walking upstream…
Andrés Segovia
photo: alessandro merletti · public domain ↗Andrés Segovia
sourcesWikipedia · Julian Bream Guitar
Self-taught against an era that considered the guitar a café instrument beneath the concert stage, Segovia built a technique and a repertoire — commissioning works from Ponce, Rodrigo, and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, transcribing Bach for six strings — that forced the instrument into the world's concert halls by sheer will and virtuosity. Decades of touring and recording made ‘classical guitarist’ a viable career for everyone who came after him, and his signature encore, Tárrega's ‘Recuerdos de la Alhambra,’ became a rite of passage for the instrument itself.
the sound in question
1939
Recuerdos de la AlhambraAndrés Segovia
walk the tributaries ↓
Johann Sebastian Bach1720s · Baroque / Classical
Segovia's transcriptions of Bach — most famously the solo-violin ‘Chaconne’ remade for six strings — did more than any other single body of work to convince skeptical audiences and composers that the guitar belonged in the same rooms as the piano and violin.
listen: upstream & here
1722
Prelude in C Major, BWV 846Johann Sebastian Bach
1946
Chaconne in D minor, BWV 1004Andrés Segovia
listen forBach's contrapuntal keyboard writing on the ‘Prelude in C Major’ and Segovia's own dense, multi-voiced guitar arrangement of the ‘Chaconne in D minor’ both ask a single instrument to sustain several independent lines at once — an ambition few guitarists before Segovia attempted in public.
Francisco Tárrega1880s–1900s · Classical Guitar / Romantic
Segovia never met Tárrega, who died when Segovia was sixteen, but he built his early repertoire and technique on ground Tárrega had already worked out — tremolo picking, right-hand independence, and the conviction that the guitar alone could sustain a full concert program.
listen: upstream & here
1892
Capricho ÁrabeFrancisco Tárrega
1939
Recuerdos de la AlhambraAndrés Segovia
listen forTárrega's ‘Capricho Árabe’ shows the harmonic language and tremolo technique Segovia inherited wholesale; his own celebrated recording of Tárrega's ‘Recuerdos de la Alhambra’ is the clearest proof of how completely he absorbed it.
Miguel Llobet1900s–1920s · Classical Guitar / Catalan Folk
Llobet was Tárrega's star pupil and, a generation later, personally encouraged and mentored the young Segovia — the direct link between Tárrega's Barcelona circle and the international concert career Segovia went on to build. Llobet's own guitar transcriptions of Isaac Albéniz's piano suites also gave Segovia both a repertoire and a method for turning piano writing into guitar showpieces.
listen: upstream & here
El Testament d'AmeliaMiguel Llobet
1976
Asturias (Leyenda)Andrés Segovia
listen forLlobet's arrangement of the Catalan folk song ‘El Testament d'Amelia’ and Segovia's own transcription-heavy performance of Albéniz's ‘Asturias (Leyenda)’ both treat the guitar as capable of anything a piano or a choir could do — dense chords and singing melodic lines pulled from outside the instrument's own tradition.