My
first nylon string guitar - after playing steel for years - was a
Toyota
(never saw another) and the first piece I wanted to study on it was Sor's 9th
Study.I had an old Segovia LP
called Three Centuries of the Guitar, given to me when I was 13, just starting
guitar.I listened to it a bit and
put it away - I was into Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, and fingerpicking at the
time.But 8 fingerpicking years
later, I started playing the Segovia LP again - you know how this can happen -
and this time fell helplessly, hopelessly, and madly in love with it.On side 2 were some Sor studies, and I just fell in love with them.There was the 9th and the 20th, which thrilled me to the quick.True, I had been doing some mean fingerpicking, but this was a quantum
leap beyond even Dave Van Ronk.This
my friends, was ANDRES SEGOVIA.I
realized I’d been a fool to have ignored the LP for so many ages, relegating
poor old Andy to the bottom of the record pile.Suddenly I could listen to nothing else.And those delightful studies.I
decided to learn at least the 9th, which sounded the more manageable, compared
with the devilish 20th.You recall I
said I only had a steel string guitar at the time, but I could read music, so I
went out and bought
Segovia
's edition of 20 Studies by Fernando Sor.I
used my Martin D-18 and learned the 9th study respectably enough to decide my
new prowess warranted a classical guitar.The
only one I could afford was this
Toyota
guitar – cheap as they come, dead as a doornail, nowhere near as good as a
Yamaha C40, but there you have it.I learned all the Sor studies after that, and never (well, hardly ever)
played steel string again.
You
know, that very edition of
Segovia
’s arrangements of 20 Studies by Sor is still on my music stand - I just
looked over to check and yep - there it is. That wouldn't be so strange in
itself but it was ... let me see... 33 years ago.
I
don't say this edition has been constantly on my music stand for 33 years
straight, but this particular edition (costing $1.50, I see on the cover)
somehow always seems to make its way back there.I'd put the Sor studies as the best set of Guitar Etudes of all time -
not that the Villa Lobos Etudes, or the Coste, or the Giulianni, or the Carcassi,
are chopped liver.The Sor are my
favorites, though.They’re the
definitive studies, IMHO.And the
Segovia
edition is the definitive version.Mine
is published by Edward B. Marks, by the way.No idea if it’s still in print.