SEGOVIA AND THE GUITAR


Recorded: 1956-57

  • December 1956 - side 1, selections 1-4, 7; side 2, selections 1-4
  • March 1957 - side 1, selections 5 and 6

Location: New York, NY, USA (all selections)
Instrument: Guitar - Hermann Hauser I (1937)
Producer:
Liner notes:
Label: Decca
Released: 1957


Side 1

  1. Luys de Narváez (variations on Mille Regretz by Josquin): Cancion del Emperador (December 1956) NY
  2. Luys de Narváez (variations on an anonymous vocal theme): Variations over 'Guardame las Vacas' (December 1956) NY
  3. John Dowland: Song Captain Digorie Piper's Galliard, P. 19  NY December 1956
  4. John Dowland: Galliard in A major                               NY December 1956
  5. Alessandro Scarlatti (arr. Ponce*): Preambulo, NY (Recorded March 1957)  NY
  6. Alessandro Scarlatti (arr. Ponce*): Gavota (Recorded March 1957)  NY
  7. Domenico Scarlatti: Sonata Longo 352 (K11) (December 1956)  NY    December 1956
  8. Óscar Esplá: Dos Impresiones Levantinas (New York April 1952 or 1956)

Side 2

  1. Joan Manén: Fantasia-Sonata per a guitarra, Op A-22, No. 1 - Largo          Segovia and the Guitar NY Dec 1956 all 4
  2. Joan Manén: Fantasia-Sonata per a guitarra, Op A-22, No. 2 - Allegro                    Segovia and the Guitar
  3. Joan Manén: Fantasia-Sonata per a guitarra, Op A-22, No. 3 - Adagio cantabile           Segovia and the Guitar
  4. Joan Manén: Fantasia-Sonata per a guitarra, Op A-22, No. 4 - Allegro assai    


*Ponce (Ponce is the composer, and the music here is written in the baroque style of Alessandro Scarlatti)


Decca DL 9931 / MCA MACS 1964, 2521
Recorded 1956. Issued 1957. Reissued 1970 (MACS 1964)

Segovia and the Guitar

segoviaguitar.com

Webmaster's note:

Some interesting information about Dowland and Segovia. Segovia had been exposed to John Dowland as early as 1927 and might have performed Dowland compositions throughout the 1930. It was not until 1944 that he recorded a John Dowland song with a classical guitar. Thirteen years later Julian Bream would record an entire album of John Dowland on a Renaissance lute in 1957. Julian Bream had already recorded Dowland Songs with tenor Peter Pears (1955) and The Golden Age Singers (1956).


"Part 1 of this series of articles discussed the pioneering work of Philip Heseltine (real name of the composer Peter Warlock) as a transcriber Dowland’s lute songs and lute solos in the 1920s. Heseltine appears to have made some of this music – possibly a great deal of it – available to Segovia around 1927, although it is not clear that Segovia made much use of it."

Ref:
Jones, Allan Clive, Warlock, Dowland and Segovia. Part 3: Dowland’s mysterious ‘galliard’, p. 1.


"The mysterious Dowland piece I referred to in Part 1 of this series. Segovia recorded it more than once and billed it on his recordings (and presumably in
concert performances) as a ‘galliard’ by Dowland. It is not a galliard (which is a triple-time dance) and, as we have seen, not a lute solo. It is, however, definitely by Dowland."

Ref:
Jones, Allan Clive, Warlock, Dowland and Segovia. Part 3: Dowland’s mysterious ‘galliard’, p. 3.


"How can we be sure that Segovia got his so-called ‘galliard’ from Bruger’s edition, rather than from Heseltine’s Lachrimae transcription? After all, as Part 1 of this series showed, Heseltine had some contact with Segovia in the 1920s, and, by his own account, Heseltine ‘introduced’ Segovia to Dowland’s music. The answer lies in some telling differences between Heseltine’s transcription and Bruger’s publication.


In Heseltine’s consort transcription (Example 2), the stretch from the beginning as far as the letter X in the lute part is the same as the equivalent stretch in Bruger’s Example 1 (allowing for the downward transposition of Example 1 relative to Example 2). Similarly, in both pieces, the stretch from the letter Y to the end is the same. However, Bruger’s ‘solo’ in Example 1 contains, between X and Y, four quavers (eighth notes) over a two-note chord. This passage is absent from Heseltine’s consort transcription (Example 2). Segovia plays this passage in his recordings, and this tells us that he got the piece from Bruger’s 1923 publication, rather than from Heseltine’s transcription. The passage in question does actually appear Mrs Nichols Almand as published in the Lachrimae collection in Dowland’s lifetime. Heseltine, however, has suppressed it in his transcription to fix what he and other editors considered to be an error in the lute part. The error, in modern parlance, consists of an additional half-bar of music in the lute part for which there is no corresponding music in the other parts. The passage that Heseltine has suppressed would, if played, make the lute part half a bar longer than the other parts."

Ref:

Jones, Allan Clive, Warlock, Dowland and Segovia. Part 3: Dowland’s mysterious ‘galliard’, p. 5.

https://www.academia.edu LINK



Joan Manén:

Editorial Berbén released an adaptation made by Antonio Gilardino based on the composer's original manuscript. A facsimile of the manuscript is also included in this edition. The original version written by Manén differs quite a bit from the adaptation that Andrés Segovia made with the composer's approval.

REF:

Joan Manén website - joanmanenplanas.com