Their place in the four-volume "Escuela Razonada de la Guitarra" and the teacher/author/composer/performer's body of work
By Steven Rosenberg
[email protected]
Emilio Pujol |
Volume 4 of Emilio Pujol's "Escuela Razonada de la Guitarra" — called el cuatro libro in Pujol's prefecio to the Spanish/French edition of his detailed 20th century guitar method — is less well-known in the English-speaking world because it was not part of the three-volume Editions Orphée English translation known as "Guitar School."
But Volume 4 is full of technical exercises and instructions — rendered in Spanish and French, of course. As with volumes 2 and 3, libro quartro ends with a number of studies. Meant to reinforce various aspects of classical guitar technique, these selections are very musical — and surprisingly modern at times.
While el segundo libro and el tercero libro both contain studies grouped together at the end of their respective volumes, Pujol makes a departure in el cuatro libro, tying a number of estudios together in the form of a theme and variations.
Volume 4 offers the short Exercise 19 from the influential guitar method by 19th-century giant Dionisio Aguado and follows it with Estudios LIV through LXX, 17 variations — the final one a fugue — composed by Pujol. Each variation focuses on different guitar techniques while at the same time venturing into harmonic territory that is very much of Pujol's time, the later Romantic and early modern periods of classical music.
In this essay I will attempt to place the Aguado exercise and the Pujol variations into some kind of context within the canon of guitar methods, running from those of Fernando Sor, Aguado and Matteo Carcassi through Pujol's own comprehensive yet overlooked four-volume method.
Click the image above for a YouTube video of Frank Bungarten playing the Aguado exercise and Pujol variations. The video's description doesn't say anything about Pujol, so this is quite a find. Bungarten also recorded the Aguado study and Pujol variations for an MDG CD of Pujol studies using a 2018 Gary Southwell guitar modeled after an 1883 Antonio de Torres. The recording is also available on Spotify. Also: Frank Bungarten's web site.
Looming over the literature and performance of the classical guitar from the late 19th century into the 20th were several prominent figures, including Francisco Tárrega, who nearly single-handedly dragged the guitar into the Romantic period through his teaching, compositions and transcriptions. Tárrega is regarded as the modern father of the guitar. The School of Tárrega, as his unwritten method and the followers of it are known, provided the inspiration — always prominently credited — for the methods written by Pujol, Pascual Roch and Julio Sagreras.
The other giant of the classical guitar, Andres Segovia, took the instrument to heights no one had reached before or since. Segovia praises Tárrega as the father of the modern guitar but sticks to the Segovia origin story of being almost entirely self-taught.
As bona fide students of Tárrega, guitarists Miguel Llobet and Pujol toured the world, but neither maintained the performance schedule and relentless ability to promote himself and his instrument that characterized Segovia during his long career.
Segovia commissioned hundreds of original works for the guitar, composed a few of his own, and issued a decent number of editions of works by famous composers. Many of those Segovia-edited works consist of studies and etudes, among them a heavily used edition of Sor studies first published in 1945, according to Guitar Salon International. Yet aside from his famous (and famously short) editions of major and minor scales and slur studies, Segovia never put together his own guitar method.
Pujol was also a prolific composer for the guitar. Not only did he pack the four volumes of "Escuela Razonada" with studies, many of them performance-worthy, but he also published 245 compositions and transcriptions for Paris publisher Max Eschig and more than 40 for Argentina's Ricordi Americana, the publisher of the Spanish/French "Escuela." (Information from the back cover of "Guitar School: Book One" from Editions Orphée)
Mentioned in the prefacio of Volume 4 is a planned but never published "el quinto libro," covering (rough translation from the Spanish is mine) interpretation, transcription, composition, pedagogy, esthetics (??) and ethics of the guitar.
These chapters/essays are part of the project:
Emilio Pujol's 'Escuela Razonada de La Guitarra,' 4 volumes in Spanish and French
Pujol's 'Guitar School,' 3 volumes in English
The Aguado study and 17 variations
Volume 4 of Pujol's 'Escuela Razonada de La Guitarra'
A 701-page doctoral dissertation on Emilio Pujol from 2010. In Spanish.
Upcoming:
Emilio Pujol Vilarrubí
Francisco Tárrega
Miguel Llobet Solés
Ronald Purcell
Emilio Pujol: Estudios. CD. Frank Bungarten, guitarist. MDG Gold. Available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Estudios-Frank-Bungarten/dp/B07ZW98N4F Also available on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/3AemhWycukvuac22AGO4tf
Frank Bungarten plays the Dionosio Aguado exercise and Emilio Pujol's variations at the University of Louisville in 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxC5-mW5MVQ
Twenty Studies for the Guitar by Fernando Sor, edited by Andres Segovia. Hal Leonard. Available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-studies-guitar-Andres-Segovia/dp/0793543681. From Guitar Salon International: https://www.guitarsalon.com/store/p2807-fernando-sor-twenty-studies-wonline-audio.html
This work is available via GitHub under a Creative Commons license that precludes republishing without attribution and for commercial use.
If you would like me to write something for publication, contact me at [email protected].