Help me find a tremolo piece... for guitar
Hello, can anyone suggest a tremolo piece written for guitar (no transcriptions please) in the last 50 to 75 years. No Poncelike fakery, something stylistically 20th or 21st century.
Bonus points if the the composer is still alive, extra special bonus points if the composer is still alive and considered a viable composer outside of guitar literature.
I hope I'm missing some awesome pieces, can you enlighten me with any?
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Have you played Eduardo Sainz de la Maza's Campanas del alba? It is the first tremolo piece I played way back . Beautiful melody...
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I've recorded my dear friend (and tonebase Artist and Coach) Arturo Castro with this beautiful piece:
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Thank you for your replies so far, if others can think of something please do.
Why couldn't someone have commissioned a Lutosławski or Messiaen piece for guitar!
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JR Julian Bream attempted to reach out to a variety of prominent 20th century composers like Shostakovich and Stravinsky to get them to write for the instrument. In the end, he didn't garner much interest.
Composers today I think could write well for the instrument would be Jessie Montgomery or Clarice Assad (who already has composed works for the instrument and is "viable outside of the guitar literature" if her commissions are anything to go by.
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Cristian Yes Bream's contributions to the guitar on every level were Titanean. He convinced Britten to write the Nocturnal what more could one ask for in a single life? And Malcom Arnold wrote pieces, Tippett wrote pieces, and on and on. My teacher said once that Williams could do in an hour what Bream could do in a morning, but luckily Bream worked in the afternoon also.
Everyday Bream worked to expand the guitar while Segovia worked so hard to make it insular and ... generic.
On the commission front, David Starobin has sadly never gotten the recognition he deserves. I like the Koshkin piece, I'm looking for where to buy the sheets now.
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JR I feel Segovia's contribution to broadening the guitar repertoire has been unfairly criticized in the decades following his death. He seems to get judged for what he failed to achieve, rather than for what he actually did achieve. As far as I know, he was the first to attract a non-guitarist composer of any stature to compose for the instrument. And as is now widely known, an enormous volume of newly composed work found its way into his personal archive. True, not everything was to his taste, and much remained unknown until after his death, but the fact remains that without Segovia, little - if any - of it would have been created in the first place. Moreover the particular composers that he did promote (Ponce, Tansman, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, among others) are, imo, no less distinguished than those championed by Bream (Britten and Walton being the most eminent); they are less 'modern' no doubt, but for the entirely understandable reason that they were born in a different era, with different musical sensibilities. Segovia too, was of that time - and his legacy is to have preserved something of a particular musical culture (neo-classicism/neo-romanticism) in our repertoire. Is that really such a bad thing?
I would say too, btw, that John Williams' role in growing our repertoire tends also to be undervalued. He certainly premiered (and also recorded) a number of new works of lasting value.
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David Krupka
I could not disagree with you more, or more strongly.
And that's fine we both have opinions based on our feelings, experiences, politics, and how we see music and the guitar itself. Your feelings are totally valid.
I will only comment that my feelings re:Segovia go back some time before his death.
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There is Rex Willis's Serenata del Mar (neo-Romantic) as well as Nikita Koshkin's Merlin's Dream (more firmly 20th century); Both are still alive. Joaquin Clerch has an Estudio de Tremolo that Andrea Gonzalez Caballero recorded in her first album but it isn't an exclusively tremolo piece like the aforementioned ones.
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The Clerch Primavera pieces are fabulous, and Caballero plays them so well.
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This one by Maria Linnemann is lovely. Easy on the left hand so you can really focus on your tremolo. Samantha Muir does a wonderful job.
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Hi! You might want to check out David Russell's workshop on tremolo on YouTube (David Russell - Workshop on tremolo technique). He does a pretty comprehensive summation of the tremolo literature including pieces like Rodrigo's 'Invocation and Dance', which is not a pure tremolo piece, but has some extensive tremolo sections. Of particular note, he played a newer piece by Ben Verdery called 'Now or Ever'. David said that Ben found "a new way of using tremolo" and that the piece took tremolo to the next level.
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I don't know if this meets all of your criteria, but perhaps Benjamin Britten's arrangement of "The Shooting of his Dear"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJmJQv9DDGg
It's a slightly unusual tremolo, too, where i plays twice in a row to add a middle-voice harmony along with the thumb
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