Should we Leave the term "Classical" in Classical Guitar?
I understand that in Portugal the terminology guitarra classica is often used to distinguish the nylon string guitar from the viola, which in English would be called a steel string guitar. In Portugal the guitarra is more commonly thought of as the Fado guitar, an instrument descended from the Engish guitar, a member of the cittern family of instruments. A similar instrument with a different tuning survives in Germany called the Waldzither. The words 'guitar', 'guitarra', 'cittern', 'cythara', 'cistre'', 'zither', etc., are all closely related in origin and use in earlier time periods.
The history of this terminology is a bit too complex to go into here, and I don't want to bore you with it. One could write articles of considerable length on the subject.
However I do understand the significance of the use of 'classical guitar' from a Portuguese perspective.
Not so long ago in England the instrument was commonly called the 'Spanish guitar' to distinguish it from the 'English guitar', even long after the English guitar had been forgotten about entirely except for museum pieces. You might be surprised to know that as late as the 1960's in the USA, the Gibson company were manufacturing double cutaway semi-acoustic steel string electric guitar models (used by Chuck Berry, B B King and other famous ones) as the ES series. The ES stands for Electric Spanish. Bizzare today, but then it had some sense to it.
80 or 90 years ago, when Segovia was establishing a modern 'classical' repertoire for the guitar there was a point to call the instrument a 'classical guitar'. He lived in Spain, he was determined to distinguish what he was doing as seperate from the flamenco tradition. He wanted the instrument to be taken seriously in a context when he considered it was looked down on as not worthy of the attention of 'serious' composers and so-called classical audiences.
And there was a certain amount of elitism governing his attitude, and the growing response to his efforts. The positive results were fine music by Rodrigo, etc., and a climate of support for the young Julian Bream. The negative - the deliberate push into obscurity for a generation of Augustin Barrios and some of the best 20th century solo guitar music created because Barrios used steel strings. According to Segovia this was a sacrilege!
Unfortunately today we are left with a lot of the poisonous elitism and in many cases technical incompetence. The stupid politics, and a different historical situation entirely; Segovia is dead, Julian Bream retired - with lifetimes of successful achievement. Everybody knows the tune of the Adagio from Concierto Aranjuez.
We are even left with a confusion of what we mean by 'classical' music.
In a record store it means one thing. Not 'jazz' or 'folk' or 'pop' or 'world' (another silly result of language misuse). A category of the negative.
To a musician with some understanding of music history, 'classical' also means the period after the baroque (Vivaldi, Bach, etc.) and before the romantic (Liszt, Chopin, Pagannini, etc.) - something else (centred around Mozart and Haydn).
How to understand the music of Gershwin with it's strong influence of jazz and Jewish traditions? Or Piazzolla? We can't even really call it 'modern' or contemporary because most of it is now historical also. Today symphony orchestras play arrangements of Lennon and McCartney songs alongside Beethoven works when fifty years ago they would have been despised by most 'serious' musicians and such a thing would have caused outrage.
Categorising music and musical instruments in a casual way can lead you into the muddiest of swamps and the creation of more confusion than originally intended. Or consequences like the example of Barrios.
The creation by Segovia of the 'classical guitar' tradition has a stupid logic to it today; no flamenco music allowed, no Bach according Costas Cotsiolis(!!!!), no inappropriate techniques (!!!), even no Barrios if one follows it through. Thoroughly, thoroughly stupid.
Fernando Sor and Francisco Tarrega simply called their instrument guitar. they never called it 'classical guitar', nobody in the 19th century made these distinctions. You will not find a single historical example of usage of this terminology before the 1920s.
The terminology is a modern invention that belongs in the dustbin along with all the stupidity of negativity that has survived and grown to overshadow the instrument. It is the result of snobbery, elitism, class prejudices and ignorance.
Galina was constantly criticised by her enemies (and still is) from the self-appointed guardians of this fictitious invented tradition for her repertoire. And they had a point, logic triumphing over audience reaction and good sense. The category of the negative.
Galina has always stood against this category of the negative. She plays what she likes and what works for her audience with no regard for this stupid tradition. She is much closer to the tradition of Tarrega than Segovia ever was in that sense, I am sure that if flamenco music of the quality of Sabicas had been around when Tarrega had been alive he would have had a stab at it. In another sense she is close to Barrios too.
To call Galina a 'classical guitarist' is to put her in a category with people and attitudes where she does not belong or believe in. She has a strong sense of herself as someone who dares to do what is 'not allowed'. This not what the 'classical guitar' tradition is about.
She does come from a 'classical' tradition in the looser sense of education and background, but as a musician she is far more developed than any 'classical guitarist' I know of and she is continuing to develop.
There are very important reasons therefore why we do not want 'classical guitarist'!
Galina is a virtuoso guitarist. In the true sense of the word. Somehow I think Tarrega would have had more time for her than he would for any present-day Segovian disciple.
I hope you have a clearer understanding of this, Basilio. It's not simply a matter of semantics and personal dislike of the ridiculous prejudices Galina has often ended up confronting.
Music evolves, as it always has. The categorization of genres is breaking down increasingly with many modern performers from all kinds of musical backgrounds. Audiences are constantly changing as old prejudices disappear, social attitudes change in response to wider influences.
The fear and prejudices against popular culture in music which existed in the time of Segovia and formed middle class attitudes towards those cultural influences especially during the 1920's and 30's do not exist today. In fact the reverse is happening, witness the popularity of Buena Vista Social Club or Radio Tarifa for example. Performers from 'classical' backgrounds like the violinist Nigel Kennedy have been hugely successful pioneering new attitudes, in spite of negative press and comments from the tradionalists. Keith Jarrett is probably the most influential pianist of the 20th century, playing everything from Bach to his own improvisations which completely defy any attempt to categorize them with huge sell-out auditorium performances. And of course there is our hero Paco de Lucia.
Outside of Portugal, 'classical guitar' doesn't mean an instrument, it means a whole load of crap we don't need. There are flamenco guitarists in the pura tradition like Paco Pena who play guitars with pegs instead of machine heads and cypress instead of rosewood for the back and sides. They have a distinctive sound in one sense. But there are also flamenco players like Serranito who play guitars identical to Galina's instrument.
Actually, the only reason historically for the different origins of these distinctions had more to do with poverty. In Spain, many flamenco guitarists grew up too poor to afford expensive guitars built from rosewood with expensive hand-made (the only kind then available) machine heads. Pegs were cheaper, cypress wood too. The only true difference was the golpeador plate on the front. Galina has to have golpe plates on her guitar, but this doesn't mean it then becomes a flamenco guitar. Simply a guitar with a golpe plate!
We do not want to somehow do a Reconquista on the 'classical guitar', better to show it up for the meaningless nonsense it has become and leave it's disciples to their own devices, prejudices and anachronisms. It has outlived it's sell-by date, it puts us in a position of having to overcome too many obstacles, it's got absolutely nothing to offer positive that will assist Galina to build a career in the present climate.
I can see no objection to using guitarra classica in translation for the simple reason that in Portugal it means an instrument, although I still have some reservations about it. Pity we can't really use violao as in Brazil.
But elsewhere no dice. No violinist ever has to say 'classical violin' or pianist 'classical piano' unless they are being pompous. And that is how we end up by using it, even sillier when a considerable proportion of the repertoire Galina is playing is not classical in any sense.
So I can understand why you have been trying to use 'classical guitar' Basilio and perhaps thinking we had gone off the rails a bit with this. But it is important we do not use this terminology.
We need new audiences, not old middle class men in English suburbia nodding dotage and respectability or tight arsed American academics approving. They can't pay the mortgage even if they did decide Galina was the true successor to Segovia.
The further we get away from Classical Guitar the better, believe me.
Sorry for the lengthy but necessary essay, but I hope you will see we are not being perverse on the subject. Quite the opposite.
Best wishes, Colin
I understand that in Portugal the terminology guitarra classica is often used to distinguish the nylon string guitar from the viola, which in English would be called a steel string guitar. In Portugal the guitarra is more commonly thought of as the Fado guitar, an instrument descended from the Engish guitar, a member of the cittern family of instruments. A similar instrument with a different tuning survives in Germany called the Waldzither. The words 'guitar', 'guitarra', 'cittern', 'cythara', 'cistre'', 'zither', etc., are all closely related in origin and use in earlier time periods.
The history of this terminology is a bit too complex to go into here, and I don't want to bore you with it. One could write articles of considerable length on the subject.
However I do understand the significance of the use of 'classical guitar' from a Portuguese perspective.
Not so long ago in England the instrument was commonly called the 'Spanish guitar' to distinguish it from the 'English guitar', even long after the English guitar had been forgotten about entirely except for museum pieces. You might be surprised to know that as late as the 1960's in the USA, the Gibson company were manufacturing double cutaway semi-acoustic steel string electric guitar models (used by Chuck Berry, B B King and other famous ones) as the ES series. The ES stands for Electric Spanish. Bizzare today, but then it had some sense to it.
80 or 90 years ago, when Segovia was establishing a modern 'classical' repertoire for the guitar there was a point to call the instrument a 'classical guitar'. He lived in Spain, he was determined to distinguish what he was doing as seperate from the flamenco tradition. He wanted the instrument to be taken seriously in a context when he considered it was looked down on as not worthy of the attention of 'serious' composers and so-called classical audiences.
And there was a certain amount of elitism governing his attitude, and the growing response to his efforts. The positive results were fine music by Rodrigo, etc., and a climate of support for the young Julian Bream. The negative - the deliberate push into obscurity for a generation of Augustin Barrios and some of the best 20th century solo guitar music created because Barrios used steel strings. According to Segovia this was a sacrilege!
Unfortunately today we are left with a lot of the poisonous elitism and in many cases technical incompetence. The stupid politics, and a different historical situation entirely; Segovia is dead, Julian Bream retired - with lifetimes of successful achievement. Everybody knows the tune of the Adagio from Concierto Aranjuez.
We are even left with a confusion of what we mean by 'classical' music.
In a record store it means one thing. Not 'jazz' or 'folk' or 'pop' or 'world' (another silly result of language misuse). A category of the negative.
To a musician with some understanding of music history, 'classical' also means the period after the baroque (Vivaldi, Bach, etc.) and before the romantic (Liszt, Chopin, Pagannini, etc.) - something else (centred around Mozart and Haydn).
How to understand the music of Gershwin with it's strong influence of jazz and Jewish traditions? Or Piazzolla? We can't even really call it 'modern' or contemporary because most of it is now historical also. Today symphony orchestras play arrangements of Lennon and McCartney songs alongside Beethoven works when fifty years ago they would have been despised by most 'serious' musicians and such a thing would have caused outrage.
Categorising music and musical instruments in a casual way can lead you into the muddiest of swamps and the creation of more confusion than originally intended. Or consequences like the example of Barrios.
The creation by Segovia of the 'classical guitar' tradition has a stupid logic to it today; no flamenco music allowed, no Bach according Costas Cotsiolis(!!!!), no inappropriate techniques (!!!), even no Barrios if one follows it through. Thoroughly, thoroughly stupid.
Fernando Sor and Francisco Tarrega simply called their instrument guitar. they never called it 'classical guitar', nobody in the 19th century made these distinctions. You will not find a single historical example of usage of this terminology before the 1920s.
The terminology is a modern invention that belongs in the dustbin along with all the stupidity of negativity that has survived and grown to overshadow the instrument. It is the result of snobbery, elitism, class prejudices and ignorance.
Galina was constantly criticised by her enemies (and still is) from the self-appointed guardians of this fictitious invented tradition for her repertoire. And they had a point, logic triumphing over audience reaction and good sense. The category of the negative.
Galina has always stood against this category of the negative. She plays what she likes and what works for her audience with no regard for this stupid tradition. She is much closer to the tradition of Tarrega than Segovia ever was in that sense, I am sure that if flamenco music of the quality of Sabicas had been around when Tarrega had been alive he would have had a stab at it. In another sense she is close to Barrios too.
To call Galina a 'classical guitarist' is to put her in a category with people and attitudes where she does not belong or believe in. She has a strong sense of herself as someone who dares to do what is 'not allowed'. This not what the 'classical guitar' tradition is about.
She does come from a 'classical' tradition in the looser sense of education and background, but as a musician she is far more developed than any 'classical guitarist' I know of and she is continuing to develop.
There are very important reasons therefore why we do not want 'classical guitarist'!
Galina is a virtuoso guitarist. In the true sense of the word. Somehow I think Tarrega would have had more time for her than he would for any present-day Segovian disciple.
I hope you have a clearer understanding of this, Basilio. It's not simply a matter of semantics and personal dislike of the ridiculous prejudices Galina has often ended up confronting.
Music evolves, as it always has. The categorization of genres is breaking down increasingly with many modern performers from all kinds of musical backgrounds. Audiences are constantly changing as old prejudices disappear, social attitudes change in response to wider influences.
The fear and prejudices against popular culture in music which existed in the time of Segovia and formed middle class attitudes towards those cultural influences especially during the 1920's and 30's do not exist today. In fact the reverse is happening, witness the popularity of Buena Vista Social Club or Radio Tarifa for example. Performers from 'classical' backgrounds like the violinist Nigel Kennedy have been hugely successful pioneering new attitudes, in spite of negative press and comments from the tradionalists. Keith Jarrett is probably the most influential pianist of the 20th century, playing everything from Bach to his own improvisations which completely defy any attempt to categorize them with huge sell-out auditorium performances. And of course there is our hero Paco de Lucia.
Outside of Portugal, 'classical guitar' doesn't mean an instrument, it means a whole load of crap we don't need. There are flamenco guitarists in the pura tradition like Paco Pena who play guitars with pegs instead of machine heads and cypress instead of rosewood for the back and sides. They have a distinctive sound in one sense. But there are also flamenco players like Serranito who play guitars identical to Galina's instrument.
Actually, the only reason historically for the different origins of these distinctions had more to do with poverty. In Spain, many flamenco guitarists grew up too poor to afford expensive guitars built from rosewood with expensive hand-made (the only kind then available) machine heads. Pegs were cheaper, cypress wood too. The only true difference was the golpeador plate on the front. Galina has to have golpe plates on her guitar, but this doesn't mean it then becomes a flamenco guitar. Simply a guitar with a golpe plate!
We do not want to somehow do a Reconquista on the 'classical guitar', better to show it up for the meaningless nonsense it has become and leave it's disciples to their own devices, prejudices and anachronisms. It has outlived it's sell-by date, it puts us in a position of having to overcome too many obstacles, it's got absolutely nothing to offer positive that will assist Galina to build a career in the present climate.
I can see no objection to using guitarra classica in translation for the simple reason that in Portugal it means an instrument, although I still have some reservations about it. Pity we can't really use violao as in Brazil.
But elsewhere no dice. No violinist ever has to say 'classical violin' or pianist 'classical piano' unless they are being pompous. And that is how we end up by using it, even sillier when a considerable proportion of the repertoire Galina is playing is not classical in any sense.
So I can understand why you have been trying to use 'classical guitar' Basilio and perhaps thinking we had gone off the rails a bit with this. But it is important we do not use this terminology.
We need new audiences, not old middle class men in English suburbia nodding dotage and respectability or tight arsed American academics approving. They can't pay the mortgage even if they did decide Galina was the true successor to Segovia.
The further we get away from Classical Guitar the better, believe me.
Sorry for the lengthy but necessary essay, but I hope you will see we are not being perverse on the subject. Quite the opposite.
Best wishes, Colin
posted by Basilio Araujo @ 4:25 PM
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