Complete Guitar

Sofia Gubaidulina has found a soulfulness and freedom in the guitar which speaks to her musical language of expressive mood and often mysterious but precise sonorities.

Le Livre d'Or du Guitariste op. 52; Valse des Roses; 6 Pieces par Robert de Visee.

The Capricci armonici sopra la chitarra spagnola by Count Ludovico Roncalli (1654–1713) is believed to be the last collection of music for the five-course baroque guitar published in Italy and one of the first collections of baroque guitar music to attract attention in modern times. It was the complete transcription in staff notation by distinguished Italian scholar Oscar Chilesotti that inspired Ottorino Respighi to include an orchestrated version of the Passacaglia in G minor in his Antiche danze ed arie per liuto in 1931.

Most composers who left major contributions to the guitar repertoire were guitarists themselves. Yet there are some notable exceptions, one of which is precisely Manuel Ponce. And what many of these “notable exceptions” have in common, in turn, is their friendship with a great guitarist, whose talent, skill and expertise frequently inspired them to compose, and attracted them to an instrument which has a very pronounced personality. In fact, the guitar is almost a standalone in the world of classical music. It blends only seldom with other classical instruments in chamber music; it appears even more rarely in a symphonic or chamber orchestra, except as a soloist; and many composers who signed the great guitar masterpieces focused almost exclusively on it, whilst most great composers in the classical tradition wrote very little, if anything, for the guitar.