Wayne closed down the 'early guitar' discussion list. Reasonably enough:
there was no discussion and it wasn't really about the early guitar, but
the nineteenth century guitar.
So I think this vihuela list has to be the place for little forays into
the 19th century. Anyway I've been looking at some music for an
instrument simply known as 'seven string guitar' but written like
this:семиструнная гитара and better known to non-Russians as the
'Russian' guitar and tuned to a G major chord.
There are quite a few videos for the instrument on youtube. Mostly they
are gypsy things: very fast and flashy or Russian variation-sets, also
very fast and flashy. Big, fast, loud, assertive, very technically
proficient performances. So I thought it would be interesting to put up
a couple of pieces that are not any of these!
Here are two little pieces (amateur performances)
1) (so the music says) a Romance, arranged by V.Sarenko
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJtrsfN78dY
2) Not knowing Russian beyond the alpahbet I have no idea what this is
called. But it's a little tune with two variations. Sychra wrote
variation sets which are very challenging but this is an easy one.
Still, it's challenging enough for me. I think they had a lot of time on
their hands back in the day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcZor6IZJag
(the Sarenko piece is an oddity. It doesn't sound like other 'Romances'
and it doesn't seem much like other pieces by Sarenko and it's not in
the (can't remember the spelling) Stellowsky (or however as it is
rendered in English) catalogue. It doesn't go higher than the fourth
fret. Sarenko wrote a 'romance without words' (if I've got that right)
but that Romance has a gliss up to the twelfth fret in the very first
bar and it has harmonics and it's not at all like this little 'Romance'.
On the other hand, this little 'Romance' although it's not flashy it's
so spare, it's really difficult to play.)
Stuart
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