Guitar Pieces

Musical works arranged with style for the modern guitarist.

Category: nylon-string

“Moonlight” Sonata — Ludwig van Beethoven

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1800-1850, arrangement, nylon-string

An iconic piece of piano music! But how to play it on the classical guitar?

This page is my solution for the intermediate guitarist.

About the original

I won’t say too much about the original piece, because it’s so well known and so much has been written about it already — you probably wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know it already! But you can read more about it here.

One thing that makes this effort timely for me is that Beethoven titled it “Sonata Quasi Fantasia” — like a Fantasia — and I’ve also been working recently on arranging Fantasias written for lute a few generations earlier. By comparison, Beethoven’s piece is so much more orderly, measured, and consistent than its Baroque predecessors that the link is hard to see from this vantage point. However, Beethoven seems to have considered this piece (and its sister piece with the same title) as a departure from the well-established sonata form of his time, leaning toward a more improvisational and exploratory character.

Adapting from the piano

Adapting anything from piano to guitar involves a lot of big considerations, like…
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Sarabande — Robb Surridge

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1950-2000, composition, nylon-string

This piece is from my early days learning about music history and exploring music by Bach, Robert de Visée, and other Baroque composers.

Chamber music for solo instruments in the Baroque period often took the form of a suite of movements, each of which had features characteristic of a recognized dance form. This allowed for a pleasing variety of tempos and textures. This suite form was originally intended for people to dance to, but over time as composers brought more and more complexity to the individual pieces, the dancing became less frequent and the suites became played more often just for the pleasure of listening.

Sarabandes have often been my favorite movements in studying these suites. They are slow, and they often use minor keys or have sad affects even when their overall suite is mostly in a major key. The slow tempo provides a chance to really sit with the harmonies and the moments of dissonance. And it also makes them somewhat easier for players to realize, which can be a welcome respite from fast and complex counterpoint!
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Phantasia in A Minor — David Kellner

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1700-1750, arrangement, lute, nylon-string

Here’s another transcription from Kellner’s book of Selected Lute Pieces, 1747.

This Phantasia is the first piece in the book, and it makes for a great opening. It also translates beautifully to the guitar!

For some background on Kellner and the book, see also my earlier post on the Passepied.

The form

Phantasias/Fantasias are typically loose and quasi-improvisational in form, without any real expectations for their structure or internal modulations. They’re more like free explorations within a key, with occasional temporary departures into related keys. Kind of like a Prelude in Bach’s terminology, but without any accompanying fugue or any role within a larger form.

This example breaks down into three main chunks: a spacious intro that sets up the A minor key and finishes on a half-cadence on the dominant E major; a dense and fast middle section that explores some interesting harmonic territory with tasty implied chromatic lines; and an outro with similar qualities to the intro.
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Here, It Has Always Been Winter — Robb Surridge

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2000-2050, composition, nylon-string

I went to my cottage in late October to close it up for the winter.

It was cold that week! The house isn’t insulated, and the only options for heating are an open fireplace (which lets most of the energy escape up the chimney) and a kerosene heater that is inadequate for the large open living space. And neither can offset the gaps in the windows! So, whenever I wasn’t out doing chores, my world diminished to a tiny 8×8 bedroom.

One evening, I got a hockey game going quietly on the iPad and brought the guitar in from the cold living room. After it warmed up, this song is what came out.

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Passepied — David Kellner

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1700-1750, arrangement, lute, nylon-string

Here’s a charming little piece, originally written for the lute, that I’ve adapted for guitar.

[Image from IMSLP, public domain.]

The source

This piece comes from a book published in 1747, entitled David Kellners XVI. Auserlesene Lauten-stücke, or Selected Lute Works. It was written by David Kellner, a German composer who lived most of his professional life in Sweden working as a church organist.

The title is a little funny, because there appear to be 17 separate compositions in there, even if we count the Sarabanda and Double on page 44 together as one. There’s an anonymous suggestion on IMSLP that the XVI is intended to mean that it’s Kellner’s sixteenth work, which is possible but hard to verify based on what’s known of his written output. His life story isn’t germane to this piece, but you can read more about him here if you’re curious.

There don’t seem to be any other records from Kellner’s lifetime that refer to him playing the lute. So, either this was a talent of his that wasn’t as much in the public eye as his organ playing, or it could be that he wrote the material on keyboard and fingered it for the lute for publication. Though that seems unlikely to have been a winning sales idea, as 1747 is at the tail end of the lute’s era of prominence.

The book contains mostly short pieces in traditional dance forms, with a few loose fantasias, and one really long Chaconne. I’m enjoying getting to know them. I hope to share more of them over time, because the guitar could use more characteristically Baroque repertoire, from a wider variety of composers, that isn’t as intense and hard to play as some of the usual suspects.

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