Francisco Guerau

Poema Harmonico was published in Spain in 1694. To put that in context, the first Baroque guitar treatise, by Juan Carlos Amat, was published in 1596. Gaspar Sanz's well-known work, "Instruccion de musica" appeared in 1674. Santiago de Murcia's two large manuscripts came very late in the game, 1732.

Guerau's title page reads as follows:

 
That starts off, "Harmonic Poem, comprising tablature for the Spanish Guitar," followed by the obligatory fawning of the age.

I encourage you to track down a facsimile copy of Poema Harmonico. Mine was published by Tecla Editions (1977) and has an introduction and English translation by Brian Jeffery. Everything you need to play the music is here, but even if you never actually play from a facsimile, just looking it over and comparing a few bars here and there with the modern tablature should bring you a lot closer to Guerau.

GUERAU'S TUNING: Gueraus' five-course guitar was tuned like the top 5 strings of the modern guitar, A d g b e', with high octaves on the A and d and unisons on the g and b, yielding Aa dd' gg bb e' (or maybe doubled e').

Some Baroque guitar composers made melodic use of the high octaves on the 5th and 4th course. They were used for melody notes in passages called campanelas, where notes of a scale are gotten by jumping back and forth between strings on different sides of the fingerboard.

Since Francisco Guerau did not write campanelas passages, his music works quite well played directly on a modern guitar. But there are spots where adding the octave above the 5th or 4th string note may improve the texture or help the melody. This is usually very easily done. See the "red note" version of the Villano (fg40). Of course, you might add more, or fewer, notes than I did.

GUERAU'S TABLATURE: Guerau's tablature was "upside-down" relative to what modern guitarists are used to. His top-most line in the tablature staff represents what we call the 5th-string ("low A"). The modern tablature flips Guerau's staff, the top-most space representing our 1st-string ("high E").

RHYTHM VALUES: In ancient tablature, a rhythm symbol is shown only where the next, new rhythm value appears. For the modern musician's reading comfort, I provide complete, running rhythmic information.

GUERAU'S ORNAMENTS: Francisco Guerau notated three different ornaments: % for a trill; ) for a mordent, and # for vibrato. He placed these symbols behind the note (i.e., fret number) they acted on.

In this modern tablature, I use symbols which suggest twiddles from above or below, and I put them in front of the fret number. My ornament notation is not 100% consistent. I was still finding my way producing tablature, and the computer-generated tab, the ASCII character tab, and my handwritten touches yielded different possibilities to experiment with. But there should be no problem interpreting the ornament symbols.

A symbol at the HEAD of a fret number means trill (multiple twiddles from above.) You will find a raised ~ or a " .

A symbol at the FOOT of a fret number means mordent (main note, lower neighbor, and back up.) You will find a lowered "^" or a hand-drawn shallow bowl (u) or a comma "," .

# = vibrato.

Guerau says, "The most beautiful thing of all is a continuous series of trills, mordents, slurs and arpeggios," and calls the ornaments "the soul of the music." But, if you can't play them, leave them out. "They are not an inviolable law." (Translations by Brian Jeffery.) Where a shorter note calls for a trill, I generally find an inverted mordent (main note, upper neighbor, back down) works fine.

STRUMS: While Baroque guitar music is famous for its strumming, Francisco Guerau makes very modest use of this effect. The arrowheads show the direction of the strum.

RIGHT-HAND TECHNIQUE: Francisco Guerau says to alternate i and m on descending passages down to string 4, and then use the thumb. On ascending passages, use the thumb up to the 2nd string, and then alternate i and m from there on up.

FINAL MEASURE: For all of the passacalles and some of the dances, you'll find that Guerau did not write the last measure. I just end the piece on the same chord it started with, but maybe he's inviting you to end with a flourish?

MY FAVORITES: In Baroque guitar books, passacalles often make up the bulk of the work. However, the passacalles are almost completely ignored nowadays. Editors and performers generally go for the little dance hits. For what it's worth, here are some of my favorite passacalles by Guerau: fg1, fg11, fg12, fg16, fg17, fg18, fg19, fg20, fg21, fg22, fg23, fg25, fg26 and fg28.

And don't laugh, but a few of them remind me of J. S. Bach (who would have been about 9 when the Poeme Harmonico appeared.) Check out Passacalles fg07, fg17, fg18. Passacalles fg04 and fg10 brings the famous Chaconne to my mind.

COPYRIGHT: This work may be copied freely by anybody. Help yourself.

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