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Aranjuez
( ) for guitar and orchestra assured
Rodrigo a celebrated position among Span-
ish musicians. His compositional style melds a
Spanish character with French-in uenced lucid
textures, light dissonances, and modal harmo-
nies. Rodrigo originally composed
Fantasía
para un gentilhombre
in
as a concerto for
legendary Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia,
who played the world premiere.
e composer
incorporated themes discovered in a collection
of Baroque dances by th-century Spanish gui-
tarist and composer Gaspar Sanz. Rodrigo re-
designed these nationalistic dances as a colorful
programmatic suite re ecting both Spain’s mu-
sical past and present.
ANONYMOUS
Romance Anónimo
(from
Jeux interdits
)
Much uncertainty surrounds this romance,
one of the most famous compositions in the
solo-guitar repertoire, as notions of its author-
ship and its very title have changed over time.
Some writers suspect this simple, yet e ective
piece originated in the late th century, when
the earliest manuscript versions survived with
competing attributions to Antonio Rubira and
Fernando Sor. e rst known sound recording
survives among the wax cylinders by Spanish
brothers Luis and Simón Ramírez, who record-
ed on the Viuda de Aramburo in Madrid be-
tween
and
under the title
Sort-Estudio
para Guitarra
, likely referring to Fernando Sor.
Its rst known sheet-music issue can be traced
back to an Argentine publication in the
s,
where it was titled
Estudio para Guitarra de Ro-
vira
, an allusion to Antonio Rubira.
is composition gained widespread popularity
as the main theme of the
lm
Jeux inder-
dits
(
Forbidden Games
), a touching lm direct-
ed by René Clément about a young French girl
orphaned in World War II who is befriended
by a young peasant boy.
is French-language
lm received an honorary award for Best For-
eign Language Film from the Academy of Mo-
tion Picture Arts and Sciences in
—the rst
Academy Award ceremony to be televised—as
well as the Grand Prize Award at the Venice
Film Festival, the New York Film Critics Circle
Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and a
BAFTA Award for Best Film from Any Source,
among others. e credits list this guitar compo-
sition, performed by Narciso Yepes, as
Romance
Anónimo
. e Yepes family later contended that
Narciso composed this romance as a young boy.
ASTOR PIAZZOLLA (1921–92)
Libertango
Inventor and grandmaster of “nuevo tango,”
Astor Piazzolla was born in Mar del Plata, Ar-
gentina—the cradle of tango. While still a child,
Piazzolla moved with his family to New York
City, where he learned to play the bandoneón,
an accordion-like instrument whose sound
remains inextricably linked to tango music.
Piazzolla also had aspirations of becoming a
classical composer. One day, he presumptuously
approached the Polish pianist Artur Rubinstein,
a resident of Buenos Aires, asking his evalu-
ation of a recently composed piano concerto.
Rubinstein graciously agreed and immediately
arranged lessons for this audacious youth with
another emerging Argentinean musician, Al-
berto Ginastera, who remained his teacher for
six years. e French government o ered Piaz-
zolla a scholarship to study with the legendary
pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, in Paris. A er
viewing many of his competent but uninspired
compositions, this intimidating but physically
diminutive woman coaxed Piazzolla into play-
ing his own tango music on the bandoneón.
“She suddenly opened her eyes, took my hand,
and told me, ‘You idiot, that’s Piazzolla!’ And I
took all the music I composed, years of my
life, and sent it to hell in two seconds.”
A clear musical path opened for Piazzolla, one
that combined the rhythmic and melodic sensu-
ality of tango with modern dissonances and in-
strumental e ects. His Quinteto Tango Nuevo,
a performing ensemble founded in
, pro-
vided a workshop for many of his revolution-
ary experiments.
ough now widely praised,
Piazzolla’s innovations originally su ered much
condemnation from “nostalgic” tango tradi-
tionalists. However, he brushed o such criti-
cism with a reminder that “my tango meets the
present.” Piazzolla recorded
Libertango
as the
title track of his
album. is declaration of
emancipation from traditional tango takes its
name from an amalgamation of
libertad
(free-
dom) and
tango
.
HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS (1887–1959)
Selections for solo guitar
Heitor Villa-Lobos grew up in a secure mid-
dle-class environment in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
His father, Raúl, worked for the National Li-
brary and was an amateur musician. Raúl taught
his son cello and drilled him in musical forms
and styles. Rio’s bustling cultural melting pot
o ered endless opportunities for an up-and-
coming cellist, and Heitor seemed destined for
a classical performing career. However, popular
music exerted a magnetic attraction over the im-
pressionable young man. A self-taught guitarist,
Villa-Lobos submerged himself in the culture
of the
chorões
, the popular urban instrumental-
ists who played European dance music (polkas,
waltzes, quadrilles, and others) in a Brazilian
style.
For eight years (
– ), Villa-Lobos toured
remote regions of Brazil collecting folk melo-
dies. His analyses of these melodies proceeded
with a distinctly Western classical bias, through
comparisons with Beethoven, Bach, and Cho-
pin. Later, he absorbed distinctive rhythms and
melodic shapes of Brazilian music into his own
compositions. O entimes, as in the familiar
series of
Bachianas brasilieras
, native sounds
merged with “classical” forms and textures. Vil-
la-Lobos attributed much of his phenomenal
precocity to the Brazilian musical and natural
landscapes.
To expand his growing reputation, Villa-Lobos
spent seven years ( – ) in Paris conducting
and performing his own works. A er returning
to Brazil, he dedicated himself to the advance-
ment of musical education in his native country.
His far-reaching plans included the design and
implementation of a musical education system,
rst in the state of São Paolo and later through-
out Brazil, and a series of gargantuan stadium
concerts with as many as
,
performers.
e culmination of his pedagogical advocacy
came in
, when the Brazilian government
founded the Conservatório Nacional de Canto
Orfeônico under Villa-Lobos’s direction.
Villa-Lobos expanded the range of his musical
activities during the last years of his life with
an increasing number of conducting engage-
ments in the United States. His US debut came
on November ,
, with a program of his
own works given by the Jenssen Symphony of
Los Angeles. Subsequent visits brought perfor-
mances in other major musical centers, such
as New York, Boston, and Chicago. Doctors
discovered cancer during one of his US trips in
.
e operation and follow-up treatment
were successful, and Villa-Lobos remained a
productive composer, educator, and conductor
for more years.
THE BEATLES
ree songs
roughout the band’s -year history (
-
), the members of
e Beatles shared song-
writing duties. Each of the Fab Four—John
Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and
Ringo Starr—produced hit singles as part of the
group and as solo artists. Over the decade, the
Astor Piazzollla
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