The Guitar Symphony

Spring Symphony for guitar orchestra will receive its second performance on January 23rd, 2015 by the Boston Guitar Orchestra, Scott Borg conductor, as a prelude to Sharon Isbin’s concert for the Boston Classical Guitar Society, First Lutheran Church of Boston, 7:30pm; 299 Berkeley St., Boston, MA.

My orientation to the guitar is through the voice and choral music. The guitar is an extension of my voice: I can speak, I can sing, I can recite poetry with the guitar. I think this came from two experiences: 1) growing up in the sixties, loving every form of band from Peter, Paul and Mary to the Supremes to the Beatles, all with lead vocals and wonderful harmonies; 2) my audition to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music made it clear that I could NOT sing and I was required to take voice lessons to aid in getting through sight-singing classes. It changed my life, I have sung ever since, often with a guitar, lute or vihuela in hand. When I change colors in my solo playing, I feel it as a vocal expression of different vowels and consonants, a constant flow of subtle gradation of tone and personal story.

When I began to write Spring Symphony for the NH All-State Guitar Ensemble, I wanted the guitar to do something special, something big, bold and bright. I realized my model needed to be different than a four-part chorus or a harmonized melody and accompaniment. A gentle flow of colors would not be as dramatic as I envisioned. I wanted the grandness of a full symphony orchestra that achieves colors through different families of instruments. We guitarists achieve color by changing attack on the string, sul tasto or sul ponticello, or by the number of notes we play. With a 4-part guitar orchestra, I had 24 strings to use and I wanted to use them in as many ways as possible while keeping to a fairly conservative language and tonality.

In my inner ear, the upper voices as accented chord became trumpets, high melody could be flutes, violins or oboes, the mid-range melodies might be clarinets or cellos; full chords are the string section, low pizzicato is the contra bass section. While the rhythms of this piece are complex, they fit together to create colors as in a symphonic work. When the parts scramble around in short bursts, they are like the percussion section. Of course in a symphony, it is the contrast of these colors which can happen separately or together that make it compelling and different from the experience of an intimate solo work. That is what I hope to have achieved with Spring Symphony. I look forward to the day when guitar orchestras play mostly original music conceived with all its native sounds in full glory.