SKU: MB.31088

ISBN 9781513473413. 8.75X11.75 inches.

Whether you already play old-time music, or you are just getting started, this is the book for you.áDan Levenson�s Master Collection of Old-Time Tunesápresents more than 300 tunes in standard notation with suggested chords for you to explore and enjoy. All but a few are traditional or older tunes and are easily searched online to discover their pedigree as well as several recorded versions of them.Some might call this a complete repertoire in a book in the following sense: It is a large though not encyclopedic collection of old-time fiddle tunes played in today�s sessions.Learning the tunes in this book will give you a solid old-time repertoire that would allow you to join in jams in the many communities playing old-time music today.

SKU: UT.CH-111

ISBN 9790215316317. 9 x 12 inches.

The three original pieces for guitar Notturno, Napolitana (popolar songs) and Roma (March for guitar), together with three transcriptions, are included in a manuscript of 36 pages, noting in the frontispiece “Transcriptions and compositions of F. Balilla Pratella sent as a tribute to M.R. Brondi (1920)”.
These compositions follow a traditional language, and, in the tonality and the alternating themes, are an expression of Pratella’s folkloric vein, with cantabile and melancholy melodies, with the exception of the march, that show some echoes of the nineteenth century guitar masters’ way of composing.
There is a characteristic use of the quartine with no alternated thumb forefinger tremolo, that immediately recalls the plectrum orchestra so much used by Pratella in his youth.
The discovery of these pieces – which happened accidentally and saved them from certain destruction – contributes to enhance that period of great guitarist turmoil preceding Segovia,  establishing itself at the beginning of twentieth century in Italy with three compositions from an author that, along with the Bonaccorsi and Colacicchi, anticipated that current – already initiated by the Fara, Gabriel, Caravaglios – which was, in the following decades, to go by the name of ethnomusicology.

SKU: UT.CH-321

ISBN 9790215326293. 9 x 12 inches.

Dediche is a series of short miniature pieces for solo guitar written in 1991 by Chiara Benati, an authoritative exponent of what can be called the School of Bologna, and who has devoted many pages of her catalogue to the guitar (Chiara won a first prize in 1986 at the Competition for Guitar Composition organized by the historic magazine Il Fronimo).
From the point of view of the guitar idiom, it is striking how the compositional research of Chiara Benati (who does not play the guitar) has penetrated deeply into the nature of the instrument. In my job of adding the fingering to the pieces, I started from the precise indications concerning the strings already provided by the Composer, who meticulously imagined the instrumental result created by the play of resonances and the consequent precise distribution of the parts on different strings (let us think of the tremolos superimposed on different strings in the second Dedica and the counterpoint in three parts each written on its own musical stave), with a skilful use of glissandos and other instrumental effects.
From the musical point of view, a similar meticulousness in writing is evident, shown, for example, by indicating the temporal separation between the figures by means of their spatial distance indicated in the score.
The result is an instrumentally and musically rigorous writing which also helps the performer by appealing to his ability to empathize, following the indications written in the score and in the key, with the expressive atmosphere of the work, and through that specific aspect of controlled performance flexibility and sound sensitivity necessary to render it properly.
These delicate miniatures, suffused with mystery and melancholy, and so masterfully written for the guitar, are in my opinion an important addition to the contemporary repertoire of the instrument.
(Piero Bonaguri).