293 original guitar scores, 253 chants
Preface to the English version
I know that many pieces will not be useful for people not speaking italian but anyway I hope that having these scores someone else might be pushed to increment the number of scores "translated" for guitar.
I will not be the one that will solve the long-standing issue on the opportunity of using the guitar to support songs during offices.
My little experience (talking about relevance, but lasting more than thirty years) lead me to suggest not to worry on the if it is appropriate but on the how you can use this instrument at its best.
We can quibble for long times on the fact that in a perfect world every parish should have a marvelous polyphonic choral and that brilliant organists should always be at disposal so to aim whichever celebration, but concretely speaking, actual world is made of a various set of musical experiences and proposals.
My guitar teacher told me that when he was a young boy, guitar was considered no more than a tavern instrument, with no dignity to be included in the classes of a music conservatory.
Nowadays, instead, every Italian music conservatory graduates brilliant musicians that helps to discover o re-discover the wide repertory of pieces written or transcribed for this instrument.
Though, at the same time in which the so called “classical music” world was valorizing the guitar, noble instrument with ancient origins, inside the Christian community its use is still almost exclusively reserved for the so called “young” repertoires of songs and it is quite exclusively used as a rhythmic accompaniment. Here you can find some proposals that are little and simple transcriptions that can be used as a hint by those interested in a less common use.
This scores were made for the existing material is quite scarce; the only (and blessed) releases that I am aware are by Pierangelo Ruaro “Sulle corde e sui flauti” Rugginenti editions, the whole collection of the Taizé’s songs that includes guitar scores and, in addition, some more Ruaro’s score published into the “Musica e assemblea”.
As I usually accompany songs during the mass, I had to take my pen to write what you can see here, including transcriptions born while attending some spiritual or musical events.
A sample of these works have been selected as an example and inserted in a page of the diocesan site.
As I am not a professional musician, I let them as a gift to anyone that may use them.
I will be grateful to everyone who may report inaccuracies or ask for clarification. Please, contact me through [email protected].
As a learning help I have begun to insert some “synthetic” mp3 just to have an idea on how the playing could be. Speed of execution is merely indicative. In case someone was curious to see how it work, usually I play at the Sunday mass at 11.30 in San Giuliano, via Santo Stefano 121 Bologna.
Note around fingering:
a friend of mine, an excellent guitar player, once asked me (gracefully) if I was thinking to be Segovia indicating such precise details, in short, if I became full of myself..
Contrariwise, fingering (sometime even imperfect) is intended to be a little help to make the task a bit easier to whom is not so skilled with writing for classical guitar; I apologize to the expert guitarists.
Note around tablatures:
I am not a fan of tablatures, nevertheless, as I know many people use and love them, I decided to start inserting some.
