my playing, both technically and in finding my ‘voice’ as a musician, in practice and on stage – so here’s sharing, along with my take-aways where appropriate. Quotes are in quotation marks, the rest is me paraphrasing.

1. “There are only two things which exist on stage: that which is true, and that which is false.” – Leonard Foglia, to mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, on rendering a successful performance.
   DiDonato expounds on this further by noting that truth on stage can be either ‘large’ or ‘small’, and so can falsity, but that being true to who or what you set out to be on stage will move your audience, whereas faking artistic integrity will not. Assuming you’ve paid your dues in practice, of course. 🙂
2. Imagine your technique to be a pane of glass, through which shines the music you deliver, and your interpretation, personality, and emotion. Becoming a great performer entails making (and keeping) this pane of glass clean. – Dame Janet Baker.
   I would further paraphrase by adding that I take this to mean that from the perspective of an audience, a successful rendition of a piece entails removing all obvious evidence of physical effort from the end result. Consciously develop technique that leads to your unconscious movements being efficient and effective.
3. First figure out your posture. Learn to sit with the guitar in a good resting position, without needing to hold it in place. This will help you to play more easily. – Gabriel Bianco, in many a masterclass and workshop.
   It makes a lot of sense when you consider that any amount of effort spared from finding one’s postural equilibrium will make it that much easier to focus on the business of playing.
4. Always take the time to tune your instrument well. – Roland Dyens
5. Learn to relax your (right hand) fingers immediately after playing a note. – Johannes Moller.
6. (On stage) First become comfortable with where you are and what you are doing. Attune your mind to the music you are about to present before you begin playing. – Pepe Romero
7. There is no single good posture/position. Feel free to change things up, depending on how you feel and the demands of the piece you’re playing. – Scott Tennant
8. “You guitarists don’t get it, do you? It’s not about speed or volume, it’s about intensity!“ – An experienced and well-respected American music critic whose name escapes me…I’ll come back and complete this citation!
9. Don’t waste time or effort when you’re practicing. Stay focused and only practice making the right movements. You’ll improve a lot faster. – Heike Matthiesen
10. Play like yourself, not like your heroes. – William Kanengiser
    Within reason, your own interpretations are as valid as anyone else’s. And if you play in a way that’s true to yourself and your opinions about the music you’re playing, you’re more likely to share something of value. It goes back to what you probably heard growing up – be yourself.

Alhambra LR-5A PT – an Alhambra with a sound port!

* This review will introduce you to the LR-5A PT, and captures my initial reactions to this guitar. You can also check out a more long-term review of the instrument here.

As I mentioned the other day, my main squeeze suffered a lifted bridge recently. Repairs are going to be a while – longer than I’d fancy being up the creek without a paddle, so to speak. Picking up a beater to fill in for the interim didn’t seem like such a good idea, as it would be sure to live out most of its life unplayed, once I got my main guitar back. So I looked around for something that I could stand to use on stage. And look what I found hiding in Singapore…

As you may have inferred, both from the label and the title of this post, a) Alhambra have changed their system of designations, b) this little lady is in some way related to the old 5P, and c) the letters ‘PT’ are a clue to the fact that it’s modified. Which is all to say, I suspect ‘LR-5A’ is shorthand for ‘laminated rosewood 5 spruce’. Also, ‘PT’ stands for Pepe Toldo – yep, the Swiss luthier himself! The soundport, or ‘sound reflector’ as Alhambra call it, consists of six slits in the upper left bout, and is designed by Toldo. I didn’t, to be honest, set out looking for this model. I was looking for an Alhambra, to be sure, because besides a their very typically Spanish sound, I value their robust build quality, and the extent to which Alhambras can withstand the extremes of a tropical climate. But I thought I would go for something classy yet simple – I was thinking either the 8PA or 9PA. Props to Mr Kwok at Luthier Guitar, Singapore, for placing my concerns above his commission, and directing me to a cheaper yet better piece of kit. I did a lot of looking around online for reviews prior to acceding to his suggestion, and because I couldn’t find any I’m going to write in some detail about this guitar here, but first, here are some pictures:

Getting to see bracing is a cheap thrill.

As you can see from the pictures, the LR-5A, earlier known as the 5P-A, is pretty well what you’d expect for a mid-range Alhambra. The top’s spruce is a nice, close and even grained example of the German variety, with all the expected tonal characteristics, and the back and sides are southern Indian rosewood inside and out, sandwiching one layer of Indonesian rosewood. Some say Indian rosewood is a better reflective surface than Indonesian – which would explain the sandwich, while others say the former’s cache has more to to with its limited availability. I haven’t a clue either way, to be honest. What’s visible on the inside seems to my eye to be a certain quality of rosewood, is also claimed to be as much by the folks at Alhambra; apparently the 5 and 6 models get a reasonably high quality of wood for their laminate. This makes sense, their being the upper end of Alhambra’s laminated back & sides models. The neck is mahogany reinforced with an ebony strip, and the fingerboard itself is ebony. I can’t yet say for certain if the fingerboard is stained or not, but it is a lovely, even black. The tuners are Alhambra’s own, the expected gold-plated machines with pearloid plastic buttons, and the smoothness and precision of their action relative to a number of other guitars I know, up to and including some concert grands, is a pleasant surprise. Overall, the quality of all materials used is above reproach for the price. I wouldn’t mind amethyst or amber tuner buttons any more than the next guy, but hey, for considerably less than $2000, great build quality, flawless functionality, high quality standard materials, and a good sound are good enough for me.

And it does have a surprisingly good sound! (I’m leaving the PT part of it till the end, mostly because I’d rather talk about the guitar itself first.) The spruce top is still a little wet behind the ears, but straight out of the box it projected well, had a reasonable range of tonal capabilities, sang clearly when I went up the neck, and delivered in the lowest register with a satisfying thump. Now, with over 50 hours played on it, the sound board is learning its vibration patterns, and so is beginning to sound both sweeter and more complex. I am genuinely impressed, and look forward to seeing what it sounds like once it ages a bit.

Now, about that sound port. Apparently Toldo’s design is calculated to help balance the guitar’s sound, whilst maximizing sustain, volume, and feedback to the player. In my experience, Alhambras tend to have a balanced sound anyway, so I’m not sure how much of a difference the slits on the upper bout make in that respect – but they sure do a convincing job on the rest of it! As one would expect, a sound port looking up at you does provide greater feedback, and so a better introverted playing experience. But thanks to the ways in which a second sound hole works like a shotgunned beer can, as a friend of mine once put it, the guitar is appreciably louder thanks to its sound port, and individual notes, both treble and bass, sustain considerably more than on comparable mid-range guitars I have played (like the Alhambra Iberia, a top end Hanika, a Yamaha GC, and even a couple of much more expensive luthier-built jobs). In many ways, this is a far more playable instrument, thanks to its combination of dependable traditional design and Pepe Toldo’s very effective modification of the physics of a resonant chamber.

Do I love her? Too soon to tell, of course. We’ve only been acquainted since Valentine’s Day (not a bad day to pick up a new guitar, even though it happened that way by chance). Worth it, considering I went in looking to buy an all-solid modest concert-worthy instrument? Definitely. If you’re looking for big sound for mid-sized money, shy of the 11P or equivalent, see if you can get your hands on one of these.

Also, about the Pepe Toldo tie up – the three models they’re modifying are the 4P, this 5P, and the 11P. So even if you’re looking at the 11P, the PT modification is worth looking for.

A belated debrief (part 2) – or Things I Learnt on Stage

Particularly because last week’s performance was more multi-faceted than a normal recital, I found myself more conscious of the issues that are peripheral (but not trivial) to performing than usual, and so, more cognizant of the support elements I find important for a good presentation. I thought I’d share a short list:

1. Amplify effectively. If you are against amplification, you’re in very good company. Mr Segovia, among others, was famously against mics, regardless of the size of audience to which he was playing on a given day. I, too, am against amplification in principle, but I’ll go a step further and articulate that position based on my philosophy that the ideal performance space (and size of audience) for a classical guitar should not exceed the range at which the instrument can be heard with all the richness of its tonal palette. That range is, of course, variable, depending on the acoustics of the room. My point, really, is that pianissimo played cantabile shouldn’t come across as strident and tinny, for the sake of projection – and it shouldn’t get lost in the rafters before it reaches the back rows either. If the room in which one is playing has any amount of reverb, and/or reasonable acoustics, playing au naturel is just fine. But if the room’s acoustics aren’t the best, and it’s clad in materials that drink up all the volume one generates, it doesn’t hurt to use tech to replicate the experience of the front row for those further back. What you’re looking to accomplish with a mic and speakers is to recreate an intimate and aesthetically complete listening experience for everyone in the room – and that requires an almost challengingly-light touch from the sound booth. Speaker placement helps too, of course. What I have found thus far is that a single mic, either a floor mic or on a stand, set one arm’s length ahead of the guitar, works well. At sound check, gain and master volume can then be adjusted till a) pianissimo comes through but not the click of one’s nails, and b) the speakers are just about supplementary to an unamplified performer. It’s important that the mic be further away, with higher gain, rather than close by with low gain, because that makes for the least loss of tonal quality.

2. Keep some talc and a soft cloth on hand. Between the heat of performance, the warmth of stage lights, and the draught from aircon vents, your body’s natural reactions to exercise, heating, and cooling will make for sweaty fingers. And any performance jitters you may be prone to will take the sweaty fingers problem to a whole other level. The jitters, of course, are yours and yours alone to soothe – everything from deep breathing to a shot of whiskey (backstage, only!) work for various people, but everyone gets over his or hers their own way. What is universal though, is a need for steady, dry fingers, and talc powder helps with that. Just as a gymnast would use chalk, take a little on the fingers of your left hand, and dust it over both hands, cleaning off the excess with the cloth afterwards. I’d go further and suggest making sure there’s none left visible on your hands, partly for appearance’s sake, and partly because there’s no harm in not dusting up your guitar. And never strike your hands to shake off the excess – a small puff of talc is all it takes to bring on a fit of coughing.

3. As my old teacher let on to me after the show last week, if you’re going to play tremolo, keep a bottle of warm water handy. I made the mistake of forgoing this performance aid, and all I can say is…well, I was really glad Recuerdos de la Alhambra has a pulsating rhythm on the bass strings! That’s what kept things moving when my fingers were skittering around on the trebles, a direct draught from the aircon vents ensuring that for much of the piece, they achieved neither fluidity nor speed. The effect of gripping a warm bottle needs no explanation, and sipping on it raises one’s core temperature, improving circulation, and allowing for the simultaneous right hand relaxation and a finger dynamism essential to a good tremolo. Which takes me straight to my next point…

4. The air conditioning is under your control – not the other way around. Remember that, especially if you’re performing in a tropical place, and be as picky as you must, with your requirements involving temperature, vent directions, fan speed, intervals etc, to achieve optimal comfort for playing. During my sound and general venue check the day before the show, I had insisted upon pre-cooling for at least an hour, to bring the room to a reasonable temperature. It turned out on the day that the aircon had fixed vents, which were angled right at the stage. I played through it all, and overall, succeeded in what I set out to do – but I found out only after the show that it isn’t uncommon for artistes playing in this city (and, I’m sure, any other warm place) to have the cooling turned off for the duration of a piece, and turned on at intervals of their choosing, or between pieces.

5. A solo classical recital is as much about setting as it is about sound. Do everything you can to help the music weave its spell on the audience, including:
a) Set up the seating to be as proximate to the stage as possible, and as comfortable as possible. Remember that guitar music is chamber music, and that though you’re in whatever sort of room you’ve been given in which to perform, you’re recreating an intimate experience. A semi-circular arrangement for small groups works well; a fan-shape or three sides of a square with you near the top is good for larger groups. If the room is large and has good acoustics, like a church or a hall, take advantage of the fact that you don’t need a mic to project your sound, and create small groupings of chairs in various nooks and crannies around where you’re playing. Setting will make up for the loss of proximity, and contribute to the audience’s experience.
b) Lighting is key. Warm and yellow is good, cold and white is bad. Bright is hard to get right, unless it’s yellow spots on you, which can be alright if you don’t mind being lit up like a star. Unless you’re a maestro playing for a bunch of music students at a conservatory, (where different concerns take the lead over setting and presentation) take the trouble to get this right, as it’s every bit as important as the music you make.

A belated debrief (part 1) – guitar history synopsis & the program

Well, it was, and looking back on it, I think it was alright. The lecture-demonstration I presented last Thursday seemed to go down well with most of those present, going by the feedback I’ve had so far. People from various backgrounds (including some guitarists) found the lecture bit interesting, which confirms my notion that there is a need for greater awareness of the instrument and its tradition in this neck of the woods, and strengthens my belief that there’s an opportunity to seriously enrich the classical music scene here.

To give you a blow-by-blow, here’s a synopsis of the event that’s going in the IIC’s events review:

——-

It began before the time of the Iliad, and is as old as man’s realization of the possibilities that arise from the combination of wood, metal and string. The classical guitar’s first antecedents were sometimes made of tortoise shells and gourds, and were based on the principle of the resonance chamber – that a string under tension vibrating over a membrane causes the latter to vibrate. If this membrane happens to cover a hollow bowl, it will make sound, whose pitch depends on the length of the string. If you know what you’re doing with this arrangement, you can make music.

Through the ages, advances in woodworking techniques and structural design led to instruments with which we are familiar today. Among others, the lute, through which Bach has found sublime expression, the oud, which the Caliph’s men brought to Spain, and the baroque guitar, which Vermeer made immortal, all contributed to the emerging sound of the instrument, and the expanding repertoire it played. It was not, however, until 1853 and carpenter-turned-luthier Antonio de Torres‘ innovations in instrument design and construction, specifically in bracing techniques, that the guitar graduated from the salon and chamber to the concert hall. The latter half of the 19^th Century and the first few decades of the 20^th Century formed the first epoch of the classical guitar as we know it today. Francisco Tarrega, Andres Segovia, and Augustin Barrios Mangore stand out amongst the first two generations of guitarists who adapted, composed, and played to all the world, as they showed off a growing repertoire of music written for the guitar, and demonstrated the classical guitar’s versatility by also playing music written for instruments ranging from the piano to the human voice.

On Thursday, August 22^nd, as part of the India International Centre’s Music Appreciation Promotion series, Yogi Ponappa presented the classical guitar in its historical context, delivering a talk on its evolution and musical characteristics. He then demonstrated some of the range of capabilities possessed by the modern instrument, performing pieces whose provenance ranged from 1723 in what is now Germany, to 1940 in Brazil. Some of these pieces, most notably those by Tarrega and Barrios, were written for the guitar, and represent what may be called a golden age in classical guitar composition. Others, most notably the works by Bach (written for the cello), and Schumann (written for the piano), are from the late baroque and romantic periods, before the classical guitar arrived at its present form and functionality. They have become part of the guitar repertoire through subsequent transcription and arrangement, and their viable rendition on the guitar is illustrative of the instrument’s suitability for music from much of the Western classical tradition. Yogi’s program was as follows:

Prelude from Suite #1 for Violoncello (BWV 1007) by Johann Sebastian Bach
Traumerei from Kinderszenen by Robert Schumann
Dedicatoria from Cuentos de la Juventud by Enrique Granados
Lagrima by Francisco Tarrega
Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco Tarrega
Preludio ‘Saudade’ from La Catedral by Augustin Barrios Mangore
Prelude #4 (in E Minor) by Heitor Villa-Lobos

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A short n’ sweet playlist, wouldn’t you say? To an extent that I’m not content with in hindsight, this was not a true-blue recital in that the even the latter half wasn’t quite all about the music. In keeping with the prescribed format of the event, I broke up the musical section by introducing each piece rather extensively before playing it. I think I’ll change that around if I ever present this sort of lec-dem module again, by chasing up my history-of-the-guitar lecture with an extended introduction to all the pieces before I run through them, to make the recital part of it more like a regular performance.

Highlight from the show #2: Traumerei by R. Schumann

Highlight from the show #1: Dedicatoria by E. Granados

Dwelling on history

As I have said elsewhere, I am a little over a week out from an upcoming event in New Delhi. I feel like this is going to be an interesting experience for me, as it will involve a lecture component as well as a performance. I’m going to talk to an interested yet largely uninitiated audience about the history of the guitar in the Western tradition, contextualizing the composers, their music, and the movements within which they lived, worked, and found expression. It’ll be nice to be able to do that for somewhat more than the usual few minutes before each piece in a program, because I believe an understanding of the story of where the music came from enriches the listening experience considerably. It’s not the sort of thing one does often in a recital, as that would make it more of a talk than a concert, but with this event being billed as a lecture-demonstration, more an initiation than an exhibition, I intend to make full use of the chance to connect with my listeners, and let them experience at least a few of my favorite pieces like I do.

Thinking about talking about music, especially to the unfamiliar (classical guitar is a very little-known art form in this part of the world) I’ll admit I’m rather inclined to give in to sentimentalism on the subject. I am, after all, about to tell people about an art whose origins go back in time past Orpheus, and show it to many of them for their first time. I’m drawn to the question – what is a classical guitarist, really?

It isn’t a question I need to answer for anyone, neither for myself nor for my audience next Wednesday. It isn’t a question that matters at all, really. And yet, if only for what lies wrapped up in the answer, I find myself looking with fresh eyes at this art, this discipline, which has been a defining voluntary activity of my life in recent years. A classical guitarist is a system, really. A balanced, poised system with a stringed instrument. A system where human sits poised with instrument, held in tension by the weight transfered to the instrument, yet at rest by virtue of the same. Dynamism within the system manifests as outwardly arbitrary motions that work nail, flesh, and bone against wood, steel, and string… and make music. This has always been true for stringed, plucked instruments. This system has been around since before nylon strings, and steel frets, and even before the time of wood, going back to hides and turtle shells; besides the materials involved, little has changed. Finger still meets string, and the music is still as dependent on angle and timing and pressure of finger on string, and on the level of tension in the hand as it ever was. It’s as important today as it was two thousand years ago, for the musician to be relaxed, and steady; a calm frame of mind and emotional state have always mattered enough that one might as well point to the head, or the heart, as the point from which beautiful music originates. The classical guitar as I know it is just the latest in a long line of instruments that go back a very long way, all part of an unbroken tradition of stringed instrument musicianship that hasn’t ever really changed. I feel humbled by the sheer history of that tradition, and incredibly fortunate to be a part of it.