The Andrés Segovia Archive

• The Segovia Musem, Linares Spain (Spanish/English)
• Berben Publications (Italian, English)
• Berben Publications - direct link to Segovia Archives collection (European or international buyers)

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• Angelo Gilardino Net Postings 1998-2000 (many topics, searchable)
• Angelo Gilardino - 2002 Summary of Compositions (from RMCG)
• Angelo Gilardino - 2006 Retirement from Editing announcement (from RMCG) 
• Asturias by Issac Albeniz arranged for Flute, Viola and Guitar by Angelo Gilardino 
• Angelo Gilardino - Official Web site for this Italian Composer/Guitarist/Maestro
• Trascendentia - new recordings of the Studies of Angelo Gilardino by guitarist Cristiano Porqueddu 

Subject: Segovia Foundation
Date: Sun, 9 May 1999 11:55:11 +0200

On Friday, May 14th, 6.30 p.m., in the Spanish town of Linares (Andalucia) the "Andrés Segovia" Foundation will be officially inaugurated. The ancient building of the end of XVII century, Casa de los Orozco, is now completely restored and the furniture of the halls has been conveniently installed.

In the following months, the documents that form the Segovia archives will be ordered and made available to scholars.

The programs of the Foundation will be announced as soon as possible.

Subject: The Andrés Segovia Archive
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 06:52:08 +0200

I am glad to announce that within some weeks the new series of guitar music entitled "The Andrés Segovia Archive" will publish its first issue by Edizioni Musicali Bèrben, Ancona, Italy.  I will take care of the publications as a general editor. I have asked the cooperation of colleagues for editing all the pieces in a shorter term.

This collection offers historical, previously unpublished works written by distinguished European composers for Andrés Segovia. The original manuscripts belong to Mrs. Emilia Segovia, Marquise of Salobreña, who has generously authorized their publication.

The first item of the collection will be the "Fantaisie" written on 1926 by the French composer Pierre de Breville. I cannot presently say exactly how many volumes will form the series, but I guess about 30, and it is my purpose to go ahead of all the program within two or three years.

 - - - A follow-up message:

All of these works - with the exception of a fantasy entitled "Segovia", written by Ida Presti on 1962 - have been composed by non guitarists, with their own, more or less musically sophisticated, languages. I would suggest that none of them can be properly mastered if the performer is not a well educated musician and a very competent guitarist and for sure there are pieces - like the "Sonatina" by Cyril Scott - which call for excellence. Serious amateurs are surely entitled to read them and to form their own judgement, which is often sharp and sensitive.

My competence with Bèrben being just editorial, and not administrative or commercial, I could not say how the series will be made available to public, but I guess as usual, by separate covers. Bèrben publications are not expensive at all here in Italy and I suggest American readers to order them directly to the publisher, which has a very efficient service of mail delivery.

Their email is:  info@berben.it

9/10/2001 - USENET-RMCG posting #1

> I am curious about a listing i saw of a piece by Henri Martelli called "Guitarre" for piano. I wonder if his guitar piece found in the Segovia archives is the same, or at least shares some material with the piano piece ala Martin.


I have not yet compared the two works, but I guess it is not the same composition.  The Martelli I found is a set of four pieces - neither short nor easy - and they are most idiomatically written for guitar. Surely, they are not a minor item in the composer's catalogue: Martelli is there at his best.

A piano version exists in the case of "Briviesca" by Henri Collet, a French composer with a strong Spanish background. He was a follower of Granados: the manuscript of his guitar piece piece bears no date, whilst the piano version is dated 1921. Because it is a guitar piece written for and dedicated to Segovia, we are likely in front of a French work written for Segovia much before his debut in Paris (1924), and the question about who actually wrote the first "Segovia piece" still arises, to make doubtful the statement that it was Moreno-Torroba on 1919. Anyway, "Briviesca" is a late romantic guitar piece of the wave Albéniz-Granados, and it called for a hard editorial treatment.

9/24/2001 - USENET-RMCG posting #2

I am glad to announce that the third book of Andrés Segovia guitar works has just been released by Edizioni Musicali Bèrben. It includes all the transcriptions which Segovia created and recorded, but which never published.

The title is "Andrés Segovia/Transcriptions/(Obras para guitarra-vol. 3). 155 pages display many of the most famous items of Segovia's repertoire. The authors represented are Albéniz, Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Dowland, Frescobaldi, Froberger, Granados, Grieg, Haendel, Haydn, Malats, Mendelssohn, Milan, Murcia, Mussorgsky, Narvaez, Purcell, Rameau, Roncalli, Scarlatti, Schubert, Visée, Weiss.

The notes have been transcribed from Segovia's records by Phillip de Fremery. The volume is a result of an editorial cooperation between him and myself.  Forewords are given in four languages.

Subject: R: Sonatina Op. 52 - Lennox Berkeley
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 21:26:57 +0100

> > Can someone tell me of the inspiration behind this excellent
> > composition for guitar ? The cover notes on Julian Bream's RCA
> > recording do not reveal a great deal.

Actually, I would like to confirm, but I cannot. When, 30 years ago - at a half of my present age - I asked sir Lennox to write a piece for me and the series of 20th century guitar music I had begun to lead for Edizioni Musicali Bèrben, I received a warm acknowledgement. The great composer took less than one month to send me the piece, with a flattering dedication. I gave the first performance of the work, and it was quickly printed, firstly by Bèrben and then - due to an exclusivity contract - also by Chester. Recently, the British guitar historian Graham Wade (a good friend of mine) declared that this is not the only story about the piece, and that there is another one. I do not know it.

Being unable to know all the truth about a piece which was written, dedicated to, and premiered by me, I couldn't really take the danger of telling the story of a piece which was written for, dedicated to and premiered by Julian Bream, though I believe this has been the only inspiration given to the composer for his excellent "Sonatina". I could of course write a lot about the aesthetic and the musical form of the piece, but I am afraid this would be of a little interest here.

One thing I can say for sure: our belief that the Sonatina was the first of the two guitar solo works composed by Berkeley has been dismissed on May 7th, 2001, when I found at Linares, Spain, the original manuscript of the "Quatre pièces pour la guitare" which the young composer had written in the late Twenties for Andrés Segovia, when he stayed in Paris and worked with Nadia Boulanger. Nobody knew about them. They will be published pretty soon in the new collection entitled "The Andrés Segovia Archive" by Edizioni Musicali Bèrben. Then, the Berkeley's works for solo guitar are three, each one belonging to a different age of the master.

Subject: Suite Compostelana
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2001 11:08:14 +0100

I am glad to announce that an an agreement has been concluded between the French Publisher, Salabert, and the Italian Publisher, Bèrben, for a new critical edition of the "Suite Compostelana" by Federico Mompou. This new edition - of which I will take care - will be included in the new series "The Andrés Segovia Archive", a collection of about 35 solo guitar works written for and dedicated to Andrés Segovia - almost all previously unknown and/or unpublished. The first issues will be released within the end of the current year. The new edition of the "Suite Compostelana" will include - according to my editorial policy - a facsimile reproduction of the manuscript. All the guitarists who have such a masterpiece in their repertoire, and all those who plan to include it in their next programs, are warmly suggested to read the new edition as soon as it will be published.

Subject: Cyril Scott
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 08:49:10 +0100

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

In the notes written for Julian Bream anniversary recital at the Wigmore Hall (November 26th), Graham Wade declares that the manuscript of the "Sonatina" by Cyril Scott, which I rescued at Linares, Spain, on May 7th, and upon which Mr. Bream based his premiere of the composition, has two pages missed.

In the interest: 1) of the truth; 2) of the forthcoming publication of the work, by which Edizioni Musicali Bèrben will open the new series "The Andrés Segovia Archive" under my general editorship (the "Sonatina" by Cyril Scott will be released within one month or so: it could have been printed before, but I decided to delay its publication in order to allow Mr. Bream's performance at the Wigmore Hall to be a premiere), here I declare that, upon the evidence of the manuscript, its state of preservation, its pagination, its readibility, NO PAGE IS MISSED, and the work stands exactly as Cyril Scott wrote it and delivered it to Segovia some short while after June 1927.

The fact that, at the end of the manuscript, the composer wrote a note with expressing his evaluation that he could have written better the third movement (or perhaps only its conclusion) can surely encourage speculations about the form of the work, but these speculations can reasonably exist only from a strictly musical viewpoint. Any further extension - until the conclusion that a part of the manuscript of the Finale has been lost! - goes without the slightest support of facts, as the publication, with a facsimile reproduction of the manuscript, will clearly show.

May I express my regret about the fact that the rediscovery of such a masterpiece has been acknowledged, on the occasion of its first performance, with a written statement which might throw an uncertain light about its text: this is not surely the case of a piece whose text could give place to endless controversial discussions and it is not the case, either, of a composition which needs a lot of editorial action to make it playable: with the exception of some overcharged chord sequences, it can be played exactly as its author wrote it. Were many other milestones of the 20th century guitar repertoire so clearly documented in their original sources, the guitarists would feel more at their ease indeed when placing a score on their stand!

What above is written as clearly as I can write in English, very strongly, still without the slightest purpose of lessening my warm friendship with Graham Wade and my respect for Julian Bream.

Subject: Angelo Gilardino 2001
Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2001 16:36:43 +0100

Dear friends,

As usually at the end of each year I send a message to keep you informed with what I did or attempted doing. This is also a way to beg a pardon of all those of you who could rightly complain my rather unsteady skills as a correspondent: this year, even more than before, I have left too many messages unanswered, and I feel guilty for this, still I rely upon you kind understanding and forgiving me.

As a composer - my main concern - I have not been as productive as in the preceding year, but the last four months of the year have not passed in vain. I was able to score my sixth Concerto with guitar and orchestra, and this time I associated to "our" instrument, as a second soloist, an accordion. I used a string orchestra, and not a full orchestra, just because I felt natural treating the accordion as a sort of small wind orchestra. The piece, entitled "Concerto per chitarra,  fisarmonica e orchestra d'archi" with a subtitle in Spanish ("En las
tierras altas": it means "In the uplands") has just been given its first performance, the day before yesterday, here in Italy, with Luigi Attademo (guitar) and Francesco Gesualdi (accordion) on the hot seats.

It has not been the unique premiere I had this year, because on July 21st, the guitarist Giulio Tampalini with the members of the Quartetto d'Archi Bresciano offered the premiere of the "Fantasia Concertante on the Gran Solo op. 14 by Fernando Sor", whose score and parts were issued by Editions Orphée a few weeks after the premiere.

After finishing the Concerto, I had another task to accomplish: writing a memorial for Andrés Segovia. Such a composition, kindly requested by the Segovia estate, should be performed on June 4th, 2002, at Linares, Spain, during a celebration concert which the native town of the Maestro will dedicate to his memory. Because the concert will be entrusted to the Madrid Chamber Orchestra it would have been a matter of composing another concerto for guitar...I decided instead to pay honor to Segovia without a guitar, and I realized a string orchestra setting of four guitar solo pieces which I am sure Segovia loved: the Prelude from the A minor Suite by Manuel Ponce, "Alba" by Hans Haug, the Lullaby from "Platero y yo" and "El sueno de la razon" from "Caprichos de Goya" by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. The conductor of the orchestra decided to associate this Suite - in the program of Linares Concerto - with the 3rd Suite of Lute Dances and Airs by Ottorino Respighi, a link which I cannot miss appreciating.Indeed.

The year fades away pretty well also because I am eagerly awaiting to receive from Editions Orphée the just printed copies of the Concerto for Guitar and Chamber Orchestra by the Russian composer Boris Asafiev, a masterpiece which I edited during 1999-2000 and whose premiere - in the version I took care of - was given here in Italy on June 14th by Frédéric Zigante.

All of this would have been enough to keep me busy during all the days of the year, but another - and not lighter - task was suddendly carried on my shoulders by the amazing rescue of guitar music I did at the beginning of May in the archives of the Segovia Foundation. A new series entitled "The Andrés Segovia Archive" will offer, from the beginning of the next year, a lot of works which unexpectedly came to light, and
which I am now preparing for publication: a very heavy responsibility which I am very fond of, at the point that I am not only taking care of the edition, with the help of my co-editor Luigi Biscaldi, but also of the engraving, squeezing from either Finale or Sibelius all their powers.

Considering that I am a professor in a State Conservatory and that I run a 6 week Summerschool in Italy and half a dozen masterclasses a year elsewhere in Europe, you can easily image which sort of daily work schedule I am enjoying. There is no other guilty than me, for such a situation, and then I am trying to earn and deserve my self- acceptance with offering myself a good deal of reading - literature is so marvelous - and of visiting museums and art galleries - painting is also marvelous.

There is nothing else, thank Goodness.

Have my warmest wishes for your holidays and for a Happy New Year.

Subject: Suite Compostelana
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 14:43:54 +0100

I am glad to announce that the new edition of the guitar masterpiece by Federico Mompou, written for and dedicated to Andrés Segovia, is now ready and it will be sent to printers within the next few days. The publication will be included in the collection entitled "The Andrés Segovia Archive". 

Working upon the original manuscript by Mompou, which I rescued on May 2001 at Linares, among the papers of maestro Segovia, I have established a new text with restoring several measures which had been either missed or eliminated in the Salabert edition (1964), with amending misprints and other spots and, on the whole, with bringing back the whole work to the composer's text. I have prepared this new edition with the assistance of my co-editor, the guitarist Luigi Biscaldi, and I have also received advices from Mrs. Carmen Bravo, the Spanish pianist, the wife of Federico Mompou and one of the best interpreters of his piano music, and I have not missed to submit the proofs of my edition to colleagues and friends such as Stanley Yates and Frédéric Zigante, so as to receive their opinion and advice. The publication will include a facsimile reproduction of the manuscript, so as to allow each reader to check the working edition against the original. 

Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 10:52:59 +0100

Reaction to Graham Wade's Letter to the editor in CGM, Feb, 2002 (regarding Cyril Scott's Sonatina - note, Mr. Wade's comments are in italics.)

With reference to the forthcoming publication of Cyril Scott'S "Sonatina" for guitar, in the series "The Andrés Segovia Archive", Graham Wade writes (Classical Guitar Magazine, February 2002, Letters to the Editor):

"Im my program notes for Julian Bream's 50th Anniversary Wigmore Hall recital, I was instructed by Mr Bream to write that two pages of the composition were missing. This does not necessarily mean that two pages of the original (un-paginated) manuscript have disappeared...".

This is false. The unique existing manuscript of the piece is paginated in three double sheets each of four pages, grouped in the form of a booklet, with eleven used pages, ten of which from n. 2 to n. 11 - occupied by the music, the first page bearing the title and the last one left blank. I repeat: no page is missing. Such a manuscript was never seen except by the author, Segovia, Mrs. Segovia and myself. Mr. Bream worked on a photocopy which I sent him after his request. He never saw the manuscript and the informations he has at this subject are those which I offered him by letter. Graham Wade writes, as he declares, under instruction, without having seen the manuscript.

"The third movement (in rondo form) is similar to Torroba Sonatina in that there is a brief passage quoted from the slow movement..."

There is no slow movement in the work. The quotation comes from the first theme of the first movement. To compare Schott "Sonatina" with Torroba's one is a sign of having understood absolutely nothing about the work, its form, its style, the musical culture from which the work was originated. If one is interested to see a model in the background of the  Scott's "Sonatina", then such a model is the Sonata for Violin and Piano by Claude Debussy. Not surely Torroba.

"...in a variant exposition which should then move naturally to the recapitulation and coda to bring about a logical conclusion of the work. In Cyril Scott's manuscript, for whatever reason (though the coda is present) the necessary recapitulation is missing".

"Naturally", "logical" , "necessary" ,"missing": all of these are very subjective evaluations. At the epoque when Scott's wrote his "Sonatina" (1927) there was no longer any canonic structure to respect in the Sonata form (see Turina, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Antonio José, guitar Sonatas, each of them going along a formal device of its own).

"The third movement seemed structurally unfinished".

It seemed to a musical mind. And therefore it may seem finished to another musical mind. I have just listened to the master of a forthcoming CD including the piece performed exactly as it was written by the composer. It is by all means excellent. Not all performers are affectionate to the pastiche.

"It would be very worthwhile for Mr. Bream's edition to be published along with the facsimile of the original manuscript for the musical world to be able to consider just how much love and devotion our great guitarist has lavished on this early example of the 20th century English guitar music".

Should this be read as coming from the pen of a writer who works under instruction? Love and devotion are not an exclusivity of "your" great guitarists - they inspire also performers and editors from other countries, as the history of the guitar shows beyond any doubt.

"We are all grateful that Angelo Gilardino kindly made arrangements for Julian Bream to have access to the recently discovered manuscript. It would be good to receive an acknowledgement from Angelo that the performance at the Wigmore Hall has elevated the profile of the work beyond what might have been expected earlier at 2001."

Having missed the Wigmore Hall concert (I had not been invited), I have to deal with my limits, which prevent me from releasing statements about facts I do not know. I see this is no longer a current trend - people who comment about music they never read is a common evidence nowadays - but still it works well for me.

"If Julian Bream found it necessary to devote his summer to preparing this work both artistically and technically then I would prefer his musical judgment to any other".

Because nobody else has expressed any judgment so far (the work is presently in course of print), there should be no need of such a strong defense of Mr. Bream's judgments. Did anybody challenge them?

"The passing of time and future judgments of history will provide the answers".

One sentence before, "His" musical judgment was to be preferred to any other. Which need do we have of any future answer then? Hasn't the historical truth been established once for ever by Graham Wade's visions in the present?

Subject: The Andrés Segovia Archive (Email and USENET-RMCG posting #3
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 07:55:47 +0200

Today, April 12th, 2002, Friday, Edizioni Musicali Bèrben, Ancona, Italia, have released the first four items of the new series of guitar music entitled "The Andrés Segovia Archive". 

Within next June, other six booklets will be published. Less than one year has passed since when - it was May 7th, 2001 - I sent from Linares (Spain) a press release with informing of the rescue of many either unknown or "lost" composition written for and dedicated to Segovia in the third and fourth decade of the 20th century by several distinguished European composers. In that declaration, I took a firm engagement to make those works available in the shortest while. 

I am glad and proud to announce here that I have kept faith to such an engagement: in 11 months I have been able to establish a contact between the Segovia family and the Italian publishing company which was ready to take care of the publication of all the rescued works, to find (with not easy searches) the heirs of the composers, to stipulate with them the publication contracts, to prepare the editions of the works, to engrave them (a task which I solved personally), and - last but not least - to exchange a correspondence with all the guitarists who expressed their interest in the forthcoming publication (email messages and letters are to be counted in thousands).

I am sure that all the guitarists who have a serious interest in their repertoire and the scholars who devote their studies to the history of guitar music will receive these new works with the same care I took with preparing their publication.

Subject: R: The Andrés Segovia Archive 
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 19:42:54 +0200 (USENET-RMCG and email)

All the rescued works will be published (separated items) by Edizioni Musicali Bèrben, Ancona, Italia, under the general title: "The Andrés Segovia Archive".   The four items just released are:

• Pierre de Breville - Fantaisie (1926) 
• Henri Collet - Briviesca (between 1921 and 1924) 
• Fernande Peyrot - Thème et Variations (193...) 
• Cyril Scott - Sonatina (1927).

Within one month - but likely earlier - the following items will be released:

• Lennox Berkeley - Quatre Pièces (between 1927 and 1932) 
• Pierre-Octave Ferroud - Spiritual (1926) 
• Henri Martelli - Quatre Pièces (1932) 
• Federico Mompou - Cancion y Danza (196...) 
• Federico Mompou - Suite Compostelana 
• José Antonio de San Sebastian (Father Donostia) - Errimina (1925)

Later this year:

• Aloys Fornerod - Prélude (1926)
• Federico Moreno-Torroba - Sonata-Fantasia (1953) 
• Jaume Pahissa - Canco en el mar (1919) 
• Pedro Sanjuan - Una leyenda (1923)
  
  In the meanwhile, I will follow my editorial work on several other relevant works which will be published on 2003.  I am ready to give more informations about each author and work to those who might need them.
  
  Scheduled for 2003: Works by Vicente Arregui, Lionel de Pachmann, Hans Haug, Raymond Moulaert, Carlos Pedrell, Raymond Petit, Maria Rodrigo, Adolfo Salazar, Alexandre Tansman.
  
  Other relevant items are currently in course of negotation with the heirs of their authors.

Subject: R: The Andrés Segovia Archive
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 21:46:02 +0200

> I have a question about this work:
> José Antonio de San Sebastian (Father Donostia) - Errimina (1925)

Errimina (which means Homesickness) was originally written for guitar on 1925. After Segovia refusal to play it (a letter of the maestro found in the Donostia archive explains that the piece was unplayable), Donostia prepared a piano version, which is exactly the same piece, with some obvious reinforcements in the harmony. Nobody knew the original version, because the only existing copy was among the papers of Segovia. Jankelevitch surely refers to the piano version: nobody at that epoque could have played the guitar version for him. In fact, this version is accompanied by a literary program where the story of the exiled Basque dreaming of his lost country is narrated. In my edition - which makes the guitar version perfectly playable - I have given an account of the story reported in the piano version. This latter, of course, is totally unsuccessful: the piece was conceived for guitar, and it does not fit a piano texture. On the guitar, it is really a splendid piece, full of emotion, evocative and also - I would say - a bit crazy, due to the sudden contrast between the lament (on a rhythm of zorztico, which Donostia has notated in 10/8) and the dance (recalling Bartok).

It will be published within one month or so. I am especially fond of this work - a masterpiece - and also, a bit, of my edition, which makes it not only playable, but also rich of a fascinating sound. It ends - consistently with the description of the philosopher - with a pppp. 

Nothing.

Subject: Segovia's Archives (Breville & Collet)
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 23:06:56 +0200

A golden rule for an editor is producing texts that stand as close as possible to the composer's original dictate, but which are also ready for performance with no need of further adjustments. In these first four issues of the collection entitled "The Andrés Segovia Archive" we have examples of opposite situations: two French masters of the same generation, Pierre de Breville and Henri Collet, wrote for Segovia pieces which - in order to be given in a setting ready for performance - ask the editor either and only to address some details (de Breville) or to re-write the whole piece (Collet): two very different levels of intervention on the original score with two very different charges of work for the editor, but with the same goal: making the music sounding beatifully on the guitar.

Collet sounds very much Albéniz-like, but not in the way of Albéniz "Suite espanola" or "Recuerdos de viaje": it sounds in the way of the last, higher Albéniz of "Iberia". It is true that Andrés Segovia missed to perform this work, but he allowed us to receive it from his legacy. Then, we can now recompensate "Briviesca" by Henri Collet of the time it spent closed in a silence. Piero, after your appreciation you cannot miss featuring this work in your next recitals.

Subject: Re: Angelo Gilardino: How was it? (Segovia Celebration 2002)

Date: On Thu, 13 Jun 2002 21:46:07 GMT

Linares, the Spanish town where Andrés Segovia was born on 1893, organized a great celebration for the return of the his mortal remains in his native land. The ceremonies began on Monday, June 3rd, at 1.30 p.m., with the arrival of Segovia's coffin from Madrid. The coffin was hosted at Linares Municipality until 11 p.m. and visited by thousands people. 

On Tuesday, June 4th, the coffin was brought from the Municipality to the Cathedral, where a Mass was celebrated by father Alberto, a friend of Segovia, who assisted him in the last days of his life. From the Cathedral to the building of the Segovia Foundation (Casa de los Orozco) there is about 1 km. of distance, and Segovia's coffin was brought on shoulders by guitarists: Oscar Ghiglia, Alvaro Company, Stefano Grondona, Luigi Attademo, Piero Bonaguri, Frédéric Zigante and other ones (mainly Italian ex-students of the maestro), and by his son, Carlos Andrés. Segovia's coffin was entombed in the grave prepared in the crypt of the Museum. On the evening, at 8 p.m., in the court (patio) of the same building, Madrid Chamber Orchestra performed a concert with music for string orchestra: Telemann, Albinoni, Grieg, Respighi (the "Suite of Ancient Danzas and Airs for Lute" ending with the "Passacaglia" by Roncalli) and the first performance of my own piece written for the occasion, "A Portrait of Andrés Segovia", an elaboration for strings of four pieces originally written for solo guitar and for Segovia (Ponce, Haug, Castelnuovo-Tedesco). 

The following night, June 5th, Oscar Ghiglia gave (in the same place) a recital with music by Bach, Sor, Milhaud, Roussel, Poulenc, Ponce and Turina. Both the concerts were fully attended by people coming from everywhere, except - I have to say - by Spanish guitarists, whose absence in the events of the week was almost total. 

The following two days were devoted to receptions and meetings with local authorities, and a lecture was given by Carlos Andrés Segovia, a young philosopher (and the son of the maestro) with a subject entitled "Music and hierophany" on Thursday, June 6th, then a lecture of mine closed the events on the following evening ("The music manuscripts of the Segovia Foundation"). The events were covered by national and local media with a lot of informations and interviews. 

The concerts have been sponsorized by Mrs. Rose Augustine, whose representative, a young guitarist from New York, Stephen Griesgraber (also an editor of "Guitar Review"), assisted all the events. Among the people whom I recall having met, the guitarist Phillip de Fremery, the film maker Christopher Nupen - who had been the director of the movies about Segovia - the dancer Lucero Tena, and other ones whose names I apologize not reporting here - but they were a lot indeed, ladies and gentlemen.

Subject: Posthumous Tansman works

Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 06:39:17

All those who believe (as I did 14 months ago) of knowing all what Alexandre Tansman wrote for guitar - specifically for Andrés Segovia - have to get ready to change their mind with a dramatic updating. We have no less than five solo guitar works ready for publication, and four of them stand at the same level of the known guitar masterpieces of the Polish-French master, "Cavatina" and "Suite in modo polonico". They are:

• "Inventions - Hommage à Bach". Five pieces Tansman wrote during a Summer he was a guest at "Los Olivos", Segovia's villa at Almunecar, on the seaside. They were composed with pencil on paper, without the help of any instrument.

• "Passacaglia". A powerful piece written on 1953, ending with a fugue.

• "Pièces brèves pour guitare". A set of five short, pleasant pieces.

• "Prélude et Interlude". Perhaps the highest achievement of the composer in the field of guitar solo music. The Prélude could be signed by Scriabin.

• "Quattro Tempi di Mazurka". Written at Venice on 1963, these four dances make a complete, consistent body of Polish music, with a deep, obscure, mysterious sound.

Fifty pages of music which took two months of work to be made ready for performance with a difficult editorial work. They are now ready for publication.

Subject: Speculation on Why these pieces went un-played or un-published

Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 19:02:03 +0200

> This new revelation of discovered works begs the question:
> Why would Segovia accept all of these works and choose not to do anything with  them?

It is not easy to answer. Segovia had clear in his mind since when he was a young, unknown player, that one of the games to gain was the repertoire, and he begun asking for new works as soon as he had the first contacts with established composers. He got music from Spanish authors before becoming a star. But after his triumph in his Paris debut on 1924, new music was spontaneously written for and dedicated to him by composers of higher reputations than the Spaniards, and the number of these works was beyond his possibilities to absorb. So, he was obliged to make a selection, and it is now clear that he decided to play not the music which he considered higher in quality, but those pieces which more naturally suited the instrument and his sound.

As an editor, Segovia was not available for all the kind of enteprises, but only for those which requested a fair amount of work. You have a typical example in the piece written for him by the (then) famous French composer Henri Collet: Briviesca, a very inspired work which could have served Segovia's repertoire in the same way of the most famous Albéniz and Granados piano pieces, by all means, we could say nowadays, a perfect Segovia piece. But he did not play it. Why? Simply, because it called for quite a radical preliminary re-writing, and this was an expensive (in time and amount of experiments) operation, for which Segovia was not ready. I have spent one month of study and attempts before finding the right way to write Briviesca from scratch. Segovia at that epoque had no time enough for such a work. Besides, he was a great player, but not a trained composer - and such a work needs the skills of a composer to be accomplished. I am not getting conceited, but I believe that if he had seen on his stand Briviesca how it came out of my re-writing it, he would have learnt it in two days and featured it in concert after one week. I hope to have pointed out which the order and the nature of the problem was...

> What do you imagine these composers reaction would have been to having no response or action taken to these works which obviously took considerable time and effort to realize?

Each composer had a different story with Segovia. This is material for a long book. None of them felt happy, this is sure, but not all showed their pain in the same way...Somebody accepted Segovia's silence (Cyril Scott), somebody mildly tried to persuade him to change his mind, somebody did a hell, but we have no evidence that Segovia was much worried about those reactions. In one occasion, he wrote that the lack of reviews to a Parisian concert he had given was due to the fact that all the reviewers were also composers whose works he had missed to play.

> Was it a matter of the sheer bulk of submitted works to the maestro that created this sort of a back logged treasure trove?

Mainly, but not exclusively. Years before, works of the calibre of Antonio José's Sonata and Ottorino Respighi's Variazioni had been rescued, and they had nothing to do with Segovia. Finding unknown music is a fate, a patient work, a luck, maybe also a special talent.

> Of course, the fact that he preserved these works through much hardship thoughout his lifetime says volumes about the man.

Indeed. It is like he had said: "I did nothing with this stuff, but I have no reason to prevent you from doing something, if you like it and if you have with it the time, the skill, the patience which I did not find in myself".

Subject: The Andrés Segovia Archive [new recording]
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 05:13:39

The Italian guitar magazine "Seicorde", in its forthcoming issue (July-September 2002), will include a CD containing several items of the new series "The Andrés Segovia Archive". They have been recorded by Luigi Attademo:

• Lennox Berkeley - Quatre Pièces 
• Cyril Scott- Sonatina 
• Henri Collet - Briviesca 
• Henri Martelli - Quatre Pièces Fernande 
• Peyrot - Thème et Variations 
• Federico Mompou - Cancion y Danza id.- Suite Compostelana

I think this is the first CD completely devoted to the music rescued last year in the Segovia Museum.

AG

Angelo Gilardino
Composer and editor
The Artistic Director of
The "Andrés Segovia Foundation" of Spain

http://www.seicorde.it/Gilardino/
http://www.angelogilardino.it/

Subject [ClassicalGuitarMailingList] A greeting newsletter from AG (long)
Date Fri, 20 Dec 2002 144442 -0000

To all my friends all over the world, with my best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Angelo Gilardino

------------------

Angelo Gilardino
Composer and Editor

This is what I have written until 2001 in my visiting card, but during 2002 I had more than one reason to wonder whether the most correct form would not be, since this year "Composer or Editor?".

In fact, I work as an editor for Edizioni Musicali Bèrben - and very occasionally for other Publishers - since 1967, but it never happened to me to feel that my work of getting straight for the guitar the music written by other composers would have challenged my own compositional work.

I think you all know that, from May 2001, the unknown manuscript music written for Andrés Segovia is no longer a secret. Mrs. Emilia Segovia de Salobreña, the wife of the Maestro, decided that I should open the sealed cases and see their contents; then, she decided also that what I found was available for publication. Perhaps I have not stressed enough, in my informations about this subject, that all that material was - and it still is - her personal property, and she had no obligation to make it available for publication. Not only she did, but she did not look for any form of profit for releasing such a permission. It was hard to have her accepting a public acknowledgement on the back cover of the publications. I think I have no further comment to add to such a behaviour it speaks itself.

One year and half has passed since when I found those historical papers. I feel I owe to all the guitarists all over the world a
communication about what I did of that common wealth. Well, here the facts with clicking on this link

    http://www.berben.it/doc/htm/frame_novità.htm

you can see and check up that the new series "The Andrés Segovia Archive" is now a reality, and that 11 (yes, eleven) booklets have already been published. All of them include a biography of the composer, a historical note about the specifical composition(s), an edited text ready for performance and a facsimile reproduction of the original manuscript which was found at Linares. Besides these eleven stones which belong to the building of guitar music history, the following publications are behind the corner

• Pedro Sanjuan - Una leyenda (1923)
• Jaume Pahissa - Canco el mar (1919)
• Federico Morento Torroba - Sonata Fantasia (1953)
• Alexandre Tansman - Posthumous Works for Guitar [including Inventions (Hommage à Bach), Passacaille, Prélude et Interlude, SixPièces Brèves, Quattro Tempi di Mazurka].

These four volumes will be released within February 2003.

Already prepared for publication other historical works are in wait of their time to be delivered to printers the unknown guitar solo works by Hans Haug, Raoul Laparra, Jaume Pahissa, Guillermo Uribe Holguin, Ida Presti. They will appear - I hope - before the expiring of the first half of the year. And of course, many items are still in wait in my shelf.

You have to consider the enormous amount of work this entreprise carries on the shoulders of the musicologist/editor who has to take care of their publication. He has to rescue the heirs of the late composers, to establish a good connection with them in order to have them stipulating a contract with the publisher, to do historical searches about the authors and their works, to read hundreds publications and documents, besides preparing the music engraved (mainly with Finale) ...

Such a flood has invaded all my life and this is why this year I have been less active than before as a composer - or perhaps is this an excuse I use for covering a shortage of inspiration? Be as it may, I have written mainly three works for solo guitar, this year, to fill the kind expectations of three, distinguished performers which I hope not to have disappointed in order of age, Gabriel Estarellas, Frédéric Zigante and Lorenzo Micheli.

For Gabriel - a close friend of mine since 1970, to whom I dedicated at least a significant piece for each of the epoques of my career as a composer - I wrote, according to his specifical request, a Tryptich. I took my suggestion from the Spanish painters of the late 19th century, and I entitled my piece "Triptico de las visiones", each of the three pieces referring in its title to a pictorial work of the authors which I got acquainted with.

During the ceremonies for the removal of Andrés Segovia's mortal rests from Madrid to his native Linares, on June, the well known Italian guitarist Frédéric Zigante suggested me to compose a Tombeau for the maestro. I had written, for the concert of the Madrid Chamber Orchestra of June 4th, a "Retrato de Andrés Segovia", with expanding and orchestrating for string orchestra four solo guitar pieces of the maestro's repertoire. A solo guitar piece as a homage to Segovia was not in my mind at that epoque, but during the Linares' nights I had time to wander with my thoughts and then I decided to enter the challenge. Formerly, I thought of a suite, not unlike the one I had in my mind for Estarellas - but of course in a different style - and I went on. However, I was unable to go besides the first movement, an ancient Sonata form. As such, it has been considered as finished, and entitled "Colloquio con Andrés Segovia". Zigante commented the piece with few words and strong facts, with imparting the premiere on December 4th in Rome, Teatro Ghione, in a program picked up with Bach and Tansman.

The path of the "Sonatine des fleurs et des oiseaux" which I composed for the young and outstanding Italian guitarist Lorenzo Micheli has been more elaborated, and I have recently given to the dedicatee a second, definite version of the three movements after two months of reflection about how I had written the first draft. He is such a magnificent player that he could also reduce this work under a control, but if doing so, he will need to call for all of his powers. The piece is as tight as I am and as crazy as I could be.

All of these three works will be published - with no hurry - in the same album, which - due to the common chronological and poetic origin of the pieces - will be entitled "Songs from Linares". To those who might be tempted to ask me whether I believe of being Rainer Maria Rilke, I could answer no, I am a crazy man who believes of being AG.

After these 35 minutes of solo guitar music - a field which I had practically abandoned - I begun taking care of my forgotten works for cello and guitar, and I have been able to finish the first draft of a setting for this duo of the "Sonata Romantica" by Manuel Maria Ponce, a nice piece whose existence in sologuitaristic cloths always seemed rather meagre to me, and of my own "Sonatina-Lied", of which I could accept the qualification of "romantica" only from my best enemies.

I finish these notes with announcing that - if the burocratic seals will confirm my decision - the current academic year 2002-2003 is the last of my working as a professor in a State Conservatory. I have resigned and I am in wait of knowing whether I will be able to get rid of an official teaching responsibility which does not allow me to feel as free as I think I am by nature and culture.

The best to all of you.

-----

AG
====

Subject [ClassicalGuitarMailingList] The Andrés Segovia Archive (4 New Volumes)
Date Sun, 19 Jan 2003 195508 -0000

I am pleased to announce the release of four new volumes in the collection of guitar music entitled "The Andrés Segovia Archive".  Edizioni Musicali Bèrben will have them available to distribution and sell in the next few weeks. They are:

•  Jaume Pahissa - Canco en el mar - A short, graceful piece which the famous Catalan composer dedicated to Andrés Segovia on 1919 - thus, likely, the very first composition of the Segovia's repertoire. It was followed, on 1938, by a tryptich of a stronger musical substance which Pahissa wrote, but never delivered to, Segovia, to be published within 2003.
• Pedro Sanjuan - Una leyenda - A pleasant, evocative piece composed for Segovia on 1923 by a Spanish musician - and a good friend of the guitarist - who would have spent most of his life in Cuba and then in USA as a conductor and as a composer.
• Federico Moreno-Torroba - Sonata-Fantasia - The largest, and most powerful, among the solo guitar works composed for solo guitar by Torroba, a formally classical Sonata in its first movement. Written at about 1953.
• Alexandre Tansman - Posthumous Works for guitar - The book includes a suite of Five Inventions written as a homage to J.S. Bach, a Passacaglia, a suite of Short Pieces, a dyptich entitled "Prélude et Interlude" and a suite of Four Mazurkas.

All the volumes offer a biographic note about the composer, a historical note about the piece(s), an edited and fingered music text work for performance and a facsimile reproduction of the original manuscripts. This latter feature is especially important in the case of works like Tansman's ones, where the editorial intervention has been unavoidably relevant. All the works have been edited and fingered by AG with the assistance of his coeditor Luigi Biscaldi and with some useful suggestions from outside, requested to, and kindly offered by, Stanley Yates. The Tansman book includes also an extended biographic study and the catalogue of all the Tansman music for and with guitar, written by Frédéric Zigante.

With these additions, the Segovia series counts 15 booklets, published within 20 months from the discovery of the manuscripts. Other booklets will be published this year and I will give informations in due course.
Thank you for your attention.

AG

======
Subject [ClassicalGuitarMailingList] Re The Andrés Segovia Archive (Torroba Sonata description)
Date Sun, 19 Jan 2003 210130 -0000 

--- A message from ClassicalGuitarMailingList@yahoogroups.com, - a list member wrote: 

> Hello Maestro Gilardino, The Torroba Sonata is truly a great discovery!  Could you please describe it in a little bit more detail?

The Sonata-Fantasia has three movements. The first one is a classical sonata form two themes, three sections. It is more elaborated than the Sonatina, I would say deeper, though less exciting. Honestly, before discovering this piece, I would have hardly believed Torroba could have been able to build up such a classical construction. The 2nd movement is not the customary Adagio or Andante, but a short, lively Scherzo. The third movement is a Rondo. All of the three movements show the typical Castilian flavour actually, the themes are more melodies than themes, and there are all the ingredients of the Torroba guitar music, though more ordered and more developped than usual.

AG

======

Three years ago during these days (May 9th, 2001) I announced in this NG as well as in other sources of informations about the classical guitar that I had been allowed to open the sealed cases containing the music manuscripts of maestro Andrés Segovia. On that occasion, I took on myself the responsibility of the publication of all the works written for him by distinguished composers - mainly works which had been left unpublished and which Segovia had not performed. At the distance of three years, I think I can remark the fact that I have filled my duties: the new series "The Andrés Segovia Archive" - which has been completed - has made available during these time 25 books with pieces whose relevance in the history of the guitar and within the frame of its repertoire go beyond any discussion. Here the list of the published works:

To these 25 books, at the end of the program of publication, I have added one, with a piece written for Segovia, but not during the years of his glory. Here, with the permission of the publisher, I reproduce the foreword introducing the 26th book of the series. Given or taken two or three possible - but not certain - additions to the series, I have finished my work with the Segovia heritage. My shoulders are now lighter and my mind free. I thank God, destiny, life, maestro Segovia and his heirs doña Emilia and dr. Carlos Andrés  for having chosen my person for such a tremendous task: I have worked as never in my life, and in my life I always worked very hard.

Angelo Gilardino
-----------------
A note from the composer
The collection The Andrés Segovia Archive was created with the aim of making available to all readers the works written for Andrés Segovia during his glorious life and career that were unpublished during his life and whose manuscripts were found (by myself) among the papers of the maestro in the Segovia Museum at Linares. Through the courtesy of their owner, Mrs. Emilia Segovia de Salobreña, and through the legal arrangements with the heirs of the composers concerned, a significant number of important works for guitar have been rescued from silence and added to the guitar repertoire of the 20th century - mainly the first half of the century.

Although I was neither a student nor a follower of Andrés Segovia during his life, the task and responsibility of supervising the publication of this wealth of music fell to me as one of the duties connected with my appointment (in 1997) as the Artistic Director of the Andrés Segovia Foundation (which is the Museum created at Linares by the Segovia family and by the Spanish authorities to commemorate the great artist). I accepted this responsibility fully aware of how difficult it might be to fulfill, with respect both to Segovia's memory and to the expectations of all those who were passionate about or interested in his artistic heritage.

During my years in this post I have worked hard to perform my duties both as an artistic director of the Foundation and as the general editor of the works published in The Andrés Segovia Archive. These duties called on my skills and background as a composer only in connection with the editorial work of publishing the newly found works. As a composer in my own right, I have only once composed a piece related directly to the activities of the Foundation, when, following a suggestion by the Segovia estate, I wrote a piece for string orchestra as part of the ceremonies for the return of the maestro's mortal remains to Linares, in June 2002. For that event I did not feel I could write a piece of my own to celebrate Segovia's memory, because my respect for his art encompassed an awareness of how distant I was as a composer from his beautiful world. Thus, I created a suite for string orchestra (Retrato de Andrés Segovia) by orchestrating four pieces for solo guitar which had been composed for him by authors whom he loved (Manuel Ponce, Hans Haug, and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco).

It was on the occasion of the premiere of the Retrato at Linares that I was asked by a friend, the distinguished Italian guitarist Frédéric Zigante, to write a solo guitar piece as a memorial to Andrés Segovia. He told me he believed I could do it, and I was somewhat surprised because I did not believe I could at all. But in the following months, during the summer of 2002, whilst teaching in my Summer School at Muzzano (a beautiful village in Northern Italy, close to the Alps), I thought of the affection Segovia had shown for the composers of my country, from Girolamo Frescobaldi, Domenico Scarlatti and Luigi Boccherini to Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and I thought that I could attempt to become one of them, by composing a piece as my part in a dialogue with Segovia, in the musical language which he liked. The fact that such a dialogue could no longer take place in this world was not to me an obstacle: telling something to somebody sub specie aeternitatis instead of talking in the real world is far from being alien to my way of being, especially if this "something" is told in music.

When Segovia was in this world, I did not seek his friendship - though our mutual respect was complete and sincere. I did not ask him for his assistance in the form of testimonials about my skills as a musician (which, such as they are, are revealed by my own works), or scholarships to enable me to attend his courses (which I never attended), or recommendations to influential music organizers (whose attentions were never among my aims). This is why I take the liberty of offering to Segovia a musical homage: I was and I am free of obligations to him; and this is why I maintain also that a piece written for Segovia after his death is not out of place in a series which hosts the works written for him when he was alive, young and powerful. It is an offering whose reward I will receive in the only terms I appreciate: and for describing them, I have no words.

Angelo Gilardino
Vercelli, October 2003.
====

Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 19:44:12 -0000
Subject: [ClassicalGuitarMailingList] Resignation

I have just resigned from my charge as the artistic director of the Andrés Segovia Foundation. Having finished my investigation in the music papers of the archive, I had no further reason to retain a position which would become, since now to on, just a label.

My thoughts of gratitude to Mrs. Emilia Segovia de Salobrena, the widow of the Maestro, and to his son, dr Carlos Andrés: my friendship with them will never fade out, as well as my commitment in cooperating with them if and when my help will be needed.