A New Beginning is subtitled “1st January 2010”, and clearly here’s a man who doesn’t just make New Year’s Resolutions, he get on and carries them out.
It looks easy enough, but I struggled with the second note, or rather the fingering of it, but the fog lifted when I could see this was “campanella” writing. This rolling harmony moves between 4/4 and 5/4 time and initially supports some long notes above and below, though these parts soon enter the fray with similar writing, Guitar Four is tuned DGDGBE and this gives a sustained and overlapping bass too, And this is the theme of the piece - the constant falling notes are almost like a peal of bells, and the scales are migrated from guitar to guitar so that as soon as a little section of scale is done, another guitar takes up the motif and takes it further, Here and there, the strict pattern of notes is slightly broken and it’s almost like church bell-ringers moving into a “change”.
fingering is sparse, but thoughtfully includes right hand markings to make it clear which of the campanella notes are “open” and sitting on very different strings from the notes around them.
The piece is not technically really very difficult once the “secret” is out, but where a scale run passes from guitar to guitar, the rhythm can be spiteful, with a typical guitar line moving from playing on-the-beat to off-the-beat and frequently the first beat of the bar is the back end of a tied note, so rhythmically, this piece is a little bit of a challenge and quite tough for a novice group to keep in synchronism because the four parts are seldom in step with each other.
Grading a piece like this is going to be subjective because it depends on whether the players are technicians or musicians, but although quite manageable by those with quite humble technical skills, I think it would require Grade 5-6 is musical ability to be able to hold a line against the others. But it’s definitely worth the effort, because the sound is just that little bit different.
Derek Hasted (Classical Guitar Magazine)
