Piano Music for the Solo Guitar

Prelude Manuel Maria Ponce (1882-1948) Arr. A. Segovia (1893-1987)

- F#minor

- A major

- D major

- B minor

- E major

- D minor

Suite Española No.1, Op 47 Issac Albeniz (1860-1909)

- Granada (Serenade)

- Austurias (Leyenda)

Children’s Songs Chick Corea (1941) Arr. Forbes Henderson (unknown) Arr. Manuel
Barrueco (1952)

- No. 3

- No. 4

- No. 6

- No. 1

Prelude Manuel Maria Ponce (1882-1948) Arr. A. Segovia (1893-1987)

Manuel Ponce was born in 1882 in the Mexican state of Zacatecas and was
regarded as a piano prodigy since the age of 4. He studied piano in Mexico for his
entire childhood, then in 1904 he left the continent to study in Italy and Berlin. It was in
these European travels that he met Andres Segovia, the progenitor of the modern
guitar. A friendship grew between the two and when Ponce returned to Mexico they
kept a correspondence all the way up until Ponce’s death in 1948. In the letters they
wrote to each other, we can see the birth of these Preludes. Ponce wanted to write
intensive music for the guitar, and instrument that was growing more and more popular
with contemporary composers, primarily because of Segovia. He set out to compose
24 different Preludes, one for each key. Ponce would compose them on the piano, then
send them to Segovia to have them fingered and arranged for the guitar. These pieces
are not long partly because Ponce was more or less experimenting when he wrote
them, but also because I think Ponce composed each to function as a vignette of
sorts. I like to think about these Preludes as “short story pieces”. When an author
writes a short story they don’t have the luxury of time or space to use as much as
they’d like. Everything they write has to have more weight to it. Every character, plot
point, and setting are much more vital to the structural integrity of the story. The same
is true with these shorter pieces of music. I chose these vignettes in this order because
of the way they hang in the air after they are performed, and because of their individual
potencies.

Suite Española No.1, Op 47 Issac Albeniz (1860-1909)

Although Issac Albeniz is known primarily as the composer of some of the most
well known literature for classical guitar, he never wrote anything with the instrument in
mind. Albeniz was a virtuoso pianist, which had him writing virtuoso music for the
piano. In some of these cases like ‘Austurias’, these pieces couldn’t be performed with
any real propriety unless heard on guitar. I chose these two pieces from Albeniz’s
“Suite Española” because of the range between them in terms of dynamic and
necessity of touch. When performing these pieces on guitar, it is important for the
player to approach plucking the strings as if they were pressing keys instead.
‘Granada’ requires the touch to be soft yet firm, gentle but with intention. ‘Austurias’
requires intensity, and an almost percussive approach in the right hand. Both of these
pieces represent the dynamic range of both piano and guitar in their performances.

Children’s Songs Chick Corea (1941) Arr. Forbes Henderson (unknown) Arr. Manuel
Barrueco (1952)

Chick Corea was born in Chelsea MA in 1941 and is one of the most prolific jazz
pianists and composers alive today. He was famous for his innovation in the genre
through the fusion era in the 1970s and his compositions ‘Windows’, ‘500 Miles High’,
‘Crystal Silence’ and others are considered standard repertoire for jazz musicians. The
Children’s Songs were composed by Corea as short form etudes for the piano that help
the player learn to distinguish the individuality of the left and right hands. They all
contain an ostinato pattern to be kept in the left hand, while the right plays a usually
syncopated melody line above it. While this can present a nice challenge for both
beginner and advanced pianists, it also teaches valuable technique for guitarists
looking to distinguish especially syncopated voices from eachother.