Since they first came to light in 1987, the Ten Etudes by Giulio Regondi
have become an integral part of the guitar’s repertoire all over the
world. They have been performed and recorded numerous times by several
important guitarists and served as required pieces in international
competitions. Their undisputed value was, and still is, not only their
unique artistic excellence as paragons of a compositional inspiration
seldom seen in guitar music of the nineteenth century, but also their
function as didactic material in many teaching programs, both private
and public. The story of how they came to our attention was described in
detail in my articles on their provenance in the 1990 first edition,
edited by John Holmquist, and in the 1995 Critical edition edited by
myself. Since then, a couple of heretofore unknown manuscripts of these
Etudes were discovered, the most remarkable of these was a manuscript of
the first eight Etudes, copied by J.A. Hudleston in 1857, presumably
dedicated to Hudleston by Regondi, presented as a gift to Madame Sidney
Pratten, and eventually acquired by the late Karl Scheit. That
manuscript was found in his nachlass by Dr. Stefan Hackl. This
manuscript is a preliminary version of eight of the Ten Etudes, and it
provides us with a unique view into the composer’s developing ideas
about these Etudes and a clearer comprehension of their biography. The
other manuscript, this time of the complete set of Ten Etudes, was found
by Angelo Gilardino, at the time the director the Segovia Foundation,
in the Segovia Archives in Linares. That manuscript was presented to
Segovia as a souvenir of his visit to Leningrad in 1926, by the
secretary of the Leningrad Guitar Society, Dr. Viktor Nikolaevich Finné.
It turned out to be an almost exact duplicate of the Kovalevskaya Ms.
and provided no new insights, beside the realization that this music was
in the possession of Andrés Segovia since 1926. The present edition is a
revision of the 1995 Critical edition in which I corrected several
misprints reported by users, and also some discovered by me during a
minute examination of the edition and its sources, the original Klinger
and Kovalevskaya manuscripts. The Hudleston and the Segovia-Finné
manuscripts were also considered. The edition has been thoroughly
revised to reflect a clearer picture of the harmony and a better
depiction of the actual durations of the notes of the several voices. At
the same time, a new layer of editorial fingering has been added,
mainly to provide students and amateurs with an easier access to this
music. Matanya Ophee
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Ver Extracto ♫ )
