Segovia’s concert heritage as the basis of forming the guitar performing traditions of the XX century
Authors: Kryhin Oleksandr 
Published: May 2019

Background. The academic guitar art, which announced itself at the beginning of the XXI century as one of the dominant and sought-after forms of the concert music making, in recent decades has become the subject of scientific reflection. However, due to a later start time of its evolvement, it turned out to be less explored than other concert genres. The birth of the academic guitar art in the early twentieth century associated with the name of A. Segovia, together with whose creativity it stepped beyond the limits of the Spanish national culture and came to the world level. Creativity of the contemporaries and compatriots of A. Segovia, the famous guitarists of the first half of the twentieth century C. Romero, R. S&#225;inz de la Maza and M. Llobet, did not have that cultural and artistic weight, which could be a basis for ascension of the Spanish guitar art to the European professional heights. Exactly A. Segovia was able to do this. In spite of the fact that the importance of A. Segovia’s activities for the formation of the new performing guitar traditions of the twentieth century is enormous, it has not yet received its systemic coverage. Thus, the relevance of this article is caused, on the one hand, by the great interest in the academic guitar art in recent years, and on the other, by the lack of the special scientific studies dedicated to the performing art of the outstanding Spanish guitarist. Existing studies contain only incomplete historical data [3; 7] or the compressed socio-cultural panorama of A. Segovia’s creative activity and the period of formation of the guitar performing traditions of the twentieth century [1, p. 4–6]. Objectives. The proposed research considers the features of the performing art of A. Segovia at its different stages in order to identify the patterns of its evolvement and the main its achievements from the point of view of the contemporary guitar art. For the first time, a comprehensive assessment of the concert heritage of the Spanish maestro in the aspect of its legislative influence upon the modern academic guitar creativity is given. Methods of the research. The complex of general scientific research methods makes it possible to disclose the basic positions of the article: signification of the classical guitar in the family of the academic solo instruments (systems approach); the evolution paths of an academic guitar (historical approach); comprehension of the guitar creativity in a broad socio-cultural aspect (cultural approach); definition of the author’s performing style of A. Segovia (interpretational approach). Results. For comprehension of the evolution of A. Segovia’s performing arts, maestro’ concert programs are considered. The first big performance (March 12, 1916) included 19 pieces (Par I – the arrangements by A. Segovia and one piece by M. Llobet; Part II – the works by J. Bach, J. Haydn, F. Mendelssohn, F. Chopin, all transcribed for guitar by F. T&#225;rrega; Part III – the music by I. Albeniz, E. Granados and one play by P. Tchaikovsky). At this stage of evolution of the academic guitar art, A. Segovia could not present in the program the works of the Renaissance epoch; besides, in the historical and cultural aspect, the program is formatted inconsequently. However, in our opinion, the program is logical and justified in its own way, and its third part that almost entirely formed from the works of the Spanish national classics one can consider as a response to the ideology of “Renacimiento” – the movement for the national revival of Spain. The ending of the decade of the fruitful concert activity of A. Segovia coincided with his tours in the territory of present-day Russia and Ukraine. In 1926, A. Segovia gave six concerts in Moscow and two concerts in Leningrad, and in 1927 – six concerts in Moscow, three concerts in Leningrad, and one each in Kharkov and Kiev. The analysis shows that the total number of works in A. Segovia’s repertoire list during his Moscow tour performances in 1926–1927 has grown to 75. They belonged to different historical eras and various performing styles, to 28 authors from different countries. The extensive repertoire corresponding to A. Segovia’s exquisite taste embodied in elegant performing interpretations, which reflected in the feedback from listeners and music critics. Over 10 years of his concert activity, the total repertoire of A. Segovia expanded significantly (up to 300 works), not only due to his own transcriptions of works by J. Bach, G. Handel, W. Mozart, J. Haydn, F. Schubert, F. T&#225;rrega, I. Albeniz and E. Granados, but also thanks to the works of a new wave of composers: A. Tansman, F. Moreno Torroba, J. Turina, which created a number of pieces for guitar at the request of A. Segovia. Conclusions. Thus, contingently, A. Segovia’s concert activity one can divide into two big stages: before and after 1924. The culmination point of the first stage is related with the successful performance in Barcelona (1916), which eliminated some acoustic and psychological barriers that hampered guitar performers and organizers of concerts (A. Segovia is the first guitarist who was playing in the hall for 1000 seats). The first tour in Paris in April 1924, which began the second stage of the maestro’s concert activity, can be considered as a landmark event on the path of world recognition of A. Segovia. Henceforth the format of the concert programs of A. Segovia and his recordings on disks thought out clearly, it is structured delicately based on the musical styles of certain historical periods. An important place the works of modern composers occupied. The concert heritage of A. Segovia is a reflection of the evolution of the guitar repertoire. It progressed from the limited by the previous tradition in the early twentieth century up to the universal format, combining the best examples of the folk music (flamenco), the transcriptions of European classical music and the modern works bearing the newest sound images. Among the authors of such, at the request of A. Segovia, were M. Castelnuovo-Tedesko, F. Moreno Torroba, M. Ponce, J. Rodrigo, A. Tansman.