Do you think that there exist special places, buildings or landscapes that can tell you anything?. Me too. I belive in the existence of some kind of soul for some places. A soul that sometimes is if not visible, is at least perceptible.
To show these places, we’ve started a new series in our blog-system, called Charming Places… to play. A combination of guitar music and a charming environment.
Sure, I knows that these are absolutely personal and subjective feelings, but we can share them…
Come and visit, on the first delivery, the romanesque church of Santa María de Piedeloro, in Asturias (northern Spain), a little and remote jewel, lost among milenary meadows…
During one of those crisis that every guitarist suffers, I decided that will be amazing to play flamenco guitar. In that time, I believed I could learn flamenco as I had learned the classical one and I found the perfect teacher, Mr. Serra. He was a true gipsy guitarist in his sixties., who speaks in a correct Catalan language, as few gipsy usually do today in Barcelona. He received me on gown dress, elegant in his way. He was really an artist, and a good teacher, but there was a problem: soon I realized that I don’t have “duende”.
But what “duende” is?. That’s a good question. It is something that in fact, only gypsy musicians possess. It is something magic that is not possible to teach nor learn. Gypsy learn music not in a school but at home or in the streets. So, they are not so much academics, and perhaps they take not a lot care on their nails. As flamenco guitars have the strings very low, strings repeatedly hits the mast. But they have “duende”, and they produced a wonderful, distinctive sound. Sometimes magic. Everybody can easilly perceive it only by listen them.
You can appreciate this “magic” in that video about great maestro Melchor de Marchena, one of the best flamenco guitarist of any time. Pay attention to a phrase in the interview…
- A qué tipo te cantaor prefiere usted acompañar? -Do you prefeer, to acompain, any kind of “cantaor”?
-Eh que todos cantan muy bien Eh, all of them sing very well.
-A mi me gusta mucho Manolo Caracol I like a lot Manolo Caracol.
-Cuando Manolo canta, saco cosas de la guitarra que no las sé When Manolo sings, I get off from the guitar things that I don’t know.
- También hay otro cantaor que me gusta mucho, que es Mairena, que canta muy bien.There is another cantaor wich I like a lot, Mairena, who sings also very well
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All of us (are we religious or not) need a pilgrimage. Go to those places and that inspired events and works that are beyond our knowledge, convinced that they are hiding some kind of secrets. So, we visit the homes of painters and writers, as we do with shrines. What must be truth in that? Those places really have anything special, or were artist that created the unusual by themselves ?
I do not know, but I also pilgrim. Today, to the summer hut of the Norwegian painter Edward Monch. A year ago I “discovered” the work of this man which liked to paint sick and dying, but also white girls surrounded by peaceful landscapes, as this famous “girls on the pier”
Today, with several degrees minus zero, the famous pier was snowy, sea was icy, and the pier empty. As you can see , the house is still there, as is was, but the pier is no more woooden.
In the small summer house that Munch once occupied, all was silence. The snow gave it a peace that perhaps, his owner never enjoyed when alive.
You can read a post onsimilars questions, but this time about the Alhambra, by our friend Mark Antony
My name, “Montserrat, comes from a magic mountain located not far from Barcelona. It’s a Mountain formed by conglomeratic rock, an infrequente type of rock caracterized by strange forms that erosion produces on it.
But it’s not only that. It’s also a “holy” place in many senses as music is. The choir, of its monastry has been, along th history, a major place for music studies. One of its relevants pupils was Fernando (or Ferran) Sor, most prominent XIX Century guitarist, wich acquired a solid musical education as a boy-choir and, I’m sure, the spirituality that fill his works. This same choir is still teaching music at higest level.
Few years after Sor left the Monastry, it was destroyed by the Napoleonic army who had come to Spain to bring culture and progress. That same war forced Sor to the exile, as he was one of the so called “afrancesados”, or supporters of the new Monarchy imposed by the Frenchs. He lived in Pareis, then in London and Sant Petersburg, were he lived a passionate romance with a russian dancer… but this is another story.
Here you have a litle session, without thecnical comments, played with a romantic guitar.
(you can find the same piece but with some technical comments here)
