Hey!

Someone else's dream. But not just anyone else's dream. Andrew York pays homage to Ludwig van Beethoven. Our YouTube Find.

The renewal of the classical guitar canon – that's what Eva Beneke's et aliae Album of the Week is all about. This time as an advance notice, as the album will only be launched into the audiophile streaming orbit next week. To mark the occasion and for reasons of congratulations on our part, we also re-post our interview with Eva from issue 9.

In our etudes section, Leon Albert once again shows how important it is to celebrate routines. Neither four over three nor four under three are a problem for him. His miniatures are no less tasty than a well-roasted espresso and his humor is timed more precisely than Swiss clockwork.

And if that's not feel-good vibes enough, let Flora Falls take you to where the grass grows tall, because the grass is always greener in the second half of April.

But now, happy reading!

All the best,
Stefan and Willi

YOUTUBE FIND OF THE WEEK
with Andrew York

“Ludwig's Dream” by Andrew York is a wonderfully soft reminiscence of Ludwig van Beethoven's theme in the Allegretto of the 7th Symphony. Andrew captures the haunting mood, like a greeting to another time. Four minutes and ten seconds. Without wanting to exaggerate, the impression is one of elegance, or at least of being completely in the here and now.

The second movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony: calm and solemn in gesture, very haunting – almost like a slow, mournful march. The theme is magical in its simplicity, gradually building up tension. Impossible to escape, and also a little impossible to put into words. Listen to Beethoven. Watch “Ludwig's Dream”. We can only recommend it.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK
with Eva Beneke

The canon of the classical guitar world is HER topic.

In issue 9, we conducted an interview with Eva Beneke on this very topic, which has certainly made us more aware of the role of women in classical music. We are therefore all the more pleased to be able to recommend Eva's latest EP to you in this issue.

Et aliae pays attention to “a few others” who are not included in the classical canon. It features three female composers from three different temporal, geographical and therefore also (socio-)political backgrounds.

Eva Beneke writes about the composers: Petra Szászí, born in 1997, a young composer of today. Sofia Gubaidulina, a representative of the "long" 20th century, who passed away on March 13, 2025 at the age of 93 – her life story affected by migration and exile from the Soviet Union. And Germaine Tailleferre, the only woman in the "Group des Six" around 1918 – a time, where women still had to ask for permission to be a composer from father and husband.

Sofia Gubaidulina's “Serenade” has cast a spell over us. This composition shows that it doesn't take much to create depth, to depict strong contrasts and yet to speak a clear, coherent musical language. A language that immediately paints a picture of the woman behind the composition.

Thank you, Eva, for making this dialog possible and for playing your part as a translator so well. The fine, thoughtful and emotional interpretation of the pieces offers a wonderful insight into the world of “the others” that we all need to explore!

As far as we are concerned, Eva Beneke's question “Could this ‘other’ music – quiet yet angry, multi-facetted yet simple, genre-defying, yet a soloist's choice – be a way to renew the canon?” can be answered with a loud and clear YES!

We wish you a happy release day on April 21st.

MORNING-ROUTINE
A coffee with Leon Albert

Hi Leon, what’s the routine for this week?

I keep working on independence, this time specifically in relation to over- and underlaying. If you can do four over three (see last issue), you must also be able to do four under three. :)

KNOW-HOW
with Eva Beneke

(Interview from issue 9/2024)

In the canon of the classical guitar repertoire, the term "underrepresented" is still a rather euphemistic way of talking about female composers! Why is that?

Well, we can thank the 19th century in particular, where the bourgeoisie with its patriarchal structures assigned women a very limited place in society: namely children, cooking, church.

Many structures in the classical music business emerged during this period and continue to have an impact today. All areas of music theory and practice, from orchestral work and university teaching to musicology and music criticism, were male-dominated, and the canon of works, therefore, too. Much has changed, but if you look at a typical exam program today, you will only sporadically discover a work by a female composer.

Then, of course, there were always influential artists such as Andrés Segovia, who played a decisive role in shaping the canon for our instrument. It is no secret that Segovia rejected works that did not suit his taste – and these were by no means only works by women. One example that comes to mind is Teresa de Rogatis, whose pieces bridge the gap between impressionism and neoclassicism. Perhaps she would have composed much more if Segovia had noticed her?

(Link: Teresa de Rogatis: Sonatina, 1st Adagio, https://youtu.be/zr8sg0TZ0Eg?si=1f2j_nX06zufMgWS)

The topic has many dimensions – the guitar is certainly only one small area, but it is so important for us! If you want to find out more for yourself, I recommend Eva Rieger's book with the dauntingly glorious title Frau, Musik & Männerherrschaft (Woman, Music & Male Supremacy).

When did you take up this issue? Can you remember the starting point? And what has happened since then?



That was around 2020, during the pandemic. I was increasingly thinking about such topics – there were few distractions. I devoured a number of books that moved me, such as Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez – a recommendation from my Argentinian colleague Carolina Folmer. But I no longer enjoyed looking at the guitar scene and the programs at concerts, competitions and festivals.

At some point, the question arose: Why do I hardly ever play a piece written by a woman? And what does that mean for me as a female musician?

I then did some research, exchanging ideas with other female guitarists such as Heike Matthiesen, who was a veritable encyclopedia for female composers, with Jiji Kim and colleagues from Netzwerk Gitarre Berlin (link: https://www.netzwerkgitarreberlin.de). This educational gap slowly began to close for me – and still does.

Arrangements, chamber music, solo pieces, concerts – there's a whole world to discover!

At no point should it be about replacing our beloved "standard repertoire" – that is an often-heard prejudice.

For me, it means moving away from the Eurocentric, male-dominated canon towards a broader idea of classical music that, to put it polemically, does not exclusively accept works by "white men" as the standard.

Which three female composers in music history do you find particularly exciting and which three contemporary female composers are currently inspiring you? 

There are so many! Germaine Tailleferre (link: Guitare https://youtu.be/QUV_gmpO5f0?si=L7hVetjxjkHlDUxy), who decided to compose against the will of her father and two (!) husbands, partly supported by her teacher Maurice Ravel. Or Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre – born in Paris 20 years before J.S. Bach, she was a true baroque superstar and court composer for Louis XIV! I recently transcribed one of her harpsichord suites for the guitar.

Hildegard von Bingen, of course, the mystic of the late Middle Ages – generally known for her herbalism and recipes – but she was also a poet, composer and polymath. She wrote the only surviving medieval music drama (link: https://youtu.be/f1sJ91rS0o0?si=UM1pz-CsdcEnTMYO), both the text and the music.

Composers are still inspired by Hildegard today, such as Sofia Gubaidulina, who wrote a piece for solo alto called From the Visions of Hildegard von Bingen in 1994. Serenade & Toccata will certainly be familiar to some – two wonderful, richly pictorial and expressive solo pieces. Her chamber music with two or three guitars and strings is also very worthwhile – there's a whole evening's worth of repertoire for us guitarists to discover.

I currently find the young Hungarian composer Petra Szászí remarkable. I have just recorded her solo piece Hommage à Charles Bukowski (link: http://www.evabeneke.com/new-album-page) for a new album – but there is also a very cool, rhythmic guitar quartet, Dyslexia, and a new piece for cello and guitar, which was premiered last year by Jesse Flowers and Ildikó Szabó.

Apart from that, of course, it's always worth doing some research outside the guitar world – the Korean composer Unsuk Chin (link: https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/wunderlandmusik-unsuk-chin-erhaelt-ernst-von-siemens-musikpreis-ld.1830886), for example, has been living in Berlin for many years and writes incredibly great music, complex, highly virtuosic, for instance the cello concerto, or the piano etudes that were considered almost unplayable – now they are already part of the repertoire in piano competitions. I had the opportunity to meet her once as a student. I took part in an orchestral project and, unfortunately, Mirroirs des temps was the only piece written by a woman when I was a student – but at least with guitar in the orchestra!

How do you think (and hope) the issue will have developed in 10 years' time? What will it take to counteract the imbalance?

Hopefully we won't need this discussion any more one day and can concentrate on the essentials – namely good music. The fact is, however, that many factors contribute to whether and how often something is performed. It is, not least, up to the organizers and the taste of the audience. But also marketing, agencies, the wheels of the music industry and ultimately us performers. There are still some barriers to be broken down. As we all know, new things are always greeted with resistance.

I can imagine: a kind of "quota" for compulsory pieces in competitions, entrance exams, exam programs – that may sound a bit brute, but it is already partly the case in art and literature. Next semester, for example, I'll be working in a group that will compile a diverse catalog for the entrance exam repertoire of music universities in Norway.

I can recommend a clever and important article by Jiji on this topic, which moved me a lot at the time: “How audition requirements exclude” (2020) (link: https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/how-audition-requirements-exclude/).

Can you tell us something about your research project?

Absolutely! Together with two fantastic colleagues, we have a research team at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo on the topic of Challenging Musical Canons (link: https://nmh.no/en/research/projects/challenging-musical-canons).

The two of them come from music education and musicology, respectively, while I represent musical practice and teaching as well as artistic research. The aim is to scientifically question common standards and conventions – e.g. the assertion that "women have not contributed any relevant works to music history" or "there simply weren’t that many good female composers in the past".

But also questions such as: how does a work get into the canon? Who decides that?

What prevails and why? We also need to consider that for the longest time music reviews and music criticism were almost exclusively carried out by men, as were the publishing houses. It's all really incredibly exciting. There will be articles, presentations, discussion concerts and much more.

How do you make young guitarists (your students) aware of and enthusiastic for the topic? My own musical search automatically led to a number of projects with the students – in 2021 we had a project week on the topic of "women composers". And in the fall of 2023 – and I'm a bit proud of this – the entire Oslo School of Music organized a week of chamber music by women. It covered all instruments and departments: jazz, classical and Norwegian folk music. I got to know so much new repertoire!

There were several concerts a day, world premieres, a student orchestra project: they worked completely without a conductor (yet another of those traditional male positions!) and performed a work by a 19-year-old female student. Plus discussions and talks – the time is simply ripe, students want to actively work on these issues, and they want to do it now!

In one-on-one lessons, I definitely encourage playing or arranging pieces by women. Next fall there will be a "Voice & Guitar" project week where we will write out the basso continuo to arias by Barbara Strozzi (link: https://youtu.be/XWXAUnXQlhY?si=YEPl5iEsPnHr2e2K) or Claudia Sessa.

In general, I pay much more attention to also suggesting etudes by female composers, or looking for audio examples or YouTube videos by female and male performers in equal measure.

Imagine you could print one sentence on a poster to be hung up at every (classical) music festival in the world. What would it be?

"Today is the future!"

FEEL-GOOD TUNE OF THE WEEK
with Flora Falls

An upbeat and positive melody! It makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning. Or take a look at the sky in the middle of the day. Stress? Bad news? Put on your headphones, let your hair blow in the wind and jump on the good mood train!

Our feel-good tune of the week!

OUTRO

Thanks for reading! Check out the playlist of our newsletter. Be good to each other.

Stay tuned!
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 http://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.