Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986), a virtuoso pianist, prolific composer and conductor of Polish origin was one of the few mainstream orchestral composers who wrote for the guitar. His association and admiration for the musical personality of Andres Segovia resulted in a long term fruitful collaboration and friendship with Segovia. It has been one of the great contributions of Segovia to have inspired composers outside the guitar world to compose for the guitar. Composers such as Tansman, Heitor Villa Lobos, Manuel De Falla, Manuel Ponce, Castelnuovo Tedesco, Joaquin Rodrigo and many others wrote a considerable amount of music for the guitar and this widened and enriched guitar repertoire immensely.
alexandre tansman guitar pdf 11
Tansman uses certain dissonances beautifully giving the music a certain yearning quality. The later part of the piece, which revolves around the dominant, has a clear homophonic texture with a descending topline melody still maintaining a strong duple metre. We come back to the main theme again after the melodic and harmonic development in the B section with a strong dominant-tonic resolution. Tansman was a pianist-composer and one can sense the pianistic writing with the melody notes being played and sustained with the right hand while the left hand playing the chordal arpeggios and basslines. The music is completely tonal albeit using some interesting chordal harmony and it is an example of some of the finest writing for solo guitar.
Besides writing an incredible amount of orchestral music, music for other instruments and some film scores (Tansman composed the soundtrack for the film Paris Underground, for which he was nominated for the Oscars), Tansman wrote considerably for the guitar, much of which was found posthumously. Some major works for the guitar by Tansman include Variations sur un thème de Scriabine (1972, dedicated to Segovia), Hommage à Chopin (1969, dedicated to Segovia), Hommage à Lech Walesa (1982, dedicated to Corazon Otero), Suite in modo polonico (1962) amongst many other guitar works. 2ff7e9595c
Comments