Prologue The guitar works of Manuel M. Ponce were created over a 25 year period which started in 1923 and concluded with his death in 1948. During all these years Ponce composed six sonatas, three variation groups, two suites, twenty four preludes in all major and minor keys, an étude, two sonatinas, another six preludes, a sonata with harpsichord, a concerto with orchestra and several pieces. Alll these works came to enrich the guitar repertoire of this century and are marked by an eclectic artistic approach that comprises several styles. Thus the works composed betwee: 1923 and 1927 bear, more or less, the influence of French impressionism, save the five songs, transcribed by Ponce himself, that have a very Mexican character. This period was followed by a neoclassic one that lasted a couple of years with the creation of two sonatas, one in the classic style and another with Schubert's influence, as well as a suite in the baroque style, written at the request of Segovia. This tendency was interrupted by the composition of the 24 preludes and the étude, between the fall of 1929 and the following spring; continuing with the last sonata, where a procedure dating from the beginning of polyphony was deployed by using in the first two movements the melody of a Paganini sonata, in the manner of a cantus firmus but with a chromatic language within the romantic style. The sonatina bears a Spanish influence, required by Segovia, and in the Folia variations, one of the leading guitar works of the 20th century, several idioms and influences appear. During a single year, beginning in December of 1930, there is a return to the neoclassic style, with the creation of another suite and several pieces, all in the. baroque style, until finally, starting in 1932, with the second sonatina written as a homage to Térrega, Ponce reaches his last period influenced again by 9impressionism, but by then within a more chromatic approach. In all this output we find a concern towards the formal aspect, and so the proper employment of the great forms, within guitar music, makes Ponce a true innovator since no one, before or after him, had written six sonatas for the instrument, nor variations of the scope of the ones written on the Folia theme. ‘The interest and the inclination towards research into Manuel M. Ponce’s music, were awakened in me by Alirio Diaz when we met in Martinique in November of 1975 during the Suite’. Alirio guitar festival organized by Jean Pierre Jumez in which I played the ‘We suggested that, since I was living in Mexico, I should check the Ponce manuscripts and see what they were really like. At the beginning of 1976 I visited Ponce's house for the first time and met his heir, the pianist Carlos Vazquez, who gave me access to the Ponce archive. I started by writing the thematic catalogue of a copybook containing several guitar works and there eventually found most of the 24 preludes which I started copying and that I published, a few years later, with Tecla Editions in London. Whenever a text is transmitted, or communicated by any means, a variation may occur because occasionally editors, copyists, or even performers, are not careful enough with the source itself. By omitting certain items, by trying to correct something that is considered wrong, or perhaps by not knowing the style and context in which a text was originally written, alterations may be introduced, as has happened many times with biblical texts. Because of this, the critical work on a given text consists in detecting these changes in order to restore it, whenever possible, to its original form, and in some cases to reconstruct something that does not exist anymore. Also a text may be accepted in good faith and by getting used to it, in spite of its lack of authenticity, it may often be preferred to the authentic and true version because of the familiarity that has been established. Alll this is applicable to the case of Ponce, which is why I have tried to make known the original version of his guitar works, which explains why when playing his music one feels, sooner or later, that something is missing, that something is not right and in the end one finds out that his original conception was changed. Since Andrés Segovia prompted the composition of most of Ponce’s guitar music and was its main editor and popularizer, one could think that this edition might be a sort of critique or attack of his work, but this is not the case since Segovia was the result of an era and education, Victorian up to a point, having remained enmeshed in the values and attitudes of the XIX century. He also lacked a truly academic background, which he managed to overcome by his own effort and discipline, though not completely. Besides, he was an idealist who took on himself the redemption of the guitar, as a personal crusade, and engaged in making the music of Ponce known to the world. 11He was also a human being and as such was not infallible; he could therefore be prone to the influences that affect human beings and as we sometimes are motivated by unconscious drives, he denied his origins and developed a phobia against flamenco. This can be documented in his own words in Christopher Newpen’s Segovia en la Alhambra (Allegro Films, 1977) in which he admits when narrating that episode that his first guitar teacher was a flamenco tocaor: Suddenly, a poor flamenco tocaor came home, his first rough rasgueado frightened me and I fell back; but when he scratched in his guitar some falsetas, according to him of soleares, those melodic fragments entered through all the pores of my body; I felt so moved that I even now remember it. The poor man asked: would you like co learn how to play? I motioned my head upside down with joy; my uncle agreed. And two months later I had absorbed everything that the poor tocaor knew, which was very little. As my uncle saw my skill, he used to say to his friends: rather than learn this lad remembers. Later on in the same video, before playing two Ponce pieces, he explains his resistance towards flamenco in these terms: It proved a herculean effort to change the idea my countrymen had about the guitar, being considered only suitable to accompany songs and flamenco dancers in taverns with a prodigal abundance of wine and female commerce. To confirm this and to demonstrate how fallen was the image of the guitar, he also recounts that one morning when the maid brought breakfast into his room and saw Segovia practicing on his guitar she exclaimed: “Oh young man, so early and so happy!” Segovia exerted a great influence on Ponce and that was only natural since the virtuosi, during the first half of the century, always had a great charisma and their opinions were considered next to infallible, Ponce succumbed to many of the suggestions made by Segovia but sometimes when he did not agree with them he kept silent or made the required changes but did not include them in his manuscripts, perhaps thinking that some day they would be played in the way he had conceived them. Some people may think that the final result was better after Segovia’s intervention. However, the interpreter’s point of view had always the coloring of the great success expected and at times the subtlety of Ponce’s music had to be transformed into something louder and more brilliant to obtain the public’s approval, as is the case with the rasgueados that he liked to add. In some other cases the changes were to facilitate the performance of a difficult passage; nevertheless, the crave for speed resulted in rhythmical alterations, especially with the rhythmic figure of dotted eighth and sixteenth, 13ct value, because the faster this is played the more difficult it gets to render it with the exa being changed at times into a triplet or two uneven eighth notes. The tempi asked by Ponce were not very fast and so the allegro was mostly shaded by adding indications such as moderato, non troppo, serioso, espressivo, piacevole, semplice, etc. Undoubtedly this was part and parcel of his unobstrusive character in which introversion and reflection predominated, producing a tranquil and restrained personality that did not need expansive outbursts to attract attention. These qualities are to be found in all his music which shows a perfect balance between affection, expression and reflection. Alll this is evident in his guitar music, managing to express what captivated him the first time he listened to Segovia in his Mexican debut and that he shares with us in the review that he wrote for El Universal of 6 May 1923: egovia is to experience a sensation of Listening to the notes of the guitar played by Andrés intimacy and homely wellbeing; it is the evoking of remote and soft emotions wrapped in the mysterious enchantment of past things; it is opening the spirit to reverie and living some wonderful moments within an ambiance of pure art that the great Spanish artist knows how to recreate. Ponce's output comprised almost all musical forms and even in his orchestral works there -y and refinement that appears in most of his prevails the atmosphere of introspection, intima works. His activity was not limited to composition and he was a brilliant pianist as well, with technical resources that he worked on with Martin Krause in Berlin; these can be noticed in the score of his piano and orchestra concerto, performed splendidly by the composer himself for its premiere, as was confirmed by the reviews. He also taught piano and composition and was director of the Conservatorio Nacional ile Miisica as well as of the Facultad de Miisica of the | activity was his research and University of Mexico. Another important aspect of his music compilation of popular music as well as the creation and inclusion of these themes in many of his works, being considered the initiator of the nationalistic movement in Mexican music. Most of his guitar manuscripts have heen preserved in his archive, only missing the ones that were kept by Segovia and that were lost during his pilgrimage from one continent to the other, or because of national and personal disasters like the Spanish Civil War, or simple robbery. This is the case of the first four sonatas, the Weiss suite, the Folfa variations and several pieces that will be mentioned throughout the present text. At the beginning I intended to publish only the solo guitar music but as the concerto has a lot of important changes, not only in the soloist part but in the orchestration too, I finally decided to include the guitar part and at the end, in an appendix, the reduction of the orchestra fragment that 15was suppressed. That is not the case with the guitar and harpsichord sonata, published like the concerto by Peer International Corporation, revised and fingered by Carlos Vazquez and Manuel Lopez Ramos, whose text was respected and only the metronome markings, which do not appear in the original manuscript, were added. Finally, | would like to acknowledge the assistance and help provided by Alitio Diaz, Carlos Vazquez, Juan Helguera, Manuel Lopez Ramos, Gustavo Alanéz, Sergio Ortiz, Jorge Alcézar, Bernardo Kupfer, Ron Purcell, Martin Kaaij, Mirek Kotecki, Rogelio and Lucy Arellano, Miguel Querol and Father Antonio Brambila who in one way or another contributed to the realization of this book, as well as to Alan Stark who made the final revision of the English text. I made the recording during 1997, of all the works here published, to be released by Tritonus. Mineral del Chico, July of 1998 17