Eliot Fisk’s Notes

I first became aware of the music of Agustin Barrios Mangore’ through the masterful revisting of this music by the great Venezuelan virtuoso, Alirio Diaz. Some years later John Williams’ famous first recording devoted solely to Barrios played an important role in re-introducing Barrios to all of us living outside Latin America.

Since then Barrios’s music has practically been overplayed, yet rarely has it been heard played in a manner consonant with that revealed in Barrios’ own recordings. Imperfect though the sound reproduction on these old discs is, they give undeniable proof of certain attributes of a style of playing that was common to an entire generation of great guitarists from Llobet and Pujol to Segovia. I find it extremely amusing that some of the same people who claim to be so interested in authentic performance practice of old music, for example, can virtually ignore incontrovertible evidence from the surviving recordings of the masters of a great romantic style, which, while perhaps somewhat out of fashion at present, has a great deal to teach us all about expressivity on the guitar.

What are some of the hallmarks of this style as revealed in Barrios’s own recordings and manuscripts?

1) This is music written for an actual audience, music that seeks above all to communicate in a magical way (see Barrios’s famous mystical and poetic outpourings about what it is he is trying to do with his “six silver moonbeams” (echoes of Lorca’s dancing “seis doncellas/ tres de carne/ tres de plata” in the Adivinanza de la Guitarra!)

2) All artistic and aesthetic means serving the goal of communication are justified. Thus Barrios uses lots of rubato, vibrato, and portamento, and seemingly varies his pieces in many small details spontaneously, in the moment, often departing from his own often meticulously notated scores as the whim overtakes him.

3) Barrios uses as a matter of course all coloristic effects of the guitar: tremolo, tambour, snare drum, scordatura and harmonics all are called upon in new and creative ways to conjure up the many colors, sounds, smells and sights of life as he knew it.

4) Once again, a routine performances just will not do. It is the intangible magic, what the flamenco artists call the duende, that it the raison d’etre of this music.

5) Barrios also uses much more harmonic variety than almost any of his virtuoso composer colleagues: his bass lines feature lots of step wise motion (not just open strings). This alone makes his pieces more difficult to play than that of some of his lesser contemporaries and predecessors, but also allows Barrios his greater harmonic vocabulary.

6) Barrios also uses a greater variety of keys than the E,A, D trinity which enslave so many of the earlier guitar virtuoso composers.

I feel that a true test of the virtuosity of any of us latter day Barrios interpreters is to emulate the same spontaneity and expressivity he so nobly embodied by studying the many variants of parallel passages (as indicated in Richard Stover’s editions!) and being able to spontaneously opt for any one of a number of solutions to certain passages. (In this spirit, I often introduce slight changes of my own and hope Barrios might approve.)

Sad as it is that Barrios’s posthumous career even exceeds the success he enjoyed in life, we can all be grateful for his legacy and for the opportunity to keep burning the sacred flame he first ignited.

Eliot Fisk
Boston April 15, 2008