Manuel Morais / Paulo Esteireiro
In May 2009, on the “35.ª Feira do Livro do Funchal”, (“35th Book Fair of Funchal”) we were able to acquire two madeiran 19th century manuscripts for classical guitar. These are two compilations bound in oblong format, where they were copied a diverse repertoire for classical guitar with six single strings. To facilitate their description, we’ll refer to them as Ms. 1 and Ms. 2.
In Ms. 1 was pasted on its cover a small label that reads: Musics for Classical Guitar / Belong of H. R. Teixeira. It consists of 22 sheets of good quality paper, which have been previously printed with ten staves per page. No date can be found in them, which forces us to collate some of the pieces annotated – at least by three copyists – with the 19th century repertoire available, both Portuguese and foreign for this chordophone, here also called french Guitar. Based on this, we tried to advance with a date for its copy. In its three first pages, we found six pieces that were copied from the Methodo para a Viola Franceza (Method for the french Classical Guitar), published in Oporto on mid-nineteenth century, by Manuel Nunes Aguedo (fl. 1856), but they are arrangements by João António Ribas (1799-1869)i. Three names were annotated in this collection, two string players of 19th century guitar, and the one of a portuguese composer also of this period. The first is famous Italian guitar player Giuliani (Mauro Giuliani, 1761- 1829), appointed author of a small Andantino. The second is M.[anuel] J.[oaquim] M.[onteiro] Cabral (fl. 1801-c.1860) from Funchal, guitar-machete player, collector of music from the earliest madeiran romances, as well as composer, represented by a Polka Mazurkaii. The last one, is the portuguese composer, F. [rancisco] A. [ntonio] N
Two Madeiran Manuscripts from the 19th Century for Classical Guitar” in Música para Viola
