Stanley Yates
(…While we may also acknowledge that the guitar, with its technical idiosyncrasies and relatively limited dynamic range, is perhaps not the most facile instrument upon which to express detailed dynamic nuance,1 this is all the more reason that musical expression be a central aspect of our pedagogy. With this in mind, I would like us to take another look at one of the major study sets of the nineteenth-century guitar repertoire, a publication that, unusual in the didactic repertoire for the guitar, contains copious detail of marked expression—Matteo Carcassi’s 25 Études Mélodiques, Op. 60 (1836). Despite the fact that this study set (which serves as an addendum to the composer’s Methode Complète pour la Guitare, Op. 59) has been reprinted many times over through to the present day, and that there can hardly be a guitarist who is unfamiliar with it, I feel there still exists a basic misunderstanding regarding the fundamental aim of the collection and, therefore, a missed pedagogical opportunity…)
Expressing Ourselves: Another Look at an Archetypical Nineteenth-Century Guitar Study Set—Carcassi Op. 60
