Guitar is the latest in the Yehudi Menuhin Music Guides series. Written by Jonathan Leathwood and Richard Wright, it examines vital questions that arise during the development of a classical guitar player.
This is not a prescriptive teaching method. Leathwood and Wright are international experts in guitar pedagogy and are widely published separately. This book represents their individual views, and they each choose topics where they feel they have something useful to add to the current debate.
The book’s style is scholarly yet accessible. The content covers history, technique, repertoire, interpretation, musicality and teaching ideas. There are fresh perspectives on common topics; other areas will be of particular interest to conservatoire-level students and their professors. The book provides much scope for CPD at any level, and many sections will be relevant to other instrumentalists.
Guitar is split into four sections: Teaching and Playing; Learning and Practising; Repertoire; and The Collaborative Guitarist. Each is further divided into chapters.
The introduction gives a brief history of the guitar. It examines how different types of guitars are played, what they play, and what they have in common with other instruments.
A rounded performance
The chapter on ‘Teaching and Playing’ discusses why the guitar is characterised as ‘difficult’. It offers initial teaching strategies and discusses the value of presenting a rounded musical performance at any level. ‘Touch, Sound and Voice’ covers familiar territory, such as point of contact, planting, right-hand fingering, the role of the rest stroke, string crossing, left-hand expression, articulation and intonation. Examples show how Carcassi’s studies are ideal preparation for bravura studies by Villa-Lobos.
There is an illuminating discussion on chord voicing with clear exercises for teachers and students, further developed in the book’s complementary blog, ymguitarguide.com. There is also a very interesting section on tuning.
Learning and Practising
‘Body and Mind, Guitar and Score’ discusses internalising the music, and the benefits of working with the score separately from the guitar. We are encouraged to develop our tactile knowledge of the fingerboard by applying chordal accompaniments to any music to hand. We are presented with ways to explore theory on the guitar, and to memorise pieces. This section also contains several games for use in the studio or classroom; for example, practise with ‘speech song’ to discover where to place an emphasis.
‘Creative Practice’ highlights the importance of improvisation. There is much on harmonic reduction (developing ‘X-ray vision’) and a valuable guide to identifying vocabularies in post-tonal music.
Other thought-provoking practice techniques include imagining what might have been written; and the value of exploring ‘alternative realities’ as a way of participating in the composer’s decisions.
Repertoire
This is in three parts. ‘Player-Composer’ places the giants of the guitar canon in chronological and evolutionary order, and, crucially, explores their roles in the concurrent wider musical world. Much of this is extremely entertaining; I particularly enjoyed discovering why Sor gave his pieces sarcastic titles.
The influence of keyboard and chamber music on 19th-century composition is explored, as is the rise of multi-string guitars. We examine Romantic developments and the importance of Arcas and Tárrega (fêted here not as the ‘father’ of guitar but as the link between the 19th century and what followed). There are sections on Barrios, Villa-Lobos and Brouwer.
‘Unstable Texts’ looks critically at issues raised by ‘discrepant sources’. It tackles transcriptions, how to deal with misprints, and examines the late-Romantic cult of genius. There are case studies of transcriptions of Visée’s Suite in D minor, Giuliani’s Gran sonata eroica, Mertz’s arrangements of Schubert, and Albéniz’s Granada; and Segovia’s interventionist tendencies are considered.
Above all, this section exhorts the student to take responsibility for the edition they choose to play, and understand how it gives their performance authority.
‘The Guitarist’s Bach’ comprises 10 lessons on a composer whom many students approach with caution. These include: ‘Commit to Rhythm and Flow’, ‘Map out the Music with Harmonic Reduction’, ‘Avoid Costly Ornaments’ and the comforting ‘Be Sceptical of Complex Notation’. It’s a wealth of valuable and practical information for playing Bach at any level.
The Collaborative Guitarist
This short section encompasses two chapters. ‘Chamber Music’ is full of succinct information. It discusses how to make the guitar audible against louder instruments, and encourages us to work through problems of balance, rather than avoiding them.
‘Working with Composers’ is invaluable for those commissioning works by – or collaborating with – non-guitar-playing composers. But it is also a fascinating read for players who themselves compose for their instrument. Practical strategies abound. The piece deals with the ‘curse of excessive deference’, the burden of responsibility, and ways to prevent small difficulties sabotaging the whole. It offers advice on how to get into a composer’s mind, and how to add resonance to their sketches. A series of case studies examines aspects of Leathwood’s collaborations with Param Vir, Harrison Birtwistle and Roxanna Panufnik.
Rich pickings for teachers
This book is scattered throughout with fantastic analogies and practical strategies we can pass on to our students. Much content is directed towards those working at a refined level of skill and expression; but most of the creative ideas will enrich teaching at any level.
Guitar is a springboard for further exploration, with quality resources and pedagogical value; it is a significant contribution to any classical guitar teacher’s professional development.
Guitar
Jonathan Leathwood and Richard Wright Kahn & Averill
£19.95
