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Guitar Composers: Matteo Carcassi, Ferdinando Carulli, Mauro Giuliani, Fernando Sor, Heitor Villa-lobos.
Building a Classical Guitar Sheet Music Library
Suggestions from guitarist Dale Reagan
- start with what you can afford (duh!) I have been collecting and reading music for 30+ years. Most of the anthologies that you come across contain reasonably edited editions (i.e. all editions have errors whether intentional or not; errors could be due to omission, intent, ignorance or any other number of reasons) of music that has been transcribed, arranged or created for the classical guitar. Since the modern classical guitar is a fairly new instrument just about any piece of music written before the 1800's was NOT written for the instrument that you are playing; instead, music prior to this period tends to be transcribed from scores that were intended for similar, but different instruments.
- I suggest starting with anthologies like the ones listed below. If the collection contains more than 'just notes' (and if you read and think about the information presented) then you will grow as a guitarist and a musician. I prefer editions that contain such 'extra' information - the information is helpful in working towards a resolution when working on or performing in the music.
- I prepared some general comments on music editions that may be helpful - read this before you spend all of your funds...
Any of the period anthologies edited by Frederick Noad. Mr. Noad passed away a few years ago but has left a wonderful collection of music for us. The technical requirements in each anthology ranges from beginner to advanced with a tendency to contain mostly pieces with medium difficulty. These collections include background information on most of the pieces along with performance suggestions as well as suggested fingerings for the tricky portions of the works begin studied.
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Click here for several links to collections of composer specific classical guitar music and transcriptions.
(I will include links to the items below as soon as I locate them...)
The Royal Conservatory of Music Guitar Series provides a 'graded' collection with levels ranging from one to eight. Each collection contains graded (difficulty levels) works from all of the major musical periods (renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, and modern.) Volume eight contains the most technically difficult music in the series and contains several works currently being performed at the concert artist level.
The series, Progressive Popular Classics of the Great Composers (edited by Jason Waldron) provides many familiar pieces as well as transcriptions of pieces familiar from other instrumental genres (i.e. arrangements for solo guitar of piano, cello or small ensemble works that, when played, activate your brain cells and remind you of many of the things that you really like about classical music...)
- don't limit yourself to only one method book (each brings something else to your knowledge base)
- when possible, include the older editions of in your music library (many times, modern editions are presenting their interpretation of what the composer may have intended - since it is impossible to make definitive statements about many older works then the only recourse is to examine what appear to be the original editions...
Also see: Building a Classical Guitar Recorded Music Collection
Composer Specific pages: Ferdinando Carulli, Matteo Carcassi, Mauro Giuliani and Fernando Sor.
Some additional Classical Guitar music links are listed below.
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