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Andrés Segovia

 

...Arena del Sur caliente
que pide camelias blancas.
Llora flecha sin blanco,
la tarde sin mañana,
y el primer pájaro muerto
sobre la rama.
¡Oh, guitarra!
Corazón malherido
por cinco espadas.
F. García Lorca

Andrés Segovia's original autograph. Year 1953 signed after a concert offered in the Philharmonic Society.
Eulogio Albalat's particular collection

 

Portrait of García Lorca (1989-1936). Personal friend of Segovia, they coincided in New York, opening him the guitarist the cultural and social doors of the City.

 

Program N º 1: Tuesday, On July 29, 1919. 19:30 hours.
Place: Theatre Rosalía de Castro. La Coruña.
Promoter: Andrés Segovia
Programa: Sor, Tárrega, Vieuxtemps, Beethoven, Mendelsohn, Schubert, Chopin, Granados and Albéniz.
Prices of the localities: from 1 up to 4 pesetas in Prosceniums.
Document of transcendency for musicologists specialists in Guitar. The first Concert that Andrés Segovia offered to the public of La Coruña. It was a habitual practice to move up to this City and to embark from here towards America to realize tours of concerts, and Segovia, it was not an exception. The program can be read in three parts close to the taste of the epoch.

 

Program N º 1 obverse: The prologue belongs to Ricardo Baeza, writer and diplomatic friend of Manuel de Falla, Segovia and Juan Ramon Jiménez, pilgrim for the Lebanon, the Balkans and Turkey in 1910, wrote the books "From Barcelona to Jerusalem by foot" and "Without money for a Spanish pilgrim". Pilgrim of foot and without money in the most ferreous of the traditions.
Verses of The Count of Santibañez of the Rio.

 

Program N º 2: On December 30, 1958. 20 hours.
Place: Colon Theater, La Coruña.
Promoter: Philharmonic Society of La Coruña.
Program: V. Galileo, Narváez, Roncalli, Sor, Bach, Scarlatti, Tansman, Villalobos, Rodrigo, Granados and Albéniz.
Guitar: Well-known Hermann Hauser
Notes to the Program: draft of the Philharmonic Society.
Observations: both programs, with 39 years of difference among them, consist of three parts and finish with Granados and Albéniz.

 

Program N º 2 obverse: To observe here, that both programs, with 39 years of difference among them, consist of three parts each one, and they finish with paths works of Granados and Albéniz. The "Tonadilla" of Granados repeats itself.

Andrés Segovia, was born on February 18, 1894, in the village of Linares, province of Jaen, Spain.
Son of a humble carpenter, is probable that of having grown up with him could never have followed his musical vocation. Nevertheless, the destination wanted to put it in hands of a few uncles who were enjoying an economic wide position... And even this way, the things were not so simple.
The refrain repeated in the infancy of many people of the big musicians of the history, is that his relatives did not see with good eyes his artistic zeals. And Andrés Segovia was not the exception. For him, the family wanted the pharmacist's trade, as which remedy did not have any more that to study guitar only and furtively.
To the previous thing, it must add the fact that in the years of his childhood, the guitar was a despised instrument, since it was considered to be proper of the gypsies and his dancers.
His first teacher was a Flemish Andalusian gipsy barber who was tearing tastefully the strings of the guitar. Later, during the adolescence, he  was in the Institute of Music of Granada, where the experience was extending little by little the wealth of resources that allowed him to perfect his performance.
And even to the step of the years, turned already into the biggest classic guitarist of the world, Andrés Segovia was continuing in stage of preparation. He never stopped studying and the practice of the guitar of was going at least five hours a day.
His taste towards the instrument and the interest that he was putting in his learning, took it to advance rapidly. In 1910, when he was 16 years old, he gave his first concert in the Spanish city of Granada, where he presented a digest that he had formed  with scores found in libraries and adjustments to works of the big musicians.
Though he continued offering recitals, it was a presentation offered in Madrid in 1913 the one that Segovia considered to be his début. Since he did not have a good guitar, he decided to rent it and the result was a clamorous success.
Eleven years later, in Paris, he would appear already as an international virtuoso. He was 31 years old and was the best guitarist of the world.
In addition, he was fond of the reading; the books of philosophy and history were his favorites. Even already approached the setentas, he had started writing his memories that he was taking as title "The guitar and I". Andrés Segovia married in three occasions throughout 94 years through that he lived. The first two times I am widowed, and his third wife, Emilia del Corral, whom he was calling affectionatly Emilita, was forty five younger than years he and he accompanied it up to the last moment of his life.
After many presentations, recognitions and plaudits lengthways and width of the world, the king of Spain granted him in 1981 the Marquess's title of Salobreña. Six years later, Segovia was employed at his speech of investiture as Doctor "Honoris Causes", when the death surprised it. He was 94 years old, the majority of they dedicated to his passion: the guitar.
 

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