This post was overtaken by fast moving Mueller events earlier today so I’m reposting it now.
Don’t ever let some snooty keyboard player tell you that they invented the Theme and Variations. It was us, the fretboard players! I have a theory why we did so; the particular technical demands of the instrument require lots of practice to get a piece of music under one’s fingers. Guitarists can be trained to sight-read fluently, but in general we don’t. We hole up in our bedrooms or studios or dining room tables and hammer away at something for weeks or months or even years. So, the stuff we learn carves a deep groove. Plus we want to get value for our effort, so we come up with ways to spin stuff out another sixteen bars or times through the verse. Variation comes naturally to us. Even intermediate players feel the call to improvise and compose. Learning guitar music is quite a solitary pursuit, too. There’s no conductor beating time and telling us we’re done with our part, no other musicians to yield to. We can just go on and on if the fancy takes us. That’s my theory, anyway.
As I mentioned earlier this week, I am working up a set of stuff suitable for background music for happy hours and the like. I’ve decided that it will take the shape of a walk through music history. Partially for aesthetic purposes and also for practical ones. My repertoire is spread pretty evenly from the Renaissance up to the 20th century. I tell you this to illustrate how a a swell idea blossoms into an arduous task, an untenable ordeal, and finally a high-minded failure. But it keeps me off the pavement.
The vihuelaist (the vihuela is a cousin of the guitar) Luis de Narvaez set of “differencias” or variations was the first ever published. This is his Guardame las Vacas which is in a slightly different in character. It is a set of variations based not on a theme but a ground. That is, a set of chords that repeats over and over. If you listen closely you can hear the harmony I play repeats while what goes over the top becomes increasingly more elaborate. Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” is a bit like that, for reference. If you listen to his guitar part you will find rather than strumming some set pattern he varies it with almost every iteration. Did he know he was partaking of a centuries old guitar tradition? Very likely, I think!
Still a little rough (I just started it in earnest a few weeks ago), but coming around nicely. I’m like the only classical player I know who doesn’t know this one already. Shameful. Just one of those odd lacunas in one’s education.
I think both Luis de Narvaez and Jimi Hendrix would recognize a tip jar when they see it. And this is mine. It is the fund that’s split between all eventual
Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republicans.