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La Guitarra en Cataluña 1769-1939 by Josep Maria Mangado y Artigas from Tecla Editions in London. 303 pages-77 illustrations & photos. Text is in Spanish only. Hardbound $97.95 & Softbound $59.95
This remarkable book, for those that read Spanish, will elucidate beyond your expectations the history in your hands. The province that's capital is Barcelona is rich in history with classical guitar virtuosos. Long before Miguel Llobet & Emilio Pujol, (it's most notable 20th century concertizers, teachers & recording artists) were a stream of contemporaries of Fernando Sor & progenitors of his epoch that carried on his legacy. Fernando Sor is not covered here, as the portent of the book is to cover the "subjects of the king". The inclusion of previously unattainable complete biographies of Jose Ferrer (1835-1916), Jose Broca (1805-1882), Jose Viñas (1823-1888), Jaime Bosch (1826-1895), Jose Costa y Hugas (1827-1881), Miguel Mas (1846-1923), Juan Nogues (1875-1930), Antonio Alba (1870-19??), Alfredo Romea (1883-1955) & Jose Sirera (1884-1931) fills a void that was for a long time vacant. The overall materials exhibited are: letters from the artists, covers of first editions, newspaper accounts of concerts & deaths, complete listing of the works of each artist, hand written manuscripts & their current residence (as well as the trail of how materials 200 years old have passed down from teacher to teacher to collector).
FFSI has within it's collections, some of which, that came from the same sources as names listed within. If this book had been published in years ahead, FFSI's contribution of manuscripts of unknown whereabouts, ex. collection of Jose Ferrer, later Segundo Contreras-- 58 page manuscript with index of works by Buenaventura Bassols (1812-1868), Jose Costa, Jose Viñas, Jose Augustino (included in Domingo Prat's Diccionario de Guitarristas -though not included here) would have answered questions on page 116 by the author. This manuscript is mentioned on 3 pages in Prat's Diccionario, as to whom it came from, who were the composers within, and who was a student, and had a piece dedicated to her. As mentioned in the 1931 Antigua Casa Nuñez Catalog page, the collection of J. Augusto Marcellino (1911-1973) had the rarest of pieces (see page 117). Many of these pieces are in the First Editions page and First Editions Continued page, though the majority of which went into the hands of the late Robert Spencer, whose collection is listed in the Manuscritos a Londres section & the rest to FFSI.
Josep Mangado y Artigas' web site is dedicated to Catalan Guitarists. He is the author of the Spanish language book La Guitarra en Cataluña, which really is an ongoing investigation. He is the #1 expert in this field of study. We encourage everyone to visit this academic pedestal, a photo of Jose Ferrer y Esteve was recently found and added to the site, Josep is a colleague of mine, with whom I share freely my own ongoing investigations of the whole spectrum of Classical Guitar research. http://www.arrakis.es/~dedeo/
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