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 O rd e r N u m b e r 9434737

The role of Andres Segovia in re-shaping the repertoire of the

classical guitar

Segal, Peter E., D.M.A.

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Temple University, 1994
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C opyright © 1 9 9 4 b y Segal, P eter E . A ll rights reserved.

300 N. Zeeb Rd.

Ann Arbor, MI 48106

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 The Role of Andres Segovia in

Re-shaping the Repertoire of the Classical Guitar

Peter E. Segal

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Read and Approved by:
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Date submitted to Graduate Board:

Accepted by the Graduate Board of Temple University in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of D octor of M usical A rts

Date: y - /r- m
Dean of Graduate School

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 THE ROLE OF ANDRES SEGOVIA IN

RE-SHAPING THE REPERTOIRE OF THE CLASSICAL GUITAR

A Monograph

Submitted to

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the Temple University Graduate Board
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in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

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DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS

by

Peter E. Segal

May, 1994

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©
by
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Peter E. Segal

1994
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All Rights Reserved

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 ABSTRACT

THE ROLE OF ANDRES SEGOVIA IN

RE-SHAPING THE REPERTOIRE OF THE CLASSICAL GUITAR

by Peter E. Segal

Doctor of Musical Arts

Temple University, 1994

Major Advisor: Dr. Mildred Parker

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Early in his career, Andres Segovia (1893-1987), a Spaniard who would

achieve unprecedented international stature as a classical guitarist, recog­

nized a need to enrich the repertoire of his instrum ent far beyond its state
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as of c.1920. One of the guitarist’s primary objectives throughout his career

was to encourage contemporary composers to create new works for the

guitar. Partly as a result of his initiatives, the twentieth century marks the
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first time in its history that works were being routinely composed for the

solo guitar by individuals who did not already play it.

This investigation ex am in e s the state of the guitar’s repertoire at the

start of Segovia’s career and follows this important guitarist’s influence on

the expansion of the literature. As a result of the lengthier and more

musically ambitious guitar works of Mexican composer Manuel Ponce, as

well as the almost constant presence of his music on Segovia’s recitals and

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 recordings, particular attention is devoted to the symbiotic relationship

between these two individuals. One, in the role of instrumental virtu­

oso/interpreter and the other, as composer/creator, contributed to the

process of "commissioning," composing, editing, performing, recording,

copying, and publishing musical compositions. As a result of Segovia’s

immense appetite for new repertoire, this process was repeated countless

times to the point th at the guitar’s literature would undergo a dramatic

change.

Segovia’s position as the pre-eminent guitarist of our century stands

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unchallenged. His role in the development of the literature for the instru­

ment is not without criticism, however. As an artist of international stature

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he had access to most of the major composers of the twentieth century. Yet,

his choice of which composers to solicit remains regrettably limited. Instead

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of aligning his and the guitar’s fortunes with Stravinsky, Milhaud, Ginaste-

ra, Britten, Bartok, or Prokofiev, he chose Tansman, Castelnuovo-Tedesco,

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Torroba, Turina, and Ponce. By any measure of artistic judgement, this

latter group of composers demonstrates th at Segovia was a world-class

performer with conservative musical tastes. Thus, despite his unflagging

energy and venerable concert career, his legacy on behalf of the classical

guitar repertoire falls lamentably short of his professed goals.

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This investigation would not be complete unless it recognized the

welcome contributions made by Temple University and several individuals.

The Graduate School of Temple University provided the necessary

assistance in the form of a University Fellowship which insured the comple­

tion of this program. I am especially thankful that they agreed to contract

Oscar Ghiglia as my major professor. Maestro Ghiglia is not only one of the

world’s preeminent guitarists and teachers, but as a reader of this mono­

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graph, he provided a unique perspective on the subject of this study.

Several other persons within the guitar community volunteered infor­

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mation which further enriched this project. Singer/guitarist Olga Coelho,

Segovia’s intimate companion from the mid 1940s to the mid 1950s, spoke
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candidly of their life together during that period. Rose Augustine, publisher

of the Guitar Review and president of Augustine Strings, was described by

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Segovia as the sister he never had. She, too, reflected on Segovia’s career

during the 1940s and 1950s when he lived in New York, keeping a room in

her home. American luthier Richard Schneider, who was in frequent contact

with Segovia concerning new methods of guitar construction, was most

generous in making a large collection of Segovia memorabilia available to

me.

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 I also wish to acknowledge the invaluable assistance given by Matanya

Ophee, president of Editions Orphee. In addition to sharing his enormous

collection of bibliographic materials, he read the manuscript at several

stages, offering suggestions along the way. I am indebted to Mr. Ophee and

Editions Orphee for their permission to quote liberally from The Segovia-

Ponce Letters.

I wish to thank the members of my doctoral committee, Professors

Helen Kwalwasser, Paul Epstein, and Richard Brodhead, who have been

most supportive while offering valuable insights. And I am deeply grateful

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th at Professor Mildred Parker agreed to serve as chair for my doctoral

committee. She has been generous with both her wisdom and her time. One
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could not have hoped for a more ideal mentor for this project.

Finally I wish to thank my wife, Concha Alborg, whose companionship

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has made a rich counterpoint to the solitary hours spent writing this mono­

graph.
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 To my parents,

Margaret B. and Alexander S. Segal

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT..................................................................................................... iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................. vi

INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................xi

CHAPTER

1. EXISTING STUDIES AND LITERATURE ON EARLY

TWENTIETH CENTURY GUITAR HISTORY AND
SEGOVIA IN PARTICULAR............................................................. 1

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Guitar H istories............................................................................... 1
The Segovia-Ponce Letters ............................................................. 3
Concert Reviews, Articles, Dedicated Journals,
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and Other Documents ................................................................. 4

2. GUITARISTS AND THEIR REPERTOIRE C. 1920 ...................... 6

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The School of Tarrega .................................................................... 6

Segovia’s Early R epertoire........................................................... 10
Commercially Available L iterature............................................. 12
Guitar Publishing c. 1920 ............................................................. 14
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3. A PROFILE OF SEGOVIA’S REPERTOIRE .............................. 18

4. THE COMPOSER/PERFORMER RELATIONSHIP................... 28

The Commission ..................................................................... 29

Fingering, Editing, and Other Considerations ......................... 34

5. SEGOVIA AND P O N C E ................................................................ 37

Concierto del S u r .......................................................................... 40

Apocryphal W o r k s ........................................................................ 45
Suites in the Baroque S ty le ........................................................ 47
Variations on Las Foltas de Espaha and F u g u e ....................... 52
S o n a ta s .................................... 60

ix

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 6. BEYOND PONCE 71

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco ......................................................... 73

Heitor Villa-Lobos ........................................................................ 75
Dismissed O p tio n s........................................................................ 80
Concluding Remarks .................................................................... 81

REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................. 88

APPENDIXES................................................................................................. 94

A. SELECTED CONCERT PROGRAMS ........................................... 94

B. SEGOVIA PRESENTS A NOVEL PROGRAM........................... 101

C. LETTER FROM SEGOVIA TO PONCE, JANUARY 1928 ------ 103

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 INTRODUCTION

The year 1993 marks the centenary of Andres Segovia’s birth. His name

has been identified with the guitar throughout most of our century. It is a

name that has been as close to the guitar as Pablo Casals’ is to the cello,

Wanda Landowska’s to the harpsichord, and Ravi Shankar’s to the sitar.

These performers are recognized not just for having excelled as interpreters,

but also for succeeding in many areas including technical innovation,

repertoire development, audience development, and even improved construc­

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tion methods for building their instruments. Surely Segovia’s achievement

embraces each of these accomplishments in no small measure.

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This study will concentrate on Segovia’s accomplishments in the devel­

opment of the guitar’s repertoire. And although his concert career lasted
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from 1909-1987, an astonishing 78 years, it is the period from 1923-47 that

will be examined here. These years encompass Segovia’s friendship and

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professional collaboration with Manuel Ponce, the Mexican composer whose

music formed the substance of Segovia’s recording and concert material.

During his lifetime, Segovia was most admired for his performances,

which introduced the guitar to more audiences than ever before. This was

possible as a result of an already large interest in the instrument through­

out Europe and the Americas. In Germany and Austria, as well as the

United States, there were guitar societies and journals, which attested to

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 the popularity of the classical instrument. But with the introduction of an

unparalleled virtuosity, thereby raising the expected standards of perfor­

mance, as well as highly personal interpretations, Segovia was able to

capitalize on the popularity of the guitar to create an unprecedented level of

interest in the instrument.

Andres Segovia’s lifelong ambition was to raise the public’s awareness

and appreciation of the classical guitar. To this end he made his influence

felt along several fronts, though none was as important to the future of the

instrument, he reasoned, as an enduring repertoire. Now, seven years after

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his death, Segovia’s reputation will inevitably begin to be re-evaluated.

Since he devoted so much energy toward raising the level of guitar litera­
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ture, it seems appropriate that a serious study be undertaken to examine

this particular area of Segovia’s contributions to the instrument. In a letter

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dated August 1956, he wrote to Castelnuovo-Tedesco:

This year in my classes [i.e., Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Siena,

Italy], I have good students who will continue playing your beauti­
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ful works after I’m gone. The guitar will not sink among the forgot­
ten novelties [of our age] and my work will not be lost.1

1 Corazon Otero, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: su vida y su obra para

guitarra (Mexico: Ediciones Musicales Yolotl, 1987), p. 122.

xii

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 CHAPTER 1

EXISTING STUDIES AND LITERATURE ON EARLY

TWENTIETH-CENTURY GUITAR HISOTRY
AND SEGOVIA IN PARTICULAR

Guitar H istories

With few exceptions,2 formal studies devoted to a complete history of

the guitar did not begin appearing until the 1960s and 70s.3 Like many

initial attempts at detailing a complete story, they were soon shown to be

incomplete as well as inaccurate. In 1970 Thomas Fitzsimmons Heck

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completed his study, The Birth o f the Classic Guitar and its Cultivation in

Vienna, Reflected in the Career and Compositions o f Mauro Giuliani (Yale

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University), applying a more academically rigorous standard toward the

investigation of the guitar’s past. Shortly thereafter, Harvey Turnbull

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published The Guitar from the Renaissance to the Present Day (New York,

1974), which soon established itself as a standard text on the history of the
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classical guitar. And while it could have profited from a thorough revision,

2 Some of the better known are: Philip J. Bone, The Guitar and Mando­
lin: Biographies o f Celebrated Players and Composers (London, 1914); Josef
Zuth, Handbuch der Laute und Gitarre (Vienna, 1926); Emilio Pujol, La
Guitare in Encyclopedie de la Musique et Dictionnaire du Conservatoire
(Paris, 1926); Domingo Prat, Diccionario biogrdfico, bibliogrdfico, histdrico,
critico de guitarras, guitarristas, guitarreros (Buenos Aires, 1934).

3 e.g., Frederic V. Grunfeld, The Art and Times o f the Guitar (London,
1969) and Alexander Bellow, The Illustrated History of the Guitar (New
York, 1970).

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 it instead fell out of print for approximately fifteen years until 1993, leaving

the guitar with no single-volume work endeavoring to fully explore its

past.4

A few contemporary studies on the repertoire of the guitar during the

early years of this century merit recognition. David Franklin Marriott, J r.’s

dissertation Contemporary Guitar Composition: Experimental and Function­

al Practices since the "Second Viennese School" (Ph.D. diss., University of

California, San Diego, 1984) is an examination of the uses of the guitar by

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composers with no close affiliation with guitarists of the so-called Spanish

School. John Schneider’s The Contemporary Guitar (Los Angeles, 1985)

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explores the use of the guitar in contemporary music with particular

attention to notation. Emilio Pujol’s Tdrrega: Ensayo biogrdfico (Valencia,

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1960) develops a portrait of th at guitarist and the guitar at the turn of the

twentieth century. And most recently, Richard D. Stover’s thorough study of

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the music and career of Paraguayan guitarist Agustin Barrios, Six Silver

Moonbeams (California, 1992), documents the repertoire of this and other

important guitarists traveling throughout Latin America during the early

decades of the century.

4 Recently, this work has been re-issued, although it is still awaiting

revision.

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 3
The Segovia-Ponce Letters

Andres Segovia, as a subject of academic inquiry, has not yet received

the attention he may gam er in the future. In one sense, however, time is

running out because many of those who knew him well during the earlier

decades of his career Eire themselves elderly. This study benefits from

interviews with several close friends and colleagues of the guitarist.

Recently, an even more candid, uncensored body of information con­

cerning this period came to light. It is in the form of 129 letters written by

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Segovia to Manuel M. Ponce covering the years 1923 to 1948. The Segovia-

Ponce Letters (ed. Miguel Alcazar and trans. Peter E. Segal) have been pub­
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lished in a bi-lingual edition (Spanish/English) by Editions Orphee (Colum­

bus, 1989). They begin somewh ,.t formally but soon become more relaxed,
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exposing a spontaneous portrait of Segovia, more intimate than anything

published about him before — or since. The final letter, written on May 18,
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1948, is addressed to Ponce’s widow, Clema, expressing the common grief

they shared when the composer died on April 24. Prior to this edition, these

letters had never been published in full, though small portions were ex­

cerpted in Corazon Otero’s Manuel M. Ponce and the Guitar (English ed.,

Great Britain, 1983). Although no letters from Ponce to Segovia have been

located, we do possess the works composed by the Mexican composer in

response to Segovia’s persistent requests for fresh repertoire. These works

must be perceived as Ponce’s "letters without words."

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 Segovia was a prolific letter writer not only to Ponce, but to other

composers as well. Otero’s study of the music of Castelnuovo-Tedesco con­

tains twenty letters (or portions thereof) from the guitarist to th at compos­

er. Like those to Ponce, Segovia’s letters convey a sense of timeless friend­

ship while offering suggestions for themes, forms, and motifs on which to

base future guitar works.

Concert Reviews, Articles, Dedicated Journals, and Other Docu­

ments

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Contemporaneous with the years which serve as the locus of this study

are articles written by guitar enthusiasts for such commercial journals as

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The Etude, The Crescendo, and The Chesterian. Many of the articles are

written in a fanciful, fairy-tale style, nonetheless containing much useful

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and apparently reliable information concerning who performed what works

and in what country.

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Guitar journals have been published throughout the twentieth century.

While appealing to the amateur musician, they help document who the

notable guitarists of the period were as well as what and where they

performed. The present study has found Die Gitarre (Germany, 1919-1933)

and early editions of The Guitar Review (New York, Oct. 1946-present) and

The Guitar News (Great Britain, 1951-1973) to be especially useful.

Of great interest, too, are the concert reviews, discography, and publishing

activities of the seemingly indefatigable Andres Segovia, as well as his

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 5
anecdotal Andr6s Segovia: an autobiography of the years 1893-1920 (New

York, 1976).5

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5 Portions were previously published in The Guitar Review 4, 6, 7, 8, 10,

and 13 (New York: 1947-1952).

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 6

CHAPTER 2

GUITARISTS AND THEIR REPERTOIRE, C.1920

The guitar in the early twentieth century held great appeal throughout

Europe and the Americas. There were active guitar societies in most

countries where amateurs and professionals alike performed. And while

Spain was not the only country to produce performers, it did boast a collec­

tion of virtuosos such as Tarrega, Llobet, Pujol, Areas, and Manjon who

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gained international recognition for their recitals. This only reinforced

Spain’s reputation as being the major center of guitar performance.

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These virtuosos’ repertoire can be roughly divided into three areas:

works written by guitarist/composers (whose principal endeavors are in the

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area of performance), transcriptions, and works composed by contemporary

composers.
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The School of Tarrega

To understand Segovia’s approach to concert program min g one m ust

first examine his immediate predecessors’ and contemporaries’ concert

repertoire. The year of Segovia’s baptism into concert life (1909) poignantly

marks the death of Francisco Tarrega (b. 1852). This important guitar­

ist/composer has been much praised by his well-known pupils Miguel

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 7
Llobet (1878-1937) and Emilio Pujol (1886-1980).6 Tarrega’s extensive list of

publications shows considerable interest in transcriptions as well as original

compositions (most of which remain in print) — single-movement works

generally not lasting longer than three to four minutes. Examples of his

concert programming demonstrate the same interests (see Appendix A for

an example of one of his programs). Any concern Tarrega may have had for

the music of earlier guitar masters is nowhere demonstrated, nor is there

any apparent curiosity for the music of his contemporaries in the guitar

world.
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Miguel Llobet, a performer of considerable reputation who toured

Europe, North, and South America extensively, exhibited similar preferenc­

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es in his concert/publishing/recording activities. Although his compositions
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indicate an awareness of Impressionistic techniques, they are nonetheless,

little more than attractive, undeveloped miniatures (see Appendix A for an

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example of his concert programming).7

The past held little interest for most of the Spanish guitarists during

the first decades of the twentieth-century, despite the large repertoire of

solo works by such historical figures as Fernando Sor, Mauro Giuliani,

Dionisio Aguado, Napoleon Coste, Johann Kaspar Mertz, Giulio Regondi,

6 Pujol’s guitar method, La escuela razonada (Buenos Aires: 1934-1971),

professes to based on "the principles of Tarrega."

7 An exception to this is the Variaciones sobre un tema de Sor, Op. 15,

composed in 1908.

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