We are all touched by Andres Segovia

I have been playing guitar, or attempting to play it in a fashion, since I was about 12 years old.  My mother tells me that even as a young child, I was drawn to the guitar, fascinated by it.  In other words, on some level, I always wanted to play the guitar, even before I started taking lessons and learning first-hand of its challenges and difficulties.

When I was in college, after years of playing rock music and writing my own songs, I found myself attracted to the intricacies and beautiful mystery of the classical guitar. The classical guitar, then as now, seemed apart from other guitar styles and apart from classical music. One man, especially, has been given a lot of the credit for helping to bring credibility to the modern classical guitar: Andres Segovia.  I learned who he was just barely before he died, in 1987.  My own studies of the classical guitar, if such modest attempts can be called "study," began with Mel Bay's Classic Guitar Method and with a few lessons through extension learning at the University of Texas. Since that time, I tried to practice a few pieces, and bought a nice, handmade classical guitar from the Croatian guitar prodigy Ana Vidovic, but mostly I languished as a classical guitarist, and I also did not do much with my other guitars, being mostly preoccupied with the business of living life and trying to get by.

In the last couple of years, I have picked up the classical guitar again, and tried to pursue it more earnestly, with the help of my current instructor, John Kiefer, who teaches guitar at the community college where I teach writing and literature. With John, I have tried to expand my repertoire, learn new skills, and break old habits.

Concurrent with the new routine, I have been reading more about classical guitarists, including Segovia, Christopher Parkening, and John Williams. In reading the Wikipedia entry on Segovia, I was taken aback by the statement that "practically all living classical guitarists are students of Segovia or students of his students."  This seemed implausible, until I began to research it a bit. I asked my instructor, and he nodded and said that his own instructor was a student of a Segovia protege. A little more removed than suggested by Wikipedia, but still pretty interesting.  Then I discovered, quite accidentally, that my first classical guitar instructor, someone I had only taken a few lessons from -- a Spanish guitarist named Maria Cortes -- had studied with Segovia.  I had found two links to me, an amateur guitarist living in suburban Houston, seemingly far from the influence of Europe and Spain.  Not bad.

Segovia's influence cannot be overstated, perhaps, although music writers have noted that there were other guitarists during Segovia's time (such as Ida Presti) who were just as talented and brilliant.  Yet Segovia had the gravitas, the dedication to the guitar like no other, and he had the studious, romantic image that conveyed something important about the guitar. (It also helped that he kept at it for so long, from the 1930s to1980s, giving continuity to his efforts.) Guitarists working today perhaps think of Segovia as too serious, too shut off from other genres and styles (several recent guitarists have made wonderful hybrid albums with the electric guitar, for instance, something that likely would have made Segovia shudder).  Segovia gave the classical guitar what it needed at the time, in order to be taken seriously by the classical music world, and his contributions made all that experimentation possible. And of course, he continues to, indirectly through his teaching and inspirational legacy, influence all students of the classical guitar.