ISBN 9781619116955. 8.5 X 11 inches.

In his quest to compile an anthology of the best pieces by vihuela composers, David Grimes encountered the rich complexity of the music of Luys Milan. He also noticed many discrepancies in fingering and in the notes themselves in various existing transcribed editions. Following a period of exhaustive research the author prepared this authoritative guitar edition of the fifty fantasias in Milan's seminal 1536 book, El Maestro. The resulting edition provides a more accurate sense of the virtuosity of this music. These extraordinary pieces are presented here in standard notation only with extensive historical and performance notes. Of this collection the author writes, It is my sincere hope that this new edition will help bring this glorious repertoire to the attention of more of today's many outstanding performers, and that Milan's fantasias will more often take their deserved place on recital programs, alongside the masterworks of John Dowland and Francesco da Milano.

This collection contains sixty easy Renaissance pieces from various European countries, and from works of well known, but also obscure or anonymous composers, transcribed for the classical guitar mainly from lute, vihuela, and bandore sources. The pieces will be published in three volumes, each volume containing twenty pieces.
I have tried to include pieces of varied difficulty in all three volumes and also to keep the upper level of technical difficulty to the contemporary grade IV level of the A.B.R.S.M. which takes the student to the intermediate level (grades IV-VI).
The pieces in each volume are given in two versions, first as decorated pages in ordinary notation, and then the same pieces are again given in undecorated pages of notation and tablature. Therefore each volume contains two books in one and the choice is left to the user whether to keep the volume as presented, or to construct his own book by inclusion or deletion of unwanted pages, blank pages, etc, for use either as a printed or a tablet-screen book version. The addition of tablature of course results in doubling the number of pages needed for the presentation of the pieces, therefore the staff sizes are here reduced to an appropriate degree which can maintain the two-page view principle of any piece without need for automatic or manual page turners, foot pedals etc.
The inclusion of tablatures which shows a preference for open string combinations whenever that is possible, clarifies sufficiently the left hand playing positions without need for additional fingerings.
Having said that, my professional advice to all guitar students is to abandon completely their reliance on tablatures and study seriously through many easy collections of music such as the present one in order to familiarise themselves to all aspects of musical notation. And always have in mind that tablatures were invented and still are in use only for fretted instruments, and only due to commercial (publisher?s) considerations primarily, while other string instrumentalists neither have them available, nor need them in order to study/play music.

Metronome marks are only suggestions that need not be taken too literally and are placed mainly for guiding a score writer programme such as Sibelius for performance and extraction of audio and video files. To this end many other expression and/or technique and tempo marks may have been added to the score and made invisible.

NAVIGATION INDEXES ? External and Internal links

The second page in every volume is an index divided into three columns. The first column has the titles of the pieces as active invisible links which take the user to the relevant tablature page. The header of that page brings the user back to this index.
The second column has visible links (in frames) to live performances of the pieces either by professional guitarists or students, which are only for getting familiar with the music, but not as suggestions that particular performances should be followed for study purposes.
The third column contains active links to information about particular composers, found mainly in Wikipedia, but sometimes also in other external sources.
The third page in every volume contains a thematic index of active links to the decorated (without tablatures) pages of the pieces. The header of every decorated page brings the user back to this index.
Finally, the titles of all decorated and tablature pages are active links of interconnection between these pages.

This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard?s global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.