Gaspar Sanz And His Spanish Style Baroque Guitar

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Gaspar Sanz was a Spanish baroque guitar composer who was at the time very well-known and has influenced many, many classical guitarists and composers right up until today. Although the birth date of Gaspar Sanz is unknown the composer was baptized as Francisco Bartolomé Sanz Celma in the church of Calanda de Ebro, Aragon on the 4th of April 1640 in the city of Calanda, Bajo Aragon, Spian. He later accepted the first name Gaspar. Slide 3 Gaspar was born into a very wealthy family and as a result of this he had the privilege of excellent education and studied music, theology and philosophy at The University of Salamanca which was at the time the oldest university in Spain. He took the vows of holy orders and later was appointed professor of music there. Gaspar ventured around Europe to Naples, Rome and Venice after finishing his Bachelor of Theology degree. It is often thought that Sanz furthered his musical studies under the supervision of Ozario Benevoli, a choirmaster at the Vatican was and Chrisofaro Caresana who was an organist at the Royal Chapel of Naples. Gaspar himself spent some years as the organist of the of the Spanish Viceroy at Naples and was also a priest. After this he then came to appreciate the guitar music of the Italians, this was one of the main reasons he became a baroque guitar composer. Sanz’ musical output Consisted of various compositions within three volumes of Spanish style Baroque guitar. Sanz died in 1710 aged 70 in Madrid, Spain. Gaspar Sanz was well known for his various compositions for the Baroque guitar and the broad genre of Spanish Baroque music is both punteado (plucked) and rasqueado (strummed) style. One composition of which I have analysed and will share my analysis of today.

Canarios is taken from Sanz’ first volume of his three-book set, Instrucción de Música Sobre la Guitarra Española (written in 1674). Canarios translated to English means Canaries and the tune of the guitar playing is meant to simulate the beautiful song of the birds. It is also a Baroque Spanish dance. Although it is part of the ‘baroque’ repertoire, Canarios is a dance form, with a very Spanish flavour, so like all baroque piece’s rhythmic drive and continuity is crucial. You can hear this in the 6/8 metre, which switches from two groups of three (eg bar 7) to three groups of two (bar 8) and continues to alternate throughout the piece. This type of musical metric device is known as a hemiola (quite like the opening of Bernstein’s America from West Side Story). Like most Baroque music the unity of mood of Canarios is joyful and happy however it reaches an intense climax of excitement and exhilaration with strumming in the dynamic of fortissimo at the end of the piece. The unity of mood is also created by the rhythm which I spoke about earlier. The harmony is quite simple, so the spirited rhythmic drive and deft melody are central. Although it could be played at any tempo a quite bright and swift one such as allegro or even presto would be most appropriate. For the most part Canarios is very diatonic with very few notes outside of D major, this work also simply follows a chord progression of I-IV-I-V and so on. Gaspar Sanz has also used a baroque style of melody creating continuity throughout the piece as the opening melody is played a various amount of times throughout the piece, for example after the first 5 bars there is a repeat in the music and the opening is played twice consecutively. Overall this piece is extremely repetitive and has the same tone and mood throughout. Although there are no physically written dynamics on the score of music Canarios is played for the majority of the piece with fingerstyle picking of the strings and like most other Baroque pieces the level of the volume tents to stay fairly constant for stretches of time and is usually played at around mezzo-piano for the majority for the piece until it suddenly changes towards the end just like most other Baroque music pieces to a much louder fortissimo as it reaches its climax with strumming. The texture of Canarios unlike other Baroque pieces is mainly homophonic as it is written for one guitar player to play and most of the time there are multiple strings ringing but only one main melody being played.

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