Andrés Segovia

Andrés Segovia Torres, 1st Marquis of Salobreña (21 February 1893 – 2 June 1987), was a Spanish virtuoso classical guitarist. Many professional classical guitarists were either students of Segovia or students of Segovia's students.

Segovia's contribution to the modern-romantic repertoire included not only commissions but also his own transcriptions of classical or baroque works. He is remembered for his expressive performances: his wide palette of tone, and his distinctive musical personality, phrasing and style.

Segovia was born on 21 February 1893 in Linares, Jaén. He was sent at a very young age to live with his uncle Eduardo and aunt María. Eduardo arranged for Segovia's first music lessons with a violin teacher after he had recognised that Segovia had an aptitude for music. That proved to be an unhappy introduction to music for the young Segovia because of the teacher's strict methods, and Eduardo stopped the lessons. His uncle decided to move to Granada to allow Segovia to obtain a better education. After arriving in Granada, Segovia recommenced his musical studies. Segovia was aware of flamenco during his formative years as a musician but stated that he "did not have a taste" for the form and chose instead the works of Fernando Sor, Francisco Tárrega, and other classical composers. Tárrega agreed to give the self-taught Segovia some lessons but died before they could meet, and Segovia states that his early musical education involved the "double function of professor and pupil in the same body".

Segovia's first public performance was in Granada at the age of 16 in 1909. A few years later he played his first professional concert in Madrid, which included works by Francisco Tárrega and his own guitar transcriptions of Johann Sebastian Bach. Despite the discouragement of his family, who wanted him to become a lawyer, and criticism by some of Tárrega's pupils for his idiosyncratic technique, he continued to pursue his studies of the guitar diligently.

He played again in Madrid in 1912, at the Paris Conservatory in 1915 and in Barcelona in 1916 and made a successful tour of South America in 1919. Segovia's arrival on the international stage coincided with a time when the guitar's fortunes as a concert instrument were being revived, largely through the efforts of Miguel Llobet. It was in that changing milieu that Segovia, thanks to his strength of personality and artistry, coupled with developments in recording and broadcasting, succeeded in making the guitar more popular again.

In 1921 in Paris, Segovia met Alexandre Tansman, who later wrote a number of guitar works for Segovia, among them Cavatina, which won a prize at the Siena International Composition contest in 1952. In 1921, he also met Agustín Barrios in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Segovia was impressed by Barrios's Bach-inspired and arguably magnum opus La Catedral.

At Granada in 1922, he became associated with the Concurso de Cante Jondo, promoted by the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. The aim of the "classicising" Concurso was to preserve flamenco in its purity from being distorted by modern popular music. Segovia had already developed as a fine tocador of flamenco guitar, yet his direction was now classical. Invited to open the Concurso held at the Alhambra, he played Homenaje a Debussy by Falla.

In 1923, Segovia visited Mexico for the first time. There Manuel Ponce was so impressed with the concert that he wrote a review in El Universal. Later Ponce went on to write many works for Segovia, including numerous sonatas.

The right hand is responsible for the guitar's musical sound and so in examining the technique, the way the right hand is placed in relation to the strings is most important. For several years, it was thought among the guitar community that Segovia plucked the strings with a combination of fingertip and nail, as stated by Christopher Parkening, but Segovia plucked the strings only with the nails. When asked which technique he used, he replied that it was "the only one there is: nails. Because they bring timbre differences and colour variation and give sonorous volume to the guitar." His right hand was placed so that the nails were perpendicular to the strings. That way, the nail alone would press the string. At the same time, it was thought that was the only way to avoid unpleasant noise coming from the low strings (E, A and D) of the guitar when they were plucked.

In spite of his technique, and largely because of the flexibility that he had in his thumb, Segovia was able to create a very strong and voluminous sound in the bass notes.

Another innovation that separated Segovia from the Tárrega school was the search for the tension in the strings by placing his right hand further to the right side. That way, he could obtain colour variation but also an especially strong, round and voluminous sound, which was very helpful for giving concerts in big halls (the technique was later used by Narciso Yepes). Before Segovia, guitarists from the Tárrega school played the guitar with the hand right over the soundhole and thus created a mellow sound but could not fill the whole space of a large concert hall.

After World War II, Segovia became among the first to endorse nylon strings, instead of catgut strings. That advancement allowed for greater tonal stability and was the final ingredient in the standardization of the instrument.

Segovia's repertoire consisted of three principal pillars: first, contemporary works, including concertos and sonatas, usually specifically written for Segovia himself by composers with whom he forged working relationships, notably Federico Moreno Torroba, Federico Mompou, and Joaquín Rodrigo, the Mexican composer Manuel Ponce, the Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and the great Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos; second, transcriptions, usually made by Segovia himself, of classical works originally written for other instruments (e.g., lute, harpsichord, piano, violin, cello) by Johann Sebastian Bach, Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, and many other prominent composers; third, traditional classical guitar works by composers such as Fernando Sor and Francisco Tárrega. Segovia's influence enlarged the repertoire, mainly as a commissioner or dedicatee of new works, as a transcriber, and as a composer with such works as his Estudio sin luz.

Segovia's main musical aesthetic preferences were music of the early 20th century (and turn of the century) especially in the Spanish romantic-modern and nationalist style. That is perhaps best typified by Segovia's own work Estudio sin Luz. Many works of that and similar styles were written especially for him and formed part of his core repertoire: particularly the guitar works of Federico Moreno Torroba (1891–1982), such as the Sonatina, which was first performed by Segovia in Paris in 1925.

Segovia was selective and performed only works with which he identified personally. He was known to reject atonal works or those that he considered too radical even if they were dedicated to him; he rejected Frank Martin's Quatre pièces brèves, Darius Milhaud's Segoviana, etc. Even though rejected by Segovia, all of those works are today published and available.

Segovia viewed teaching as vital to his mission of propagating the guitar and gave master classes throughout his career. His most famous master classes took place at Música en Compostela, in the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela. In 1964 Segovia gave his first master class at the University of California, Berkeley, from 20 July to 14 August. The selected performers on the course (necessarily under 30 years old on 1 July to be eligible ) were Guillermo Fierens (Argentina), Oscar Ghiglia, Aldo Minella (Italy), Michael Lorimer, Ako Ito, Christopher Parkening, George Sakellariou , Lisa Hurlong, Corrado Mezzina (USA), Luis Felipe Chavarría and Leticia Alba (Mexico).

Segovia also taught at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena for numerous years, where he was aided by Alirio Díaz.

His teaching style is a source of controversy among some of his former students, who considered it to be dogmatically authoritarian. One of Segovia's most celebrated former students of the classical guitar, John Williams, has said that Segovia bullied students into playing only his style and stifled the development of their own styles. Williams has also said that Segovia was dismissive of music that did not have what Segovia considered the correct classical origins, such as South American music with popular roots. He was also critical of Williams' work with the group Sky for the same reasons.

Segovia can be considered a catalytic figure in granting respectability to the guitar as a serious concert instrument capable of evocativeness and depth of interpretation. Federico Moreno Torroba said, "The musical interpreter who fascinates me the most is Andrés Segovia." He can be credited to have dignified the classical guitar as a legitimate concert instrument before the discerning music public, which had hitherto viewed the guitar merely as a limited if sonorous parlour instrument.

In Linares, the Segovia Museum "Fundación Andrés Segovia" was established in May 1995, and Linares (Segovia's birthplace) also has a bronze statue in his honour, created by Julio López Hernández and unveiled on 25 May 1984.

Segovia influenced a generation of classical guitarists who built on his technique and musical sensibility, including Christopher Parkening, Julian Bream, John Williams and Oscar Ghiglia, all of whom have acknowledged their debt to him. Further, Segovia left behind a large body of edited works and transcriptions for classical guitar, including several transcriptions of Bach, particularly an extraordinarily-demanding classical guitar transcription of the Chaconne from the 2nd Partita for Violin (BWV 1004). During his lifetime, guitarists were eager to claim association with Segovia, who suggested that he had not actually taught as many students as has been claimed. He once said, "All over the world I have 'pupils' I have never met."

His editions of works originally written for guitar include newly-fingered and occasionally-revised versions of works from the standard repertoire (most famously, his edition of a selection of twenty estudios by Fernando Sor, the "cornerstone" of every serious student's technique since its publication in 1945 although somewhat ironically, Segovia, in the preface to that work, disparaged Sor as "not among the vigorous talents") as well as compositions written for him, including by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Federico Mompou, and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

The main-belt asteroid 3822 Segovia was named in his memory in 1989.

A competition co-sponsored by the European Guitar Teachers Association is named after Segovia.

Segovia was awarded many prizes and honours, including doctorates honoris causa, from ten universities. On 24 June 1981, he was ennobled by King Juan Carlos I, who gave Segovia the hereditary title of Marqués de Salobreña (English: Marquis of Salobreña) in the nobility of Spain in recognition of his contributions to music and the arts. He received the Danish Sonning Award in 1974, the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 1985, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986.

Segovia's first wife was Adelaida Portillo (marriage in 1918). Segovia's second wife (marriage in 1935) was the pianist Paquita Madriguera, who also made some piano roll recordings. From 1944, he maintained a romantic relationship with Brazilian singer and guitarist Olga Praguer Coelho, which was to last for over a decade. In 1962 Segovia married Emilia Magdalena Corral Sancho. They had one son, Carlos Andrés Segovia, the current Marquis of Salobreña.

Recordando a Deli - Estudio para sus deditos inteligentes (1960)

II. Humorada (composed by Paquita Madriguera)

Preludio n. 6 - Preludio en si menor (1959)

Preludio n. 7 - Preludio madrileño (1936)

Preludio n. 8 - Preludio sobre un tema de Aparicio Méndez (1962)