Garrawog-Blues

This Canadian publisher of guitar music continues to add new material to its catalogue, especially in the offering for four guitars. It has now close to twenty editions, most of them in the category of original compositions for quartets such as this. Playing instructions are in French only, though the preface is in both English and French. Therefore the subtitle may be misleading: une balade en voilier is not a ballad but a trip. The garrawog indicates a particular type of sailing boat, which the composer used on his Mediterranean outings. The composition dating from 1974 consists of seven entities, the total performance time being less than six minutes. The first two movements provide the thematic material, which returns in the next two while new elements are brought in with the fifth movement. Guitars are tuned in D while one is tuned down to C. Fingering is not provided. The preface indicates that the material is meant for students but for starters they have to be of at least grade 6 standard. Rhythmically the piece is quite demanding which adds to its pedagogical virtues. It is very pleasant music and no quartet should be without this one. The printing is excellent and page turns are ideal. The staff size on the other hand is quite small. With my professional distortion when it comes to notation, I will use this space to explain that there is a difference between a tie and a slur, a difference not observed in this and many other publications. Without going too much in detail, a tie is a curved line of which the first and last point have the same vertical position. The first starts behind the tied note and stops before the target note. For a dotted tied note, the tie starts following the dot. A slur in most cases has a starting and finishing point, which is vertically different and its ends are over or under the note-head's midpoint. (Jan de Kloe, Classical Guitar, 11/2000)