Overview
Introduction
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
