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Collection of Works by Fernando Sor

Fernando Sor was an important musician of the early 19th century. He left us an impressive selection of music. Much of it is cheerful, and many may have some fond memories of challenging sessions with compositions for Sor's classical guitar.

Fernando Sor was born in Barcelona in 1778. In his twenties he sympathized with Napolean and his conquest of Catalunia, and when that failed and Catalunia returned to Spain, he was unceremoniously put outside of his own country, a place to where he never returned. He began a long residence outside of Spain, mostly in France, with some time in Moscow and in St. Petersburg, as well as some time spent in London. He died in 1839.

His work is good, varied and very distinctive. He was influential in promoting the development of the lute into a stronger sounding guitar, but he never heard the highly resonant acoustic guitars that we know nowadays.

He used primarily a smaller type of guitar, and from what we can hear and reconstruct, those guitars sounded quite unequal in tone, quality and acoustic volume. But Sor had obviously a much deeper understanding of music, and he worked within a rich musical environment. He shows a musical range from the highest possible to the lowest possible notes, and he fully exploits these ranges in his music.

Although we present his music two centuries later, we do not appear to have solved all our questions in the construction of classical guitars. I attempted to create a good simulation of a classical guitar with our current tools, but I was not able to create an instrument that could capture Sor's expression adequately, in its full expression and in its finer delicacy. With the magnificent piano that I use in this selection however, that was much easier.

You can read yet much more by studying Fernando Sor's extensive collection of edited manuscripts, established by Brian Jeffery at https://tecla.com/fernando-sor/. I am very grateful to Mr. Jeffery for permitting me to use many of his musical scores to create parts of this collection. Please note the important contribution of authors who verify and edit original manuscripts, as Mr. Jeffery has done. This is an exceedingly tedious task, as I can verify from my own 9 years in this field. In the collection below, all scores contributed graciously by Mr. Jeffery and Tecla are marked with a "T". The other parts originated in free scores found on IMSLP.

Complete collection 1: Grand Works
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