Saturday, December 12, 2015

Mauro Giuliani 120 Arpeggio Studies for Classical Guitar

Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829), along with Fernando Sor, was considered to be one the
greatest guitar virtuoso from the early 19th century. He also played the cello and was a
prolific composer.
These exercises (published in 1815) thought out principally for the right hand get pro-
gressively harder and all studies are listed with their original number next to them. It's
amazing how the right hand only uses a simple alteration between C Major and G dom.
7 chords over three bars of music.
I have posted a selection of 8 exercises which I think are the ones that represent an ad-
vanced standard of right hand technique. I fell that this group summarizes all that
should be achieved all in a nutshell.
Whichever set of exercises you decide to work on, we should always take into account
important musical factors like dynamics (p, mf, f, cres., decres.), articulation (staccato,
legato, accents), tone control (tasto and pont and everything in between), tempi (slow/
fast, accelerando/decelerando) and most importantly voicing (placing emphasis on the
bass, middle or upper voices).
Here are some suggestions for developing a solid right hand arpeggio technique: play
the exercise on open strings, combine free and rest stroke, establish rhythmic precision
and alteration (change the values from long to short and vice-versa), play any series of
exercises sequentially as if they were a concert piece, use two different chords and al-
ways be observant and listen to yourself, this is not "zone-out" time.
http://www.stormthecastle.com/classical_guitar/Collection/120studies-for-right-hand.pdf