We take a journey to 17th-century Spain this month to explore Declan Zapala’s arrangement of this uplifting miniature originally written for the baroque guitar.
This month’s classical arrangement by baroque Spanish composer Gaspar Sanz is said to be one of the inspirations behind the vibrant opening theme to Joaquín Rodrigo’s world famous Guitar Concerto in which the guitar majestically dances between an alternating 6/8 and 3/4 pulse over a simple D Major tonality. A quick glance at the opening notes of this month’s arrangement reveals a striking similarity to this compositional characteristic with the alternating time signature giving it a quintessentially Spanish flavour.
Born in 1640 (well over 250 years before Rodrigo) Sanz was baptised Francisco Bartolome Sanz y Celma but later adopted the more familiar Gaspar as his forename. A colourful character born into a wealthy family in the Bajo Aragón region of Spain, in his life Sanz was a priest, a poet, a writer, and a teacher, though his legacy is almost certainly his compositions as a baroque guitarist. The privilege afforded to him allowed him to travel to Italy to pursue his love of music, moving between Naples and Rome for his studies as well as studying back home in Spain at the University of Salamanca – Spain’s oldest university – where he received his Bachelor’s in Music, Theology and Philosophy.
One of Sanz’s first appointments upon completing his studies was teaching guitar to Don Juan, the son of King Philip IV, to whom Sanz dedicated his method book ‘Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española’ – an important and rich work in the pedagogical history of the guitar which contains all of his known compositions.
The notation in this month’s classical arrangement was transcribed from the original five-string tablature by Sanz. It’s very similar to modern tablature where numbers and lines simply represent strings and fret numbers, but a notable difference is that the strings appear ‘upside-down’ in the baroque version, the highest-pitched string appearing on the lowest line (Sanz would no doubt claim our modern tablature is the one that’s upside down!). The tuning of the baroque guitar conveniently had the top four strings tuned like the moder
