Fantasia for Guitar - Robert Gerhard (Score)

https://www.patreon.com/classicalmusicanalysis Score of Robert Gerhard's "Fantasia for Guitar", written in 1957 and published in 1964 by Mills Music Ltd. Gerhard was a Catalan composer born in 1896 in Valls, near Tarragona. His life was characterized by an interesting mix of different geographical residencies and origins: his father was Swiss and his mother was Alsatian, and he lived in Barcelona, Vienna, Berlin, Paris and Cambridge, having to flee from all of these cities and go into exile as they were all attacked during either WWI, WWII or the Spanish Civil War. But he remained true to his roots, as he "never stopped feeling deeply linked to the Catalan cultural climate" (written in one of his letters), a culture which was systematically repressed and censored during the Francoist regime - that's why his works, considered too avant-garde and experimental, didn't have any kind of support or visibility in Spain during his lifetime whatsoever, as was common in fascist and/or totalitarian states (Germany/Hitler, Italy/Mussolini, URSS/Stalin...). He studied composition with Arnold Schönberg and befriended Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and he was deeply inspired by their new musical language and dodecaphonic techniques, although he saw them as interesting stylistic approaches to his music rather than treating them in a very strict way. "Fantasia for Guitar" is a special piece, as it's his only solo guitar piece and one of his only compositions that alludes to the stereotypical hispanic sonority, which he wasn't quite fond of: it begins with the spaniard-playing-the-guitar-calmly-and-introspectively-bathed-in-moonlight cliché we all know so well, but he slowly breaks it down and moves to a peculiar B section in which an andalusian fandango or flamenco rhythm is stripped of its harmonic and tonal content, turning it into a mere rhythmic pattern. Performer: Sanel Redzic (/watch/)oa7XkAzsZNJs7

الفئة