From: ihrj@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical.guitar
Subject: Re: Performance precedents
Date: 25 Jan 93 15:26:05 EST
Followup-To: rec.music.classical.guitar
Distribution: rec
Organization: Cornell University

In article <basinski-230193125407@lully.biosci.arizona.edu>,
basinski@biosci.arizona.edu (Mark Basinski) writes: 
> In article <1993Jan22.175947.7774@cerritos.edu>, radams@cerritos.edu wrote:

>   This is a very insightful point. While Segovia is owed vast homage for
> his work to revive the guitar and for his beautiful playing, some
> unfortunate
> parts of his legacy are the "you must do things the way I do them" approach
> to teaching and the numerous recordings of various pieces in which "his
> way", though beautiful sounding on the guitar, was not at all what the 
> composer intended.

It's interesting you should mention this. I was reading the latest issue
of Guitar Review, which includes the first part of an interview with John
Williams. Williams brings up much the same thing you've mentioned. He says,
and I paraphrase, that in retrospect Segovia did him, and his other students,
more harm than good. He rarely gave any indication of the broad intent of a
piece, or how to approach it. Instead he would give you isolated bits of
fingering, a couple of ideas on rubato or phrasing and smile congenially
if you imitated what he did. Williams does say, however, that Segovia was
genuinely fond of his students and tried to help them along with their
careers. Again, from what JW says, some of that help was unsolicited and
counterproductive. He gives the example of Segovia's encomium calling him 
the "prince of the guitar" (leaving little doubt as to who Segovia thought
was the king), which apparently JW has tried unsuccesfully to stop the use of
(by publicity people and the like).

My own guitar teacher studied with Jose Tomas (who along with Williams,
Ghiglia and Diaz were Segovia's proteges in the '50's), and he reinforces
the above impressions of Segovia's behaviour and teaching. He tells me that
when he studied in Spain, there was a lot of "this is how Maestro plays it,
and hence this is how you should play it" going around.

>    Due to the former, there was a whole generation of students (of Segovia)
> who either were totally into everything he did (though at times the attempt
> to 
> imitate was not the same thing as drawing upon a genuine artistic vision,
> and sometimes resulted in performances that utterly lacked Segovia's
> brilliance), or there were those who rebelled strongly against Segovia and
> though these teachers and performers often were successful in developing
> their own artistic and musical vision, they tended to disparage everything
> about Segovia, which is a shame. I studied extensively with 2 teachers that
> fit into the latter category, Jose Tomas and Abel Carlevaro. I doubt anyone
> spent more time with Segovia than either of them, yet they both tended to 
> speak of Segovia, when they spoke of him at all, as an example of lack of
> concern for the composers intentions; not strictly fair.

Another person who has an obvious dislike for Segovia is Shearer. This is
entirely second hand and speculative, because I have never met Aaron Shearer,
but I did read a newspaper feature on him once, while I was in Raleigh, NC,
and my teacher there was one of Shearer's students. From what I understand,
Segovia was very dismissive of Shearer's pedagogical efforts. However, the
downside of this is that Shearer's student (my former teacher) would dismiss
Segovia as a terrible player, not worth listening to, etc. Since all I had
at that time were recordings of Segovia from the 50's and 60's, I tended to
agree with him. Of course the thing to do is to get hold of the early 
recordings (1925-1939) which are absolutely extraordinary. Most people who
speak highly of Segovia have never heard them (and seem to be victims of
record company/media hype !).

Since there are some of Shearer's students on this network, they may like
to comment/elucidate.


G. A. George