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Romance origins
Romance is
also known as Spanish Ballad, Romanza
Espanol, Spanish Romance, Romance Anonimo,
Romanza, Romance d'amour, and Jeux
Interdits. Nobody really knows who composed
this piece but it's now believed by some to
be a pre Spanish Inquisition Jewish song.
The Sephardic Jews had
been in the Iberian Peninsular (Spain
and Portugal) since biblical times.
Throughout their history they were
persecuted in one form or another and
this reflects in their melancholic songs
and melodies.
During the
Moorish occupation (711 - 1492) they lived
in relative harmony with the Moslems. But
when the Christians finally captured the
Alhambra in 1492, both Moors and Jews were
asked to kindly leave, so they did. This
put an end to an era which could hardly be
called romantic. But love and romance
always finds a way to exist and get
immortalised in song.
Strange beliefs
about this melody.
It's
intereseting to read some of the comments
on my 'Ragtime Romance' and
'Tremolo Romance' You
tube video pages.
Here
are some examples.
 "U guys
forgot to say that this song is from a
Brazilian player called Waldyr
Azevedo. Name of the tune: Abismo de
Rosas"
"using
tremolo in Gomez's Romance....very
original :P"
"The
composer of romance (Jeux interdits)
is unknown. What makes you think its
by Gomez? If you are referring to
William Gomez, He does perform this
piece but he is not the composer. The
composer is unknown."
isn't
this "Romanza" by "edward elgar" ????
the original version is not
tremoloed.... but nice playing
man!
I
added a comment of my own.
"One
fellow wrote to me and insisted that
Romance was composed by Narciso Yepes
and was French in origin. Narciso
Yepes plays this music in the 1952
movie "Jeux Interdits", but if you
have a good look at the credits, you
will see that Romance is credited as
"Traditional: arranged - Narciso
Yepes."
I used
Romance to develop technique
Romance
is one of those pieces that will
never die. The first part in A minor
is relatively easy to learn but it
still has some nasty stretches to
master. The second section is a real
bugger and classical guitar
lessons are strongly advised
to get that right. The arpeggio style
is common in classical guitar pieces
as is the tremolo and block
chords.
I still
remember many moons ago when I started
playing the guitar. I taught myself to read
music and I had not taken any real
classical guitar lessons
(around 1973). I shared the rent and a
hippy lifestyle with a bunch of other young
people and we had a great time doing drugs,
getting drunk and other silly things I
wouldn't dream of doing now. But often they
wanted to sleep when I felt like practicing
my guitar. So I would take my guitar to the
Bondi Rocks and played all night to the sea
and surf. I only knew a few Carcassi and
Sor pieces at the time as well as
Romance. I would dream up
different ways to play it and this made
technical practice a pleasure. I played it
in many different arpeggio styles as well
as various tremolo and block chord
styles.
When I
started taking serious classical
guitar lessons I learned new ways
to play it. It has been said that this is
the easiest classical piece to learn but
the hardest to master. When I started
playing in restaurants I never considered
including Romance in my
repertoire. I thought nobody wanted to hear
it because it was such a simple, well known
tune like Greensleves. But I was wrong. I
played it once after I had run out of the
fancy stuff and the response was amazing.
It got the first applause of the whole
night at the end of the night. I realized
then that I had played it so much I was
actually deaf to the music because I was so
hung up with playing with technique always
in my mind. I learned to loosen up after
that and enjoy my own music. That was a
real revelation to me. I could 't hear the
bloody music. I have since learned to not
only hear it but also feel it.
If you
really want to enjoy the music you play, I
have two bits of advice. Firstly, get the
technique right from the start by taking
some classical guitar
lessons from a good teacher. The
whole thing about technique is to get to
know it so well that you can later forget
it when you play music. Secondly, split
your practice time into two sections. For
the first half of your practice time focus
on careful technical training and then
loosen up and just play without thinking
about technique. Let your brain forget the
details and treat this playing time as a
meditation where you train yourself to
feel the music.
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