Children's Theatre: The History of the Guitar
The contribution of our youngest guitarists was a new item in the festival. One would expect that this would boil down to a stage cramped with eager guitarists who would play some fourty part pieces (after trying to get 40 guitars in tune). It appeared to be a better concept indeed!
Bobby and Sanna are quite experienced in merging music and theatre, which they repeatedly demonstrated in the festivals of the past. This year they decided to write history on stage together with a lot of children.
The history of the guitar, to be specific.
The full programme lasted the full day. Getting acquainted in the morning, an explanation of the plans, working on stage presentation and as a conclusion the lunch concert by Matthew McAllister. After the concert there was the rehearsal of the script -the Guitar from Stone Age up till Now- and finally the presentation on stage before a live audience.
I decided to take a look during the day. Quickly it became obvious that Bobby and Sanna were doing a good job. Not only helping the kids to learn their parts, but also picking up playful and adventurous youngsters from the orchestra pit and the balconies. They did it with a good laugh, witticism, at times a admonishing word and even a completely justified reprimand in private on the corridor outside the hall.
They succeeded in stimulating the kid’s improvisation talents! In this way it became clear to me why Francisco Tarrega had become a guitar composer rather than a direct colleague of Granados and Albeniz, both well-known pianists from the Spanish School movement. Why? Well, the poor half blind Tarrega could not discriminate the black and white keys on the keyboard and consequently failed his entrance exam on the piano. On the guitar he succeeded, because the fingerboard is all black (provided you have it in ebony).
One of the kids played Tarrega with dark glasses. I must admit it reminded me more of Jose Feliciano.
The history of the guitar started in the Stone Age. The not yet very smart Homo Sapiens learned to drum rhythms and dance around the camp fire. Then someone invented bow and arrows. What is one of the major parts of a bow? Yes, a string which sounds poiiiing as soon as you shoot. It sounded the archer like music in his ears. Thus the first stringed instruments were invented, to be bowed or plucked.
History proceeded and the Renaissance emerged. The lute of John Dowland brought the artistic music on strung instruments on a high level. Dowland’s compositions found their way to many musical collections all over Europe and quite a lot of fellow composers ‘borrowed’ his themes for their own works. Nowadays that is quite impossible with all the copyrights. In those days the ASCAP did not exist and many composers felt honoured if they were ‘copied’. Now the marketeers of the music industry already start to sue you if the chord pattern remotely resembles the one of ‘their’ songs.
The lute appeared to be a less practical instrument to carry around the world and it was hard to play, so the guitar emerged as a more portable and playable alternative. In the nineteenth century the luthier Jose Torres designed the guitar as we know it today, which inspired Francisco Tarrega to compose and play a new type of repertoire in which he also integrated elemenys from the Flamenco, like the tremolo.
Finally it became Andres Segovia who brought the (classical) guitar on the world stages with both original works or transcriptions of well-known composers.
Playing music is one thing, but this does not build a large repertoire per se. That requires famous composers who are popular with the audiences. Unfortunately this was quite a problem, in Tarrega’s time and beyond.
In the beginning of the century the Brasilian Heitor Villa Lobos changed this a little. Besides a vast repertoire of piano and orchestral music, he composed for the guitar world his preludes, etudes and choros which you can hear on many records and stages. Many composers would follow his example.
That was the story. As soon as it had to be rehearsed on stage for real, the children became very concentrated and nobody attempted to climb the curtains of the stage again.
Finally the children played the story for the live audience. They played some pieces themselves and were assisted on strings by Matthew McAllister and Edsart Udo de Haes. Kids and grown-ups got an enthusiastic applause!
Possibly this interesting experience will yield some guitaristic stage tigers in the future! Guitar Heroes to be, maybe?