The groundwork for the modern era had been laid by the 1940s, and new virtuosos emerged, such as the French guitarist Ida Presti (1924-67). She married guitarist Alexandre Lagoya (1929—99) in 19S2 and they started performing together in 19SS, becoming the first great postwar duo, with Lagoya arranging a wide range of works by mainstream classical composers. Their flowing legato approach, with vibrato giving a rich tone, and their expressive interpretation, made the duo very successful. They premiered Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Concerto for Two Guitars (1962), and their fine musicality can be heard on their 1965 recording of a Chaconne in G by Handel. This reveals a range of textures, from deep vibrato to passages with staccato and muting that are played with delicacy and great dynamic control.

Julian bream

One of the great figures in the history of the guitar, Julian Bream was born in London in 1933. He has enjoyed a long and influential career as a marvelous player and recording artist who has both arranged many works for the instrument and nurtured contemporary composition.

An admirer of Django Reinhardt, Julian Bream started on steel-string guitar before hearing a recording of Segovia playing Recuerdos de la Alhambra. He was captivated, and devoted his main energies to classical guitar. Growing up in postwar Britain, Bream had limited resources and developed his skills by acquiring whatever music was available, practicing with works such as Carcassi's Etudes. He was largely self-taught but helped by the Philharmonic Society of Guitarists, and he studied piano harmony and composition at the Royal College of Music at a time when classical guitar was not taught by music schools.

Bream made his public debut in 1946 at Cheltenham Art Gallery in England, and followed this with a bigger concert in 1947, playing a wide range of material. This included arrangements by Segovia of Bach,Tarrega's arrangements of Schuman and Albeniz, and pieces by Sor, Coste, and others. He started making BBC radio broadcasts in the late 1940s and played to great acclaim at his Wigmore Hall debut in 1951. He also took up the lute and played early music enthusiastically, which gave him an added perspective. Bream's album The Art of Julian Bream (1956) features works by Turina, Falla, and Segovia, and he embarked on a prolific recording and touring schedule, visiting North America in 1958.

Bream's playing is moving and marked by well-centered notes with a strong tone, and phrasing which has a strong musicality and depth of feeling. He felt that the guitar could convey an atmosphere and could cast a spell over the audience.

British composers

Bream mixed with a wide range of figures in the classical world in the 1950s, and actively encouraged composers to write for the guitar. He helped to demystify the instrument by explaining techniques and textural possibilities and writing articles. This was at a time when the guitar was capturing the imagination, and many composers started to produce high-quality works for the instrument. Among the British composers were Reginald Smith-Brindle, who was inspired by Segovia and wrote El Polifemo de Oro (1956), and Lennox Berkeley, who wrote Sonatina (1958).

Written for Bream, Malcolm Arnold's Guitar Concerto (Op.67) (1959) is based around some of Bream's favorite music. The first movement features colorful strumming and incorporates folk melodiousness. The middle lento movement was written as an elegy for Django Reinhardt, and has flavors of blues and jazz, while the last movement's delicacy is derived from lute music.

In the 1950s, Bream asked Benjamin Britten to compose a work for the guitar. The new work, entitled Nocturnal after John Dowland (Op.70), was completed in November 1963. A brilliant work full of color and variety, it exploits the guitar's versatility with technically difficult passages and transcends the limitations and styles of standard guitar repertoire. There are eight sections: the first, marked "Musingly," starts with single notes and offers mysterious rippling ascending arpeggios and dark mysterious chords. This moves to "Very Agitated," which is of full of nervous energy with accented chords; "Restless" offers bleak chords using fourths and seconds with a disturbing atonal melody; and "Uneasy" features flurries of short phrases which stop suddenly, and rocking hammered notes and arpeggios. "March-Like" features a double octave melody on the outer strings with rhythmic voicings using open strings, while "Dreaming" has warm open voicings and passages with artificial harmonics, and the beautiful "Gently Rocking" is rhythmic with a high weaving melodic line. This leads to the final "Passacaglia," in which a variety of upper-register phrases are answered by an insistent repeating bass figure that sets up tension. Arpeggiated chords open out with intervallic invention and lead to dramatic muted pizzicato lines, plucked voicings and open and forceful lines. This gives way to a delightful ending marked "Slow and quiet," resolving the complex feelings and moods with the graceful melody for Dowland's "Come Heavy Sleep," and gentle Elizabethan harmonies. It ends with simple tranquil chords, and dies away with a few sustaining single notes.

The piece was recorded on Bream's landmark album 20th Century Guitar (1967), featuring modern works played with great depth and interpretative perception.

Another major work, William Walton's Five Bagatelles (1972), was written for Bream and dedicated to Malcolm Arnold. Very expressive, it has touches of modernistic jazz harmony. It opens with a celebratory arpeggiated flourish on open strings, moving into an exuberant rhythmic and melodic section with constant metrical changes imparting energy and variety. Part II has a poly tonal depth with major inversions over unusual bass notes. Ill adopts a Cuban 3/8 rhythm and a dropped 6th string to D. After a reflective part IV, the piece ends with V, which opens with a rhythmic theme before building to an exultant climax.

Compositional developments

During the 1950s, a number of young composers wrote experimental and challenging music for the guitar. Pierre Boulez (b. 1925) included complex angular guitar lines in the sextet with voice Le Marteau sans Maitre (1954), Luciano Berio (b. 1925) used the guitar in his orchestral Nones (1955), and Hans Werner Henze (b. 1926) created a feeling of alienation with atonal lines for a guitar in DreiTientos (1958).

Cuban composer and guitarist Leo Brouwer (b. 1939) started to write works based on Cuban folk music and avant-garde ideas that often feature strong textural sounds and effects. Between 1959 and 1961 he produced important studies, later published as Etudes Simples. They are full of good musical content and are excellent developmental material, challenging guitarists with inventive modern ideas. Elogio de la Danza (1964) has Latin rhythms, El Decameron Negro uses African ideas from the Yoruba region, and The Eternal Spiral (1971) features Cuban rhythms and dramatic contrasts. At the beginning of the 1970s, Goffredo Petrassi's Nunc (1971) shows serialism and improvisational approaches, and Peter Maxwell Davies' Lullaby for Ilian Rainbow (1973) has a surreal detachment, while Toru Takemitsu's Folios (1973) offers meditative impressionism. Hans Werner Henze's First Sonata on Shakespearian Characters, Royal Winter Music (1976), and Second Sonata (1979) are difficult technical pieces in which Shakespearian figures are portrayed and dramatic situations described in music.

The more conservative repertoire expanded with the Venezuelan guitarist Alirio Diaz promoting interest in the work of his fellow countryman Antonio Lauro (1917—86), who has written attractive waltzes based on Venezuelan folk music, and SuiteVenezuelana based on folk rhythms.

John williams

Born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1941, John Williams came from a musical family: his father Len Williams was a gifted guitarist and teacher. Guided by his father, he began playing around the age of seven. The family moved to Britain in 1952, and Williams studied with Segovia from 1953—61 at the Chigiana Academy in Siena in Italy, where he was accorded the unusual privilege of giving a full recital in 1958. His first major recital at theWigmore Hall in London in November 1958 included works by Sanz, Scarlatti, Bach, and Sor; shortly after this he made his first commercial recordings. Williams started touring the world and was made professor of guitar at the Royal College of Music in 1960.

Possessed of a seemingly effortless accuracy, clarity of articulation, and incisiveness, Williams' technical brilliance was to some extent molded by Segovia's manner of interpreting works. In addition to solo recitals, he formed the Paganini Trio, which included violin and cello. Among works written for him are Stephen Dodgson's (b. 1924) Partita No. l and Duo Concertante for guitar and harpsichord. Highlights in his recording output include Paganini's Capriccio No. l (1965) and the outstanding album, John Williams Plays Spanish Music (1970), with its definitive performances of "Granados" and an outstanding version of the Albeniz work "Cordoba."Williams also recorded Bach to a high standard, including the Lute Suite No. 4 in E Major. He started playing in a duo with Julian Bream and their album Together (1971) features pieces by Falla, Ravel, Sor, Carulli, and Lawes that show how their contrasting styles are complementary and effective. In the same period Williams recorded Domenico Scarlatti's harpsichord works on guitar, which had been originally influenced by Spanish guitar music when they were written in the 18th century. Among 1970s works written for Williams are Andre Previn's Guitar Concerto.

One of Williams' most important contributions to the guitar has been the recordings of works by Paraguayan composer Agustin Barrios on his album John Williams Plays Barrios, which brought about a widespread appreciation of Barrios' work and its incorporation within the mainstream repertoire. During the 1980s, Williams promoted composers such as the Australian minimalist Peter Sculthorpe, premiering his Second Guitar Concerto in 1989, and in 1991, Williams formed the chamber group Attacca, which specialized in contemporary works.

The prince's toys

One of the most interesting and adventurous works, which stretches the boundaries of the classical guitar, is by the Russian composer Nikita Koshkin (b. 1956).The long six-movement suite, The Trince's Toys (1980), is a tour de force of surreal imagery, with novel sound effects, colors, and textures. It contains powerful marchlike rhythms and unusual harmonies, often using parallel voices, and repeating motifs. Strings are pulled hard away from the guitar to give a feeling of torsion, and occasionally snapped back percussively. After the first movement opens with melancholy harmonies, the second movement features the body of the guitar being hit percussively; staccato chords are added and there are driving continuous bass lines with rattling voicings. The third movement contains sad, plaintive voicings, scrapes along the strings, and thumps on the guitar body. Strangled percussive textures are created at the beginning of the fourth movement by wrapping strings across each other, and there are surging harmonies and snare drum effects.

The fifth movement has a happier playful mood, with ascending circling figures and snapped chords. The finale contains a reflective opening, jagged lines over a pedal tone, a variety of arpeggation, short developing motifs and chords with wide voicings. An elliptical tango is created with skewed figures and string scrapes, and there are muted passages featuring a pedal tone and luminous descending passages with microtonal bends on harmonics before the piece dies away to end with a long, mysterious scraping noise that conveys a sense of three-dimensional movement.
Another adventurous work is Luciano Berio's Sequenza Xljor Guitar (1988), which has powerful rasqueado strumming, percussive tapping, exotic arpeggiated harmonies, tremolo, and shimmering legato lines.

Takemitsu & brouwer

Two works have been written for Julian Bream by composers who have become important figures.

Toru Takemitsu's All in Twilight (1988) has a warm depth and beauty evoking a sense of mystery and the unknown. The first movement contains captivating voicings, mixed with harmonics, and there are marked shifts in tone and color with notes near the bridge. The second movement reveals a dark emotional theme with an unresolved tension, the third has dancing flurries of movement, and the fourth is entrancing with arcing lines of intervals and repeating motifs, with answering upper harmonics.

Leo Brouwer's Sonata for Guitar (1990) is a three-movement work that is full of contrasting episodes that collide with each other, switching suddenly from dissonance to consonance, and making short allusions to composers and different musical styles and periods.

Opening with harmonics with exotic swirling arpeggios, the first movement is full of reflective delicacy, with passages of melodic chords and juxtaposed areas of percussive dissonance, and color effects with Spanish and Cuban flavors. The second movement contains bell-like notes with somber melodies floating in a ruminative manner. The third movement is full of energy, with intertwining arpeggios and linear motifs, and builds with dramatic power to a sudden ending.

Crosscurrents

There has been a variety of crossover in guitar styles. The Brazilian Assad Brothers and Carlos Barbosa Lima have incorporated samba music, bringing a fresh rhythmic approach to the classical guitar. Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla (1921-92) wrote Tango Suite (1984) for them after hearing an arrangement of Carlos' work. In America, minimalist composer Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint (1987) uses electric guitar and was commissioned for jazz guitarist Pat Metheny. It has three movements and is made up of ten overdubbed guitar parts and two bass parts. A final live section is added by the guitar. It has continuous surging, pulsing harmonies and a theme from African horn music. Experimental composer and guitarist Glenn Branca's work, including Symphonies 1—10 from the 1980s and 1990s, uses specially built electric instruments and systems, such as all six strings tuned to one note set at various octaves and pitches, producing awe-inspiring energy with volcanic crescendos and avalanches of sound. Born in the former Yugoslavia, guitarist and composer Dusan Bogdanoyic (b. 1955) draws on a range of music. His Six Balkan Miniatures (1991) are inventive, drawing on indigenous folk songs and rhythms with an Islamic flavor.