Some time ago my Peruvian friend Hugo asked me and
Charlotte to record and upload a duet with the cello
playing a melody and the charango playing a tremolo
accompaniment. Without a doubt a great idea and I'm
sure it would sound wonderful. Unfortunetly my tremolo
skills are rather poor, but his request inspired me,
and I came up with an idea. Classical guitar composers
like Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909) and Agustín
Barrios Mangoré (1885-1944) have composed several solo
guitar pieces like the f...(+)
Some time ago my Peruvian friend Hugo asked me and
Charlotte to record and upload a duet with the cello
playing a melody and the charango playing a tremolo
accompaniment. Without a doubt a great idea and I'm
sure it would sound wonderful. Unfortunetly my tremolo
skills are rather poor, but his request inspired me,
and I came up with an idea. Classical guitar composers
like Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909) and Agustín
Barrios Mangoré (1885-1944) have composed several solo
guitar pieces like the famous “Recuerdos de la
Alhambra”. The accompaniment of these polyphonic
pieces is played by the right hand thumb while the
right hand index finger, ring finger and middle finger
produce the melody by imitating the tremolo of the
mandolin. By the use of the tremolo technique mandolin
players imitate the melodic modulation characteristics
of string instrument such as the violin or the cello,
so I wondered how it would sound to rearrange one of
these solo guitar tremolo pieces in the form of a cello
and guitar duet. For this experiment I picked the
lovely song “Canción de la hilandera” (Song of the
spinner) by the great Paraguayan guitarist and composer
Agustín Barrios Mangoré. Instead of just using broken
chords for the accompaniment, Barrios composed a
beautiful melody for the second voice which is
interwoven with the main melody and a bass
accompaniment like the thread of a spinner. The first
voice of this duo arrangement can be played by various
instruments like violin, cello, flute, and many others.
