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The Baroque Guitar in Spain 

It's one of the interesting paradoxes of music history that during the century-long craze for the 5-course 'Chitarra Spagnuola' which swept Europe around 1600, infecting royalty and commoners alike, with hundreds of books of music written for it by dozens of composers in France and Italy, that almost nothing survives from Spain, its spiritual home. Part of the reason might be the economic and political senility of the Spanish Empire in a constantly progressing state of decay since the end of the 16th century; little music of any kind was published.  

Another reason might be the evanescent nature of the music itself, coming as it did from an instrument which inhabited the separate worlds of folk and art music. Few guitarists or their activities were documented in Spain because in Spain everyone was a guitarist, and while the quality might range from the dismal scratchings of someone waiting for a shave at the barbershop (where there were always a few guitars hanging on the wall) to the inspired improvisation of a musician in the theatre or at court, the music itself was free and spontaneous, never intended to be notated; part of the internal dialogue of the Spanish people. In any event, we're lucky that three Spanish guitarists of this period did write their music down for publication; Francisco Guerau and Gaspar Sanz in the 17th century, and the subject of the present recording, Santiago de Murcia, in the 18th. Such is the beauty and vitality of what they have left us that it can still give delight today, even aswe pensively contemplate all the wonderful sounds that have gone forever, vanished on an evening breeze 300 years past. 

In order to appreciate Santiago's achievement I need to say a little about his two predecessors, both of them very different. Guerau, who was a choirmaster at the Royal Chapel in Madrid, wrote in a serious, elevated style. His main subject was the Passacalle, an exploration and elaboration of simple chord progressions which Spanish musicians treated with the same respectful attitude that Germans reserved for the Prelude and Fugue. His one publication, the Poema Harmonica of 1694 is one of the high points of 17th century Spanish music. 

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