Biography
Eduard Bayer (1822-1908) was a German composer and player of the guitar, harp, mandolin, and zither.
Bayer was born in Augsburg; his father died when he was still a child. In his youth, a city official encouraged him to play the guitar, supplying him with teaching materials and sheet music by renowned classical composers. Bayer proved to be an excellent self-taught musician and gave up his job at a printing house to teach and tour with the guitar.
After many setbacks, his first tour ultimately proved successful. Just before he was about to return home, disillusioned, he attracted the attention of a daughter of the Bavarian King Ludwig II (“Mad Ludwig,” known for his Neuschwanstein Castle). This earned Bayer favourable reviews and fame. He subsequently performed in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland.
Under the pseudonym A. Caroli, he published a guitar method and two volumes of musical score titled Esmeralda. Further, he composed primarily educational materials and pieces for the domestic market. Consequently, his publications include many arrangements of opera music and folk songs that were popular in his time.
Music
According to the title page, the two Esmeralda volumes contain beloved and easy-to-play melodies. Both volumes include around eighty short pieces of increasing difficulty. Some are Bayer’s own compositions, some are arrangements of folk and opera music, and others are “borrowed pieces” from Carulli, Giuliani, Carcassi, and other composers.
The concept of Esmeralda bears a strong resemblance to the one of the Musikalische Rundschau by Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806–1856); this work also features arrangements of popular melodies and well-known opera excerpts. However, Mertz had a slightly more skilled audience in mind. Esmeralda is better suited for beginners, partly because the bass lines can be played using open strings (E, A, D) very often. Furthermore, the arrangements are less complex and more focused on the well-known melody fragments. Sometimes that is a disadvantage, because you get the feeling that you are playing an incomplete piece.
I’ve set all the pieces in the standard guitar tuning EADGBE. There are a few pieces with exotic tunings that require detuning of multiple strings. I’ve omitted these for practical reasons. Furthermore, I encountered several typographical errors, which I corrected as best I could by ear.
Eighty pieces in a single document is a bit much. Therefore, I’ve divided the volumes into 7 parts: Band 1 has 1A – 1C, Band 2 has 2A – 2D.