by Dave Belcher<\/p>\n
This article offers a portrait of Isaac Alb\u00e9niz. Around the new year a couple of members from Classical Guitar Corner Academy decided it would be great to dedicate more time to learning about guitar composers. So they made a New Year’s Resolution for 2019 to dedicate one month each to a different composer. This “Composer of the Month Club” would allow CGC Academy members to learn more about each composer’s history, achievements, and especially their music. Many members have been contributing and participating by sharing videos, posting tidbits of history of the featured composers, and interacting with other members’ insights. January featured the great Spanish composer Isaac Alb\u00e9niz. So we thought it would be great to share a bit of background about this great composer with you. Thanks to the efforts of our brilliant Academy members (especially to Barbara and Mark!).<\/p>\n
Isaac Alb\u00e9niz is a well-known figure to the classical guitar community. Many of his works are well-established in the guitar repertoire and some of these pieces, like “Asturias” (Leyenda\/Preludio), are now better known and more frequently performed on the guitar than on the piano, for which they were originally composed. And so it may come as a surprise to those who didn’t know that Alb\u00e9niz never composed for the guitar. The bulk of those pieces that have become standards in the guitar repertoire — Suite Espanola, Piezas Caracteristicas, Chants d’Esapgne, some selections from Iberia — are thanks in large part to arrangements made by Francisco T\u00e1<\/span>rrega<\/a> and his most famous student, Miguel Llobet (and then later Andr\u00e9s Segovia, John Williams, Manuel Barrueco, and many, many others).<\/p>\n Even though Alb\u00e9niz never wrote for the guitar, these arrangements were actually not unknown to the composer — Alb\u00e9niz and T\u00e1<\/span>rrega were close friends and Alb\u00e9niz knew and heard Llobet perform as well. In a biography of T\u00e1<\/span>rrega by Emilio Pujol (yet another well-known student of Tarrega’s), the author remarks that Alb\u00e9niz heard T\u00e1<\/span>rrega perform the latter’s arrangement of his “famous Serenata” (that is, Granada) and upon hearing it exclaimed, “This is what I had conceived!” Perhaps Alb\u00e9niz was referencing in particular the strummed chords at the beginning of the piece. Alb\u00e9niz had written about Granada in a letter to his friend Enrique Moragas,<\/p>\n I seek now the tradition, which is a gold mine, the guzla, the lazy dragging of fingers over the strings (quoted in and translated by Walter Aaron Clark, “Francisco Tarrega and the Art of Guitar Transcription,” 18).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The “guzla” was an ancient Moorish stringed instrument. The guitar echoed the guzla as it accompanied the cante jondo style of traditional Spanish songs by strumming along. This is not unlike the arpeggiated chord rolls that introduce the gentle, lilting melody of Granada’s serenade.<\/p>\n\n Alb\u00e9niz and T\u00e1rrega<\/h3>\n