Peter Worley: Classical Guitar Tunes - English Folk Songs: Solo pour Guitare

This book presents 42 English folk songs arranged for the intermediate classic guitarist in standard notation with phrase and dynamic markings plus light fingering. The collection includes popular melodies like Sprig of Thyme, Seventeen Come Sunday, and Blow the Wind Southerly, but also lesser known but no less beautiful tunes like Cupid the Pretty Ploughboy, Dabbling in the Dew and Saucy Sailor. All the arrangements present the basic tune faithfully and simply before offering more elaborate and sophisticated variations suitable for concert performance. Without compromising their sophistication, these polyphonic arrangements are elegant and idiomatic to the guitar, all but devoid of excessive physical demands; even barré chords are kept to a minimum so the player can relax and focus on tone and interpretation. The primary objective of this collection is to draw attention to these deserving melodies, some of which are now rarely heard. Longtime fans of the genre will recognize a few songs once performed by folk-rock groups like Steeleye Span and The Fairport Convention, here presented anew for the solo classic guitar. “It’s an excellent collection - good to play for pleasure, good for learning and consolidating rhythm, good for sight-reading. Just marvelous. It should meet a lot of needs. Gilbert Biberian. “These are very accessible arrangements of 42 English folk tunes, some of which are familiar and many others which deserve to be better known. They are all tuneful and have interesting harmonies and rhythms in arrangements which will be well within the reach of intermediate guitarists. These fine settings would be useful pieces for a teacher looking for supplementary material and also for the performer looking for unhackneyed repertoire. They are thoughtfully presented with good fingering and phrasing, with idiomatic guitar writing and interesting harmonies. Congratulations to Peter Worley for presenting this compendium of gems from a lesser known tradition.” Gerald Garcia