Hey!

When we started this newsletter project, the self-imposed regular publication schedule seemed like a real challenge. But lo and behold, today we have reached issue 10, and with an ease that only comes with things that bring real joy. So today we can celebrate our first small anniversary. 

But what do you do with a 10th issue like this? 

Well, first of all, say a big thank you to all of you who read this guitar newsletter. Thank you to all the composers who have provided us with sheet music over the past few months.

1000 worldwide readers is another reason to celebrate.

As you probably know, we publish this newsletter in both German and English. More reach for the newsletter = more reach for the featured artists. So take heart and share the sign-up link with your friends.

https://newclassicalguitar.de/#en

With today's issue, we would also like to thank a person who has been very influential for us in terms of our artistic development. We have dedicated this issue to him.

When it comes to arranging for guitar, Daniel Göritz has a library (partly unpublished) that is certainly unparalleled in the world. From Dowland and Bach to Brahms, Schubert and even Wagner or Helmut Oering. Hardly anything seems impossible and everything is done with the greatest possible attention to detail and musical precision. In short: Daniel is simply a top-notch arranger. In this respect, today's interview is as rich as can be. That's why we've put some arrangements in our tried and tested categories that exemplify what's possible.

This issue is all about arranging – and as we are currently working on our own transcriptions of (piano) music by Claude Debussy, Johann Sebastian Bach and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy for guitar, it is in a way a gift to ourselves for the anniversary edition. 

In this issue, Daniel Göritz takes us all to a big playground.

Let's just try to open a few doors a crack wider. Let’s see what's possible and celebrate translation as a creative act.

Let’s go!

Cheers,

Stefan & Willi

YOUTUBE FIND OF THE WEEK
Daniel Göritz plays Johannes Brahms - Sarabande

Johannes Brahms in Belo Horizonte (Brazil). Arranged for guitar. Our video of the week. The Sarabande works beautifully on six strings, and in combination with the light-flooded, clean video location you would think there is nothing more natural than enjoying this piano piece in the guitar version. The interpretation is airy and intense at the same time, it breathes and the sound is literally projected into the room and sent out into the surrounding nature. We demand more Brahms for guitar. We want more sound impressions like this. 

At the same time, the video is a good example of what Daniel categorizes in the interview as “transferring a fully composed piece, in which all the details are already fixed, to our instrument.” The aim here is to remain as faithful as possible to the original and still create a translation that works as idiomatically as possible on the new instrument, the guitar. 

Check. We had no idea that Brahms composed for the guitar :)

ALBUM OF THE WEEK 
New Transcriptions for 2 Guitars by Daniel Wolff & Daniel Göritz

Transcribing piano pieces for two guitars is somehow obvious. More obvious, at least, than for solo guitar, as you can theoretically maintain more of the original score on two instruments. Which is not to say that such an arrangement is a sure-fire success. We think that Daniel Wolff and Daniel Göritz have made a fascinating selection for their duo album with Beethoven, Chopin and Schubert. Even more fascinating is the quality of both the transcriptions and the recording. The detailed, dynamic and colorful dialogue between the two instruments is so captivating. The two players merge into a single entity that includes not only them, but also us as listeners.

By the way: even though the featured artist would certainly have preferred a current album in this category, for us this LP is a classic that flies far too far under the radar and, in our opinion, is a real yardstick for all future recordings of duo arrangements.

KNOW-HOW 
with Daniel Göritz - About arranging written music

Daniel Göritz is a professor at the renowned Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. He is active as a performer, arranger, editor and composer and works on contemporary music with an extended range of instruments (various guitars and electric guitars, electric bass and electronics). In addition, free improvisation is another important focus of his work.

As a guitarist, he has played with many orchestras such as the SWR Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the New World Symphony and the BBC Philharmonic.

Artistically, he can hardly be pigeonholed, which is very exciting in itself. However, the fact that he forged his own key to the world of music as a young musician was also new to us and possibly explains his inexhaustible enthusiasm for new things and the permanent questioning of constants. 

Blinders off, eyes open and go...

How did you get into arranging and what was your first arrangement?

At first glance, this question seems easy to answer, but then it's not for me at all... perhaps because it's been so long since I started ;)

But I certainly started notating music first, recording musical ideas and then developing them further – in other words, composing! I'll come back to that later... In any case, the two are very closely connected for me. If I remember correctly, the first arrangements came about because I wanted to play something but didn't have the sheet music. I was a teenager from the mid-70s onwards, and my first attempts at composing and later arranging were probably around the age of fourteen/fifteen. That means around 1979 – long before the internet.

Before I get to the first piece I wanted to arrange, I should mention the first piece I wanted to play – I'd had the guitar in my hand for some time but couldn't read music yet. However, I really wanted to be able to play the well-known Bourrée from Bach's E minor Suite (BWV 996). I had it in my ear, for example from Jethro Tull's 1969 version, but I found the version for solo concert guitar much more fascinating – it sounded like a duet on one instrument, crazy – my desire was awakened! I got the sheet music from a library and then I went about going through the piece bar by bar with the LP and the guitar (the LP must have been pretty ruined on those grooves afterwards).

With the sound in my ear, I had to find where to put my fingers on the guitar. And since I couldn't read the sheet music yet, I had to learn it backwards by comparing how the sound (that I knew) was written down. It was probably quite an unwieldy process, but I soon unlocked the secret that this Bourrée was for me. And I was fascinated by the fact that I now had the key to all those other compositions. After all, I “only” had to play them now. It shows that everything we do motivated by inner passion will stay with us deeply and “forever”. That was around the age of thirteen.

It was important for me to tell you this beforehand because the first piece I wanted to arrange (it might have been the C major Prelude from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier Part I) no longer seemed so far away. The experience of having already tried and simply done it – that was the decisive factor. So, anyone who is passionate about it, or at least interested in it, must above all BEGIN to try it themselves, to DO it. There are still thousands and thousands of details of knowledge and experience to be gained along the way!”

Which of your own arrangements gave you the most headaches and – is there ever a limit to what can be arranged?

First of all, there are two large, quite different areas of arranging: On the one hand, the transfer of a fully composed piece, in which all the details have already been decided, to our instrument. Here you want to remain as faithful as possible to the original and still create a translation that works as idiomatically as possible on the new instrument, the guitar.

On the other hand, there is the type of arrangement where much less is fixed and where much more compositional creativity is required: for example, baroque music in the basso continuo style, where only the melody part and the bass part are written out. Everything else has to be deduced and elaborated on the basis of the figuring (which often is not even present) or from the progression and relationship of these two parts to each other. Personally, it gives me great pleasure and artistic challenge (and satisfaction afterwards) when I compose independent voices for such pieces and thus come into contact with the heart of the composition. This goes far beyond the mere placement of chords and requires a deeper examination of the musical material.

Unfortunately, I keep finding that the libraries are full of all these outdated editions – often of a boringly mediocre nature. These days, a few music albums with some of my arrangements for voice and guitar are being published by Verlag Neue Musik Berlin: a Schubert album, a Brahms album and a Purcell album. The latter is of the second type of arranging described above and attempts to do so with a great deal of personal involvement: composed introductions, polyphonically conceived secondary and middle parts. The Schubert and Brahms albums are more about translating the piano part to the guitar as sonorously and idiomatically as possible.

As far as the question of limits is concerned, it is probably about the limits of the instrument and/or the limits of one's own technique, of what is possible. This way, a ground-breaking arrangement such as Yamashita's Pictures at an Exhibition can probably only be played by others to a limited extent – too much of an individual technique is required by this approach.

My arrangement of Wagner's prelude to Tristan und Isolde & Liebestod has probably given me the most headaches. It may sound a bit crazy to even attempt it, but what can you do... I really wanted to play it – and with the necessary passion as a driving force, it seems to have worked somehow. But there were also moments of doubt as to whether it was feasible. It's also a long process that may never be 100% complete (without a deadline). Whenever I come back to it, there are still small changes here and there, polishings etc. It probably has to be recorded, captured, before I can say: now it's finished. On the other hand, it is precisely this process, this life IN such great music, that makes (at least) me happy.

Speaking of boundaries, you arranged Sexton A. by Helmut Oering for solo guitar! How did you do it and did you talk to him about it, or rather, what was his reaction to your arrangement?

The piece is originally for viola solo. At the end, for example, there is an extended passage in which it is played (bowed) and sung/hummed at the same time. A very interesting effect with two levels of sustained notes, but unfortunately not possible on the guitar. Helmut O., as an open and pragmatic person, then picked out the best changes from my suggestions and we reassembled the piece.

Some parts differ considerably from the version premiered by Tabea Zimmermann. But H. O. had no problem with that and, on the contrary, finds it exciting when a piece can develop in other directions. Of course, such a flexible and result-oriented way of working would not work with composers who are obsessed with every single detail.

If someone is sitting in front of a piano part and wants to translate it into a guitar part, what (rough) procedure would you recommend? More precisely: What criteria do you use to make decisions regarding the usually too narrow range of the guitar?

Of course, this question could fill a whole series of lectures and workshops, hundreds of pages trying to catalog things – in short: a broad field.

The first step is always the question: how much do I love a piece and how great is the urge to play it myself? Then I play around in the sheet music at sight – a very rough ad hoc arrangement, so to speak – and try to get a feel for whether it could work on the guitar. And if I still have a good feeling and most of the passages seem solvable or feasible, then I go ahead.

Perhaps this is the most important thing here: Yes, it will mainly be about reduction, as cleverly and effectively as possible. Just as a piano reduction of an opera attempts to depict the entire orchestra, the creativity required here is less in the compositional area itself, but rather in how to cunningly and skillfully omit. To do this, you first have to recognize the essence of the composition as well as possible and analyze the musical text. It may be a similar process to translating poetry into another language. A literal translation alone will not suffice, but will come across as crude – it is important to get the sound right.

A few very rough rules of thumb for omission (exceptions prove the rule!) could be helpful:

Maintain the course and contour of the outer voices as far as possible. If register breaks are necessary, try the bass first (unless the bass is the main voice). If the bass and upper voices are intact, you can be freer in between. Be careful with inversions, the bass note makes all the difference!

Omit note doublings first. If there is a choice, keep the doubling that is best derived from the voice leading.

If tonal chords have to be reduced or re-voiced, the fifth can often be dropped first (at least in most music up to the late Romantic period). Root and third (as well as important alterations), on the other hand, are not quite “negotiable”.

Finding and favoring voicings on the guitar that already contain empty strings or (in the case of position changes) lead to (or away from) those contained in the target.

Finding the most suitable key can also be an important aspect – at least for solo arrangements where we don't have to take into account the range of a voice part, for example. With compositions for piano plus voice or another instrument, on the other hand, we often have little flexibility or choice. With singing in particular, a semitone can mean a world, and singers will sometimes have little sympathy for us if the tessitura (i.e. the individually ideal position and range for this voice) is perfect in a piece in A flat major, for example – but we guitarists (understandably) offer whether we could do it in G major, for example. Incidentally, I have a tried and tested insider tip to pass on for such cases: have a second guitar at hand that is tuned a semitone higher. This allows us to offer the aforementioned A flat major sounding, but play G major. Theoretically, we could also use another guitar tuned a semitone lower – but that didn't work for me, as the instrument sounded duller and more sluggish despite strings with the highest tension and even custom-made strings (with optimized E-flat/B-flat/G-flat/D-flat/A-flat/E-flat).

What else would be important for you to say in this context?

I often address all these things in class, draw attention to decisions made by editors, encourage people to question things, compare sources… I often have the situation where someone brings in an arrangement and just plays it without this thought process of their own. If it's a good arrangement, by a good arranger – lucky them. When I look at all the hair-raising things I've come across in (published!) arrangements, my impression is that mediocre to poor quality is unfortunately far too common and is often not questioned. That's why I always try to provide “help for self-help” so that such mediocrity doesn't continue forever.

Perhaps a concrete example: we often play arrangements on the guitar in which an existing monophonic texture is supplemented by added basses, perhaps even extended harmonic interpretations and secondary voices. Many Bach movements are like this – cello suites or fast movements of the solo violin sonatas and partitas. At first glance, this appears to be a comparatively simple task. On closer inspection (and listening), however, this is not the case.  

Here is an example from the Partita for solo flute BWV1013 – arranged for guitar solo. It is interesting for us here because it is actually not a bad arrangement overall. However, the arranger (I don't want to mention any names here) has made some “less than optimal” decisions. Not at all easy to recognize – because, taken in isolation, they don't sound immediately and clearly wrong. This brings me to this fundamentally important aspect: to always see and understand the context when arranging this kind of music. Always look back, where does this passage come from, where is it going?

This example is exclusively about the third beat of bar 6. To understand the context, I'll show the bar before and after.

The C sharp in the bass on the third beat in bar 6 suggests an A7(9) chord, which immediately triggers a dominant expectation of D minor, which is then immediately withdrawn again on the fourth, since here, as expected, C7 sounds as the dominant to the F major target in bar 7. Up to the third beat, everything still seems good and exciting. Then from the fourth beat onwards the sudden withdrawal of the expectation, which somehow seems unmotivated and disappointing. You may stumble over it a little, but you are not yet convinced that you need to change anything. Only when you look and listen more closely does it become clear: if you had looked at the context, it would have been better to consider the third and fourth beats as one chord, because we are moving in a calm harmonic rhythm in half notes: from E7 via E7(9-) to A minor, then C7 to F.

Here is the passage from my arrangement:

A second example belongs to a completely different and interesting category – the disimprovement: an arrangement, often uncommented, of a piece that does not actually need any arrangement at all.

This example comes from the Serenade for 2 guitars op. 96 no. 1 by Fernando Carulli, i.e. an original work. There is a lot of sheet music in circulation that can be downloaded free of charge from the Internet, in a new and modern makeup. This is also the case here. However, nowhere is it mentioned that the piece has been edited.

This bar in the original (guitars 1+2 notated in one system):

was turned into this (uncommented) “new edition”:

Carulli may not be considered the greatest of composers, but his craft was solid, and even he by no means deserves such an aggravation. It is as if this “editor” is not familiar with the augmented sixth chord and only encounters it as a puzzle and a mistake. That's why he believes he has to fix this chord by including its dominant B7 before E major.

Pretty creepy... but unfortunately true. When two students played this passage from this “new edition” to me for the first time, I was frustrated with them because they probably didn't look closely enough. But it wasn't their fault at all – it was just hard to imagine. That's why there's this great project, www.imslp.org, for copyright-free sheet music (the composer’s date of death is at least 70 years ago) – there you can at least look at the old prints of such pieces. A first step!

Because you mentioned it at the beginning: Do you still compose today and to what extent does your expertise in arranging help you?

Yes, I continue to compose, but over the years I have written very little for guitar, mainly chamber music for other instrumentations. Until recently: my last composition was actually a very large piece for guitar. A half-hour work called Rhapsody Sonata. It has several parts, but they all flow into each other attacca. It will keep me busy for a while practicing and recording it all. It has a very personal emotional background for me and, unusually for me so far, has ended up being largely tonal.

As for the second part of the question: I see that composing fertilizes arranging rather than the other way around. Although arranging a fully composed piece naturally triggers “compositional” questions and thoughts through immersion in the world of this piece. After all, everything is connected...

What music that you have recently discovered has moved you the most? (Classical, rock, jazz, whatever comes to your mind...)

Shostakovich: string quartets, especially the elegies...

Turkish Psychedelic Rock...

(R.) Strauss: Metamorphosen

Brad Mehldau: especially his solo song arrangements (e.g. Beatles)

Barbara Strozzi...

Frederic Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (36 variations on a Chilean revolutionary song – a huge piece, a kind of modern Goldberg variations...)

SHEET MUSIC
Johann Sebastian Bach / Daniel Göritz - Sarabande from the Partita for solo flute BWV 1013

As the Partita for solo flute BWV1013 came up in the interview, we thought it would be useful to feature Daniel's arrangement of the Sarabande from it in the sheet music section. Here, anyone interested can delve even deeper into the subject of arranging. We can only recommend that you put the original part next to it so that you can follow the musical solutions step by step and be inspired by them for your own arrangements. Thank you, Daniel, for making this available.

By the way, the complete arrangement of the Partita will soon be published by Verlag Neue Musik Berlin. So if you've worked up an appetite for more – enjoy it :)

GUITAR AND…
Duo Udite plays Im Treibhaus by Richard Wagner

When you think of Richard Wagner, you first think of Siegfried, Tristan, Isolde, Valkyries and Bayreuth. You might also think of a bold sound, of an epic, and certainly of controversial entanglements and appropriation. One thinks of ongoing discussions about the separation of work and author and much more. But not the guitar. 

The Wesendonck Lieder are the result of Wagner's impossible love for Mathilde Wesendonck. This experience can also be found in the opera Tristan und Isolde. Wagner himself described the song “Im Treibhaus” as a study for the opera. The beginning of the song even appears in a more elaborate form as a prelude in Act 3 of the opera. 

What the guitar can do here is to give the piece a level of intimacy that is also beautifully reflected in the semi-staged production of the video!

“High-arching leafy crowns,
Canopies of emerald,
You children who dwell in distant climes,
Tell me, why do you lament?”

OUTRO

We hope you enjoyed reading this issue. Sharpened your pencil, opened the music paper in front of you or the music notation program of your choice.

As with the last issue, today's newsletter was certainly a deep dive. But we didn't want to shorten it too much, and we ourselves find the topic just too exciting. The next issues will be a little more concise again. We promise. For now, we’re taking a 4-week summer break with the newsletter. You certainly have enough material to bridge the gap. 

Stay with us and enjoy the next four weeks of summer.

As always, feedback, suggestions and criticism are welcome in response to this email.

Until next time!

All the best,
Stefan & Willi

New Classical Guitar is a newsletter by Willi Leinen and Stefan Degel from TMBM. You can find our music and more information about our journey at t-m-b-m.com

On Spotify, we curate a playlist with our favorite pieces. Feel free to follow our New Classical Guitar Playlist at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ZwxJRAsW9Zs2JiS2eLy6a?si=9b2a737f01c043a4 and recommend new additions.