This month Declan Zapala brings us another fiery miniature from the Italian king of etudes. Perfect as a piece to play live or as an excellent technique booster.
This month we return to the classical guitar treasure trove that is ‘Tour de Force’ Matteo Carcassi’s 25 Études Melodiques Progressives Op.60. Over the last two years I have explored Etude No.1 (GT331) and No. 23 (GT342) which covered a myriad of core techniques including scale-based melodies, slurred and crossstring descending arpeggiation, as well as efficiency of fretting-hand finger placement. Etude No.7 is a bootcamp for tremolo and broken chord arpeggiation so with that in mind the accompanying exercises focus on the plucking hand, building up a smooth and stable tremolo technique.
Carcassi wrote hundreds of pieces for guitar in his life but his 25 Études Mélodiques Progressives, Op.60 in particular show off his brilliance as a composer as well as an educator, since not only are these 25 short pieces technically challenging, covering classical technique from early intermediate through to advanced, they are musically rich and can show off a player’s sensitivity as well as their virtuosity. As such they are at home both on the concert stage as well as in the classroom. Carcassi was an active composer during what was the Classical period of music in
19th-century Europe, though for we players this period was very much the ‘Guitar Renaissance’. A huge portion of the classical guitar’s repertoire came into existence during this time from many of Carcassi’s peers including Ferdinando Carulli, Fernando Sor, Mauro Giuliani, Dionisio Aguado, and Johann Kasper Mertz to name but a few. All the while the ‘final form’ of the nylon-strung concert or Spanish guitar, the Antonio de Torres design, emerged to replace its ancestor, the Baroque guitar. The prefix ‘classical’ has stuck with the instrument ever since as there have been no significant developments from that time to this. Nearly 200 years later de Torres’ guitar is one of the most popular instruments in the world, and is widely played by hobbyists, professional concert artists, and street musicians the world over.
To learn a Carcassi etude is to tap into the origins of the classical guitar since this music is ultimately what was being written at the beginning of the instrument’s rich history, while de Torres and other luthiers of the time were busy developing and refining. Even if you are a player from another discipline such as jazz or blues, by learning the etudes you can expect an enhanced new layer of technical proficiency in your fingers, but u
