We are always happy to discuss suitability of editions for your requirements, particularly for ensembles. Contact us on (+44) 0 7535 463 936 or email us at Music questions .
If you wish to hear some of the guitar items, a selection of guitar pieces can be heard by going to Recordings These vary in quality, as some were made with a school ensemble, some of the solo pieces were recorded in less than ideal settings, but they will give you a sense of what the music is like before you part with any hard-earned cash. Because of limited space, not all the recordings are immediately clickable from the website, but they can be supplied free of charge if requested from Music questions .
Corda Music's Guitar Catalogues cover the spectrum from Solo Classical Guitar to complete Guitar Orchestras, from lute music to jazz, and from guitars alone to guitars with other instruments. We provide sets of parts for all ensemble editions. See further below for details of grading music, from easy to advanced. Two other guitar books of a more general nature are published:
19th Century Guitar Songs — An Idiosyncratic Survey. ISBN 978-0-9528220-7-3. £20.00 This book has 264 pages, including 50 pages of music examples. Guitar Songs The volume is a general survey of the many thousands of guitar songs currently held by the British Library which were published in the period c.1770 - 1900. A number of other collections are also detailed. The book includes full reference to the publications, extensive notes about the myriad composers and arrangers featured, also much detail from writers and other sources of the period, as well as information from more recent research. Additions and updates will be added online, as and when they become available. See our latest offerings: The Streitwolf Songbook (12 songs) CMP 178, and 17 Songs by J.H.G.Streitwolf -CMP 179 Guitar & other instruments/voices
Guitar Music from the 16th to the 18th Centuries. £10.00 This is a reprint of 19 articles written by Ian Gammie between 1982 to 1984 for the now defunct publication GUITAR Magazine. These were commissioned by the editor George Clinton to introduce guitar players to the repertoire, history and development of the four- and five-course guitars. The purpose was to provide an outline for players who had limited knowledge of their instrument's early history and also to examine the problems of transcribing music from the historical re-entrant tunings to make a performing version on the modern guitar. There are copious music examples and detailed text in the 52 pages. Though much research has been done since the 1980s in this area of guitar history, the articles still stand as a very useful introduction to the subject. The original publications in the magazine had numerous misprints and problems with layout presentation (beyond the control of the writer) and these have been corrected, including improved clarity of the facsimile examples. Catalogue number GTR-2.
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References to Grade numbers refer to the standards of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. We provide an approximate assessment of the level of difficulty of the ensemble music. This is inevitably subjective, but at least gives some guide to help you choose suitable playing material. Some editions have parts played with a capo so that inexperienced players familiar only with notes in first position can play higher parts without reading too many ledger lines.
|
Level |
Description |
|
A |
Very easy |
|
B |
Easy |
|
C |
Easy to intermediate |
|
D |
Intermediate |
|
E |
More difficult |
|
F |
Difficult |
|
G |
Very experienced players |
|
S |
Special forces required : e.g. singers, other
instrumentalists, percussion, etc. |
Where two letters are given for level of difficulty (e.g. F/D ) it means that one part will be noticeably more difficult than the rest. This is useful for many ensembles where there are players of varying abilities. The category A/A is used to show the simplest possible level of ensemble, usually requiring a range of 8 notes or less per part.
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Our guitar ensemble music ranges from duos to octets. Almost all of them can be played by large guitar orchestras or with just a single instrument on each part. Additionally, some have alternative extra parts, so a quartet might have a fifth part that can be used if enough players are available. In other cases, notably in the Jazz Ensemble series, the music can be played by 2, 3, 4 or even 5 players: the individual editions give explanations of how to organise this and sufficient parts to allow for flexibility. Where a work is specifically intended only for a single player per part, (as with a few specifically composed guitar trios and quartets) the composer's instructions will be given with each particular edition.
Teachers who are looking for ensemble material for students will be pleased to see that most of the easier trios and quartets are designed so that the teacher can play one or more of the lower parts or use a chord accompaniment to fill out the texture, thereby increasing confidence in performance with inexperienced pupils. It also means that more players can be grouped on the main melodic parts if desired.
A further option is to use other instruments mixed in with guitars - flutes, recorders, bass guitar, violin, electric keyboard, glockenspiel, etc. Simple percussion parts can easily be added as well. Many of the ensembles are written with each guitar playing a single melodic line, so other melody instruments can be employed in various ways, as long as the balance of sound is maintained between guitars and the other instruments. The same caveat about balance of sound applies to the use of electric guitars in the ensembles. However, the music is always complete just as a guitar ensemble - the possibilities mentioned above are always ad lib.
Most Corda Music guitar ensembles have a full score and two sets of parts (but see details with each edition). Experience has shown that this is a popular format for many guitar groups, and we offer extra parts in any quantity that may be needed. The parts are marked in a suitable place with the publisher's stamp in red ink. This is to assist identification of illegal photocopies (even colour copiers have to use toner rather than printer's ink). Our lawyers promise that any person found to have made illegal photocopies will have the gizzards ripped out of their wallets and the intestines boiled from their bank accounts, just for starters. Don't even ask about the main course.
The good news is that we supply extra parts in any quantity you require, and at very cheap prices, so please get in touch when you need additional parts or scores. Other publishers' editions (such as Sul Boca and Sondauer Music ) may have more or less sets of parts: see the catalogue for individual details.
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From time to time, incipits of selected works will appear in Corda's Website. Obviously, the screen resolution cannot do justice to the actual printed page, but it does help illustrate the layout and also show the grading standard in action.
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Last updated 1st September 2023