545 original guitar scores, 488 tunes (including 61 with english lyrics and 43 with Latin lyrics) and 61 mp3 voice and guitar
Preface to the English version
I know that many pieces will not be useful for people not speaking italian but anyway I hope that having these scores someone else might be pushed to increment the number of scores "translated" for guitar.
Introduction
This website was born to offer a tool to everybody who whishes to use guitar to accompany liturgic tunes and who whishes to make it "playing the notes", thus reading a complete score, and, when I tried to play in this way, I realized that the available materials were hard to find.
Website structure
In the Score section a number of common use tunes have been collected, from gregorian to recent years, mainly guided by my specific needs. In the English lyrics section you will find some English versions.
In the Psalms you will find a wide collection mainly from Rev. Antonio Parisi (thanks to his rich and generous site) and Rev. Gian Carlo Soli (who let me access to his private file). Some of them are proposed in English.
In the Liturgy of the hours section you will find specific material produced by Rev. Francesco Vecchi.
In the Performances section some practical examples made together with my friend Giovanni, excellent tenor of the Bologna Cathedral Choir
In the Theory section some notes on music theory to give some very first information to possible curious readers.
I inserted the Ruaro section as a personal thanks to Rev. Pierangelo Ruaro who has been an unaware guide thanks to his beautiful transcriptions.
The Thanks section was a personal necessity to say thank you to all the people who inspired, helped or sustained me.
The Biography section tells something on how I have learnt something about liturgical music.
The Workshop section was born to thanks to some masters and friends with whom I shared hours of study of harmony and composition.
In the Index section you will find a whole list of the available tunes.
In the Links section some indications of significant websites I met.
In the Contacts section the information on how to contact me.
Observations
I will not be the one that will solve the long-standing issue on the opportunity of using the guitar to support songs during offices.
My little experience (talking about relevance, but lasting more than thirty years) lead me to suggest not to worry on the if it is appropriate but on the how you can use this instrument at its best.
We can quibble for long times on the fact that in a perfect world every parish should have a marvelous polyphonic choral and that brilliant organists should always be at disposal so to animate whichever celebration, but concretely speaking, actual world is made of a various set of musical experiences and proposals.
My guitar teacher told me that when he was a young boy, guitar was considered no more than a tavern instrument, with no dignity to be included in the classes of a music conservatory.
Nowadays, instead, every Italian music conservatory graduates brilliant musicians that helps to discover o re-discover the wide repertory of pieces written or transcribed for this instrument.
Though, at the same time in which the so called “classical music” world was valorizing the guitar, noble instrument with ancient origins, inside the Christian community its use is still almost exclusively reserved for the so called “young” repertoires of songs and it is quite exclusively used as a rhythmic accompaniment. Here you can find some proposals that are little and simple transcriptions that can be used as a hint by those interested in a less common use.
This scores were made for the existing material is quite scarce; the only (and blessed) releases that I am aware are by Pierangelo Ruaro “Sulle corde e sui flauti” Rugginenti editions, the whole collection of the Taizé’s songs that includes guitar scores and, in addition, some more Ruaro’s score published into the “Musica e assemblea”.
As I usually accompany songs during the mass, I had to take my pen to write what you can see here, including transcriptions born while attending some spiritual or musical events.
As I am not a professional musician, I let them as a gift to anyone that may use them.
As a learning help I have begun to insert some “synthetic” mp3 just to have an idea on how the playing could be. Speed of execution is merely indicative. I'm on and on inserting played mp3 (despite my playing imperfections) that I have highlighted with the (guitar) indication and some includes the voice (thanks to my friend Giovanni) highlighted with the (voice and guitar) indication and collected in the Performances section.
Note around fingering:
a friend of mine, an excellent guitar player, once asked me (gracefully) if I was thinking to be Segovia indicating such precise details, in short, if I'd gone to my head..
Contrariwise, fingering (sometime even imperfect) is intended to be a little help to make the task a bit easier to whom is not so skilled with writing for classical guitar; I apologize to the expert guitarists.
Note around tablatures:
I am not a fan of tablatures, nevertheless, as I know many people use and love them, I decided to start inserting some.
